Pie Ranch’s Youth Corps Program

Pie Ranch launched a paid work experience program in April 2021 to provide an outlet for young folks, ages 14 to 22, to engage in outdoor activities for the healing of body, mind, and spirit. 

The Youth Corps program was an outlet for young people who had been learning from home and feeling isolated during the COVID pandemic to get away from a laptop screen, spend time outside with their peers, socialize, and build useful, work-related skills. Through a sense of purpose in giving back to the land, we hoped to create space for them to cultivate meaningful connections to “all the little living things” that make up the food ecosystem, including their peers. 

Youth Corps (YC) also helped Pie Ranch to recover from the CZU Lightning Complex wildfire that struck in August 2020 and caused significant damage at Pie Ranch. They helped to clear brush and trees, and assisted with repairs to our irrigation reservoir and various infrastructure projects across the farm.

Today, the Youth Corps program is intended for young adults who would like to develop experience working on a nonprofit educational farm. This position is housed in Pie Ranch’s Youth Programs, under the direct supervision of the Food and Farm Education Program Manager. 

YC engage with sustainable agriculture and food education programming through a food justice and food sovereignty lens. They work alongside our Farm and Youth Education Programs in all aspects of their work week, including but not limited to: working on the farm and in the programs garden, supporting school field trips and other educational programming, assisting with kitchen tasks and culinary events, and goat and chicken animal chores and milking. The learning process is focused mainly on a “learn-by-doing” approach and on-the-job training. 

Position Activities/Responsibilities

Farming

  • Assistance with the daily activities and ongoing maintenance of the Farm, which includes planting, weeding, irrigation and harvest

  • Greenhouse propagation & seed sowing

  • Irrigation maintenance and repair 

  • Orchard care: pruning, spreading compost and mulch

  • Record keeping

Field Trips and Farm Educational Programming

  • Assistance with implementation of food education field trips, including facilitation of school groups with farm and animal activities  

  • Development of lesson plans and curriculum

  • Maintenance and organization of teaching materials and supplies

  • Communication with field trip teachers and lead chaperones

  • Execution of administrative tasks such as data entry, form creation and more

Culinary Programming

  • Lead pie bake lessons and support culinary portion of field trips and educational programming 

  • Maintenance of the Pie Ranch outdoor kitchen as a safe and sanitary space, which includes tasks such as dishwashing, deep cleaning, laundry and more 

  • Regular inventory of pantry, kitchen equipment, and supplies

  • Development of culinary techniques which include: knifework & sharpening, stockmaking, pickling/preserves, sauce making and more

  • Creation of prep lists, grocery lists, and meal budgets

  • Processing of large harvests for preservation into pantry stores.

  • Assisting the Chef Educator as a prep or line cook for culinary events

Animal Care and Support 

  • Opening chickens from coop and goats from barns in mornings and closing animals at evening

  • Milking goats

  • Maintenance and mucking of goat barn and chicken tractor

  • Setting up fencing in pastures, clearing out unwanted plants in pastures

  • Organization of barn and animal supplies