Fellowship Schedule & Structure

Groundwork’s fellowship is an environment that promotes curiosity and a lifestyle conducive to connection with community and place. We get our hands dirty and stay physically active while tending the gardens and orchards. And we dig deep, exploring radical thought from the world’s foremost thinkers outside of the mainstream capitalist ecosystem.

Weekly Schedule

This is our general outline for the schedule throughout the season. Occasionally, we will have weekends that have special events. Please note that this schedule is tentative and may shift with the seasons, with the scheduling needs of community partners, and in response to the needs and goals of the farm and fellows.

• Sunday: Our most special day! Sundays are the most varied days: some days will be full-day workshops, some will be farm days, some will be community events.
• Monday: Farm day with flexible farm afternoon.
• Tuesday: Farm day with evening farmers’ market. May through October, fellows will rotate through the market crew. Outside of market season, Tuesdays are flexible farm afternoons.
• Wednesday: Farm day with community afternoon. Some Wednesday evenings have discussions at dinner about our readings.
• Thursday: Farm day with community afternoon.
• Friday: Weekend.
• Saturday: Weekend.

Farm Day Schedule

Monday through Thursday are farm days. Some Sundays will also be farm days. Farm work varies through the season, and includes field preparation, planting, harvesting, produce washing and packaging, weeding, mowing, trellising, and various other farm chores. Groundwork’s farm is a working farm, and we depend on farm income to . The goal of this time is to have fellows engaged in a working farm business to understand what it takes to bew a part of a food system where we compete with prices set by large-scale industrial farms.

Before 7:00 Breakfast & optional mindfulness practice (join a daily community practice or practice yoga, journaling, or nature observation on your own)
7:00 – 12:00 Farm work with small lessons on food systems, seed growing, & farming
12:00 – 2:30 Communal lunch & rest time
2:30 – 7:00 Shifts from day to day
7:00 – 8:00 Community dinner (not mandatory to attend, but fellows are asked to be present at least 3 days a week to maintain the community feeling)

Monday afternoons: flexible farm time

Monday afternoons sessions run 2:30pm to 5pm, and will shift through the season. During planting season, Monday afternoons will likely involve extra planting pushes. During the heat of summer, Monday afternoons are a great time for us to work indoors seeding trays in the nursery or to have an extra class. During the fall harvest, Mondays become a time to process food, making products, and work cleaning seeds. On some big harvest days, we might need to spend a little time Monday afternoons finishing preparing produce orders. In the past, fellows have made hot sauce, kimchi, sauerkraut, jams, pesto, and preserves, using whatever produce is abundant at the time.

Tuesday afternoons: Paonia farmers market

Paonia’s farmers market runs mid-May through mid-October on Tuesday evenings from 5pm–7:30pm. Fellows rotate through the market crew, usually working 2 markets per month. The market prep begins at 3:30pm, and the crew is usually done by 8:30pm. On weeks you are not working the market or occupied by other chores, you are free on Tuesday afternoons. Outside of the market season, Tuesday afternoons are flexible farm time, like Mondays.

Wednesday evenings: Discussions on assigned readings

Throughout the fellowship, you will have assigned readings on topics ranging from water policy and seed systems to ecology and imagination-building. Twice each month at Wednesday night dinner, fellows will facilitate discussions on the most recent readings as a way to engage with the topics and deepen learning. These Wednesday night dinners are mandatory for everybody in the fellowship to attend.

Wednesday and Thursday afternoons: Fellow-organized community engagement

Groundwork is a part of a web of farms and community organizations in the North Fork Valley. Wednesday and Thursday afternoons are set aside for fellows to connect with our partner organizations. You will learn from other farmers and organizations as you offer service to the community. After initial introductions in March and April, fellows will be responsible for connecting with partner organizations to design and complete projects that align with the cohort’s learning goals and local needs.

Partner farms include Thistle Whistle Farms (specialty produce), Grey Owl Gardens (herbs and perennial plants), and High Desert Seeds (local-adapted crops grown for seed). Our partner organizations include The Learning Council (community education programs and advocacy), North Fork Creative Coalition (artist support and local events), and Uproot (food rescue and gleaning). Other opportunities that may arise for these afternoons might look like joining locals in picking wild apricots for jam, harvesting wild mushrooms for communal meals, and pitching in on earthen building projects around the valley. The intention of these afternoons is to help you integrate in the community, meet people off the farm, and learn from people besides those involved with Groundwork. This fellowship is a collaborative program that relies on more than just Groundwork staff to create the holistic and immersive experience.

Special Sundays

Sundays are our most varied day of the week. Some weeks, Sundays are farm days (especially during planting and harvest pushes). At least twice per month, Sundays are workshop days where fellows attend workshops run by Groundwork or by community partners in Paonia. These workshops set Groundwork’s fellowship apart from many other farm experiences like WWOOF experiences.

