Outdoor Farm Lead

Company description

Founded in 2011, The Urban Canopy is pioneering the local food cycle to create a more sustainable and equitable food system in Chicago. We are growers, distributors, composters, and community members who seek to positively impact our city’s environment, people’s health, and local economy. We strive to make healthy produce accessible to all, reduce the miles fresh food travels, keep food waste out of landfills, and create and maintain local jobs.

Summary:

The Urban Canopy is a young organization working to build a local, ethical, sustainable food system in Chicagoland. We are seeking a skilled farm manager for Lead of our 2-acre outdoor farm in Auburn-Gresham. The ideal candidate has 3+ years of experience in production farming and managing a small team, excels at developing and practicing efficient hand-scale production methods, and is committed to environmental stewardship, local job creation, healthy-living initiatives, and community building.

• Develop and maintain a yearly budget with guidance from Urban Canopy Leadership
• Guide the growth and direction of the branch; actively seek opportunities for improvement
• Collaborative crop planning and continuous re-evaluation based on accurate data and analysis
• Lead daily production work including bed prep, planting, plant maintenance, documentation, tool inventory and maintenance, seed starting, monitoring soil health, watering, weed control, maintain compost, spring setup and farm winterization
• Hire, train and manage farm crew
• Lead all harvest work: upkeep harvest supplies, create harvest plan, monitor harvest efficiency, communicate with other branches on order fulfillment
• Manage Branch communications with internal and external partners
• Gather and analyze harvest data to track crop viability and inform budget
• Build relations with neighbors, city departments, urban farm partners and broader community

• 3+ years production farming experience, ideally small/organic
• 3+ years management experience
• Able to lift 75+ lbs and work outdoors in all Chicago weather
• Competence and experience with Excel/Google Sheets coding
• Efficiency-minded, self-driven, hard worker, able to give and receive instructions critically
• Entrepreneurial spirit, recognize opportunities and means for growth
• Valid license + comfortable driving large passenger vans and small box trucks to fulfill job duties
• Comfortable with the ambiguity and stressors common to a growing small business
• Able to shift gears smoothly and maintain momentum on multiple tasks
• Able to meet
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