Work with Us

About our (2024) potential positions…

About the farm:

Hartwood Farm is a 70-acre diversified produce farm thirty minutes from Syracuse. We grow over 50 different vegetables on five and a half acres, with the balance of land in cover crops, hayfields, wetlands, and woodlands. We have three high tunnels and two heated greenhouses. We use a mix of hand tools and tractor implements, are certified organic, and have lots of fun (we hope)!. Our veggies go throughout Madison and Onondaga counties into 200 CSA shares, a weekly farmers market, and online ordering.

About the Jobs:

• These positions work in all aspects of the farm, including seed starting, transplanting, weeding, field prep, irrigation, harvesting, packing shares, marketing/record-keeping, and attending markets.

• Our main field season runs from late April through the end of October. Ideally candidates start in mid-April and stay through mid to late October, however we have flexibility on start/end dates!

• While we prefer full-time farmers, we are open to part-time folks. If you are interested in part-time work, the key hours we need help with are weekday mornings. We can definitely work around parenting hours!

• Full time positions run 40 to 45 hours most weeks, Monday through Friday with everyone rotating turns to help cover Saturday farmers market (7am to noon). We generally start at 7 or 8am, break for a 45minute lunch, and finish between 4 and 5:30 pm. A typical week looks like:

  • Monday—7am start, am harvest for CSA, pm bag veggies and small farm projects (seeding in greenhouse, irrigation, trellising)

  • Tuesday—7 or 8am start, finish harvest and box shares in am, pm farm projects—seeding, planting, transplanting, or trellising

  • Weds and Thurs—8am start, sometimes short morning harvests, but these are the big transplanting and weeding days, working on irrigation systems and larger projects!

  • Friday—7am start, focused on harvesting and packing for CSA and farmers market

  • Saturday—flexible rotation of 7am to noon shifts at the farmers market

• Applicants should feel comfortable working in all kinds of weather and be able to squat, kneel, and repeatedly lift 50 pounds. We really focus on farming smart and building systems with good ergonomics, but there’s still a fair bit of human powered work and motion.

• Ideal candidates have one full season or more of farming experience, though other fast paced, outdoor, or manual labor experience can substitute.

• Harvest speed is a super-huge component of the position—in the main 20 weeks of the season, we spend over half our time on harvesting! Don’t worry, we try to make harvest days fun, but there is a fair amount of bending and kneeling (and quick hands)!

Benefits:

• Compensation generally starts at $15/hour plus all you can eat/grow vegetables and plants from the farm. We have plenty of pasture/field space and woods for your own animals and projects (and well-trained dogs are welcome).

• Employees are covered by workers comp, unemployment, disability, family medical leave, and all that jazz, and also receive at least 5 paid vacation/sick days a season (they accrue at 1hr/30 worked). We also provide paid sick leave as needed with regards to Covid!

• Speaking of Covid, we strive for safety for our food, customers, and staff. Most of our work is outside and well ventilated, but we do have some days working in close quarters like greenhouses and coolers. We ask that staff are vaccinated for Covid (and for tetanus, because that’s a higher risk on farms, and nobody wants lockjaw!). If we are working in tight quarters, especially while rates are high, we do mask up. We will provide any necessary high-quality PPE for staff.

• Employees are responsible for own housing and transportation. We are about 30 minutes from downtown Syracuse and less than 10 minutes from Cazenovia and Chittenango.

• Bi-lingual and non-English speakers are always welcome.

• We are committed to helping teach the next generation of farmers the technical skills needed to be successful growers, and there is considerable hands-on learning and opportunities to visit other farms (and we are happy to provide past employee references). We’ve been farming since 1998, and here since 2012, and working with us is an interesting (and hopefully fun!) mix of experienced growers dealing with the ups and downs of bringing land and markets into production and finetuning growing systems. We are happy to work with you to build the best learning mix of opportunities from your work with us and have experience working with schools as a internship/practicum site (we don’t do unpaid internships, but are happy to tailor our jobs towards internship requirements).

To apply or learn more, shoot an email over to Matt at hartwood22@gmail.com with a resume or brief list of your experience. We look forward to talking!

Check out the farm at www.hartwoodfarm.com, Facebook @Hartwood Farm, and Instagram @hartwoodfarm. To learn more, email Matt at hartwood22@gmail.com.