In the early years of the fellowship, we posted a complete syllabus of what the season would offer in terms of workshops and craft days. As the program has evolved, it has become more embedded in our local community, and more of our teachers are local experts outside of Groundwork. We no longer plan the entire fellowship in advance for a few reasons. First, the fellowship has grown from 3 to 8 months, and we want to tailor the experience to the curiosities and interests of fellows as we are on this learning journey together. Second, we want to break out of the mold of structured educational experiences, where classroom planning is divorced from what happens outside of the classroom. We need to be flexible to take advantage of last-minute opportunities and to work with various local teachers who have their own shifting schedules.

Throughout the season, we’ll be working with Groundwork staff, local teachers, and fellows to craft an experience that is holistic and deep, but we do not offer a concrete syllabus for the whole fellowship. We hope you’ll appreciate our reasons, and we know you’ll love the flexibility this model affords you. Below are examples of workshops and craft days we try to include.

Workshop days

Workshops vary from year to year based on teacher availability, and may include:

• Seed School: harvest and process basket willows from the farm, learn basic basket-weaving techniques, and weave your own harvest basket.
• Colorado River Policy: use traditional techniques and all-natural materials to tan a sheepskin or deer hide.
• Falling In Love With The Future: harvest clay from local soils, and focus either on earthen construction or pottery. Possibilities include making sun-dried adobe bricks, studying basic adobe construction, making clay-based paint, and hand-building pottery.
• Nonprofit Finance: Study nonprofit budgets and financial planning using Groundwork as a case study.
• Land Management in the West: Study public lands history and present management as it relates to
• Farm Planning: Dive into Groundwork’s farm planning in-depth to understand how a diversified farm is planned and operated.
• International Food Movements: Case studies on food-based movements around the world. Compare and contrast these with U.S. based food work.
• Modernity: Study industrial food production.
• Degrowth and Post-Capitalist Movements: Dive into the foundations of non-capitalist economic theory and dissect the growth imperative that drives so much of our economic system.

Craft days: exploring origins and place-based lifeways

Craft days have consistently been a highlight for fellows. These craft days are focused on building a hands-on understanding of the place where we live and people’s relationship with the land. The workshops focus primarily on harvesting local materials to experiment with more place-based lifeways. Classes vary from year to year based on teacher availability, and may include:

• Willow Basketry: harvest and process basket willows from the farm, learn basic basket-weaving techniques, and weave your own harvest basket.
• Natural Tanning: use traditional techniques and all-natural materials to tan a sheepskin or deer hide.
• Wild Clay: harvest clay from local soils, and focus either on earthen construction or pottery. Possibilities include making sun-dried adobe bricks, studying basic adobe construction, making clay-based paint, and hand-building pottery.
• Earthen Building: make adobe blocks and natural plasters and paints from local soil.
• Local Fiber Textiles: In our eco-region, we can source fiber from sheep, yaks, alpaca, flax, yucca, and dogbane. Local weavers and knitters create textiles from locally-sourced and naturally-dyed fiber, and we can join in to learn the basics from soil to textile. Options include processing fiber, spinning, and weaving.
• Natural Dyes and Botanical Printing: In our eco-region, we can grow and harvest dye plants for natural color. Experiment with using these plants, and create your own dyed or printed garments.

Free Time

Friday and Saturday: Weekend (Free time with rotating farm chores)

Fellows have Friday and Saturdays as weekends. Farm chores still need to be completed, and it’s up to the people on each chore team to make sure their chores are completed. Chore teams may pass their chores off to others. We have chosen the Friday/Saturday weekend schedule so that Sundays can incorporate workshops where the broader Paonia community is also invited to attend (it’s hard for people to come to full-day offerings on weekdays).

Days off

Through the 8 months, fellows are expected to take 8 days off. Days off need to be approved by the fellowship cohort crew and farm mentorship team to ensure that needs on the farm are met. It’s most common for people to take Wednesday, Thursday, or Sunday off to extend weekends.

Holidays

The farm observes Labor Day and Juneteenth, though the farm schedule may require us to shift the days we actually take off for these holidays. In Paonia, the Cherry Days Festival happens on the 4th of July, and we usually take the day off to attend the festival, depending on farm needs. If the 4th of July falls on a weekend, we won’t observe the holiday with an additional day off. We observe Thanksgiving as a harvest feast day for giving thanks, (we also acknowledging its fraught cultural roots and do not celebrate them). The farm does not observe the militaristic holiday of Memorial Day (which also happens at the busiest time of year for farmers).

