Find your place in the field of good food

Our goal is to connect good people with good food. We advertise sustainable food jobs and training opportunities to help jobseekers and employers find each other.

Roots to Work is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

Job description

We are looking for someone to take on a 2 acre, no dig, chemical free market garden as a self-employment opportunity. We have already planted some agroforestry strips on-site, and a food forest. The site is deer fenced and has an irrigated poly tunnel. 

We are particularly enthusiastic to attract to our farm people that will help our community to be representative and diverse. If you are BAME, LGBTQ+, or disabled please know you are especially welcome :) We’ve been running the garden ourselves so-far but we would like to find a person (or a couple) with proper experience, dedication and focus to take it over so that it really thrives. We have a small number of existing customers (retail and wholesale) that we can pass on and we will want to come to an arrangement with you about access to the veg for GroundSchool CIC.

This is a really unusual opportunity! We are flexible to suggestions of how to structure the relationships to work well for all involved. We have already invested significant capital costs which we now want to use as a platform to enable other people to join us on the farm - we are not expecting any payment for these investments, our priority is getting people on the farm and being part of our community. We will discuss together an ethical, equitable, timely compensation for our part (ie. reasonable rent, bartering, proportionate profit share etc).

We can’t provide accommodation; but if you have a caravan and want to live on site that is possible.  

The ideal applicant would have 

• Experience or knowledge in regenerative, no-dig market garden practices

• An entrepreneurial mindset, and the dedication to create a flourishing, diverse garden 

• A handle on marketing and sales, to ensure the produce grown is getting out to the local community

• An interest in showing the garden to potential future GroundSchool course attendees

• Share our values and approach to discovering better ways to farm, flourish, grow and nourish

About the farm:  

Irongate Farm is a regenerative mixed farm in Hertfordshire, with pasture raised rotationally grazed cattle and arable land in the process of converting to organic. We are also home to GroundSchool CIC and co-host the Groundswell Festival. Together we are co-imagining what the future of farming could look like. We have a number of business opportunities for farm-based enterprises that we are seeking to find collaborators for.

Other potential on-farm collaborations / opportunities  

• Chickens: we don’t have any existing equipment to offer, but we are keen to include a pasture-raised broiler operation to follow our mob grazed cow rotation next year. We might be able to help with upfront costs to get this off the ground, please get in touch if this is of interest. 

• Aronia berries: we are taking over an existing aronia berry business and will transplant around 2000 aronia berry bushes in autumn, alongside installing a freezer and juicing equipment. We are looking for someone to take on this as their own and bring this amazing crop to more people. We think it is about a day or so a week of social media and marketing, plus juicing and sending out the juice. There’s an existing customer base. We’ll support with the harvesting.

• Miller: we have recently acquired a Zentrofan mill and associated equipment. We’re looking for someone to mill our heritage grains (approx 10 tonnes this year), to market and sell the flour, and to work with us in the years ahead to develop landraces here on the farm.

Application information

To make a suggestion, arrange a conversation, ask questions, or put yourself forward please contact:

Belinda Bell 07903 991113  

belindabell@thegroundschool.org.uk

Please mention Roots to Work when applying for these jobs