Rest & commitment

For a small town, Paonia has a surprising amount happening. It’s very common for fellows to overfill their schedules, leaving too little time for rest. It’s also common for people to begin requesting time off The fellowship schedule has evolved over the past 5 years to incorporate flexibility and intentional time to interact with the community. Some of these structures we hope you will appreciate are the fellow-designed afternoons on Wednesdays and Thursdays, rotating farmers’ market crews, and Sundays that will incorporate events put on as collaborations between Groundwork and the broader community. We trust that you can balance your commitment to the farm and your cohort, rest, and all the additional happenings you may want to participate in.

Five Components

Hands-On Experience in Local, Organic Food Systems

Fellows spend 4-5 mornings a week on the farm: watering, weeding, seeding, transplanting, and harvesting. These morning sessions are 5 hours per day with a small break in the middle. Groundwork’s farm grows organic produce and seeds, so you’ll learn how a local, organic food system works from seed to table. With our seed production, you’ll learn the multi-generational side of agriculture, understanding food systems from seed to seed. Fellows should finish this experience being more than qualified to work as an assistant farm manager on any organic farm or to run a community garden.

Reading, Discussion, Workshops, & Seminars

The fellowship is a collaborative learning environment, where we all engage in a curriculum focused on creative critiques of mainstream approaches. Our academic component combines readings, discussions, and classroom workshops and seminars. Click here for more about our curriculum.

Citizenship of Place

Slow living, unstructured time, and exploration form the backbone of your connection to the landscape of Western Colorado. The land here is rugged, dry, and diverse. The 14,000-foot peaks of the Elk Range rise to the east, while red-rock canyons of the Colorado Plateau sit just to the west. The dusty piñon-juniper forests, the lush aspen groves, and the towering cottonwoods all create their own magic in this landscape. Fellows will learn the local plants, animals, and landforms. Citizenship of place means engaging with place in multiple dimensions: personal, ecological, spiritual, historical, social, and political. It means yielding to the seasonal cycles of the land, like you are weaving your life into the land, rather than forcing the land to bend to your vision.

Traditional Lifeways

From food preservation to basket weaving, seed saving to local clay pottery, the fellowship is a space for exploring what life looks like outside of a consumer/industrial society.

Alternative Living: Slow Life in Community

As a cohort of young people facing down the world’s huge environmental problems, community is the backbone of what we do. Fellows live, cook, eat, create, and play together. We create a village-like environment, where there are always friends around, but there is space for personal time when you need. Fellows work together to manage everyday tasks like menu planning with farm-harvested ingredients, plan celebrations together, and collaborate on projects.

About The Farm

Groundwork rents space from The Lamborn Foundation, a spiritual foundation devoted to creating real-world embodiments of spiritual ideas. The Lamborn Foundation and the family who runs it are known for their extreme generosity and idealism. The Lamborn Foundation is Christian, but the farm as a whole and Groundwork as an organization are not. Board members of The Lamborn Foundation often say that they feel more resonance with non-religious people of integrity than they do with many self-identified Christians. The 135-acre farm as a whole is a space that blends intention with practice: a place to grow. The farm hosts 4 separate nonprofits and 6 separate businesses. Only one of these ten organizations has any religious affiliation.

Being a spiritual space, Groundwork operates on a few broad agreements with The Lamborn Foundation:

• No alcohol or other substances on the property.
• We strive together to establish a space where different religious views and practices coexist and learn from each other, so long as they are reverent, kind, and prayerful in nature, seeking understanding and harmony rather than judgment, suspicion, or disunion. The farm is a space of open dialogue, where we seek common ground. For example, Greg Cranson, a farmer from The Lamborn Foundation gives a beautiful class on seeds that includes his view that seeds hold a special place in Christian cosmology. He does not intend to convert or correct others, but simply share his way of understanding and expressing love for the world. All such spaces of sharing have been highlights for past fellows, building understanding across difference.
• On this land, we work to limit practices that have historically promoted misunderstanding across difference, like certain rituals. We welcome all kinds of individual daily prayer and meditation. If there is a practice you hold which you have apprehension about bringing to this space, please reach out to us. For our 2021 fellowship program, Groundwork hosted a much larger cohort than we do now, which included Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, Jews, atheists, and Christians, and all felt welcome. The intention of this agreement is to maintain a sense of respect and understanding. Simplicity, reverence, love, and kindness are the general feelings people find from our landlords on the farm.
• We limit public displays of symbols tied to contentious social and political topics. The Lamborn Foundation does not display crosses or other Christian imagery, and they ask their tenants not to display symbols like flags, banners, or statues in public spaces. The farm’s aesthetic is simple and agricultural, and you would not know it is owned by a Christian organization.

Much of the way we work is influenced by our friends at environmental centers around the world: Pun Pun Farm, The Mekong School, and Thai Plum Village in Thailand, Teatro Trono/COMPA in Bolivia, SECMOL in India, Bolad’s Kitchen in New Mexico, and environmental and experiential education programs based here in the United States including Mission: Wolf, Where There Be Dragons and NOLS.