Event Calendar

Get practical and hands-on experience in:

• Intentional communities
• Permaculture
• Urban farming
• DIY culture
• Animal husbandry
• Food preservation
• Medicinal herbs
• Beekeeping
• Food forests
• Natural building
• Water systems
• Radical sustainability
• Grassroots economics
• Garden-based education
• and much more!

Session 1: June 2-July 10, 2009
Five-and-a-half week Community Sustainability Internship and Permaculture Design Certification. In addition to earning a PDC, interns will participate in The City Repair Project’s ninth annual Village Building Convergence, and gain in natural building, gardening and community development skills. Tuition, room & board: $2,600. ($2,500 if sign up by April 15)

Session 2: August 1-21, 2009
Three-week Community Sustainability Internship, with a focus on local food and plant medicine. Interns will tend, harvest and preserve food from the animals and garden, learn to make medicine from wild and cultivated plants, as well as work on natural building and community development. Tuition, room & board: $1,600. ($1,500 if sign up by June 15).

The internship program will combine theory, practice, innovation and adventure. From learning how to grow and preserve food, to how to make decisions in community, to integrating social and environmental justice, each intern will come away from this program with a set of skills which will be increasingly useful in our changing climate and economy.

Courses will be taught by TLC Farm teachers and local experts, including permaculture teachers Toby Hemenway & Marisha Auerbach, herbalists Judy BlueHorse Skelton & Cascade Anderson Geller, and more. Each intern session will culminate in a personalized action plan, supported by intern mentors.

A limited number of work-trade scholarships are available. Please see www.tryonfarm.org/intern , contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 503-245-3847 for more information about the program and registration.

*This program is made possible in part by a generous start-up grant from the Spirit Mountain Community Fund!

More details about TLC Farm's Sustainable Community Immersion Program

1. Community living
Interns will experience communal life on two levels. The interns
themselves will create a community and be responsible for collective
decision-making, meal preparation, conflict resolution, etc. In addition,
the community of interns will interact with, and be supported by, Cedar
Moon, the intentional community at TLC Farm.

2. Outdoor living
The internship is an immersive, outdoor experience. Interns will live in
tents, wash in outdoor showers, cook in a outdoor kitchen, and have most
classes and work experience outdoors. There will be an intern yurt for
reading, research and chill time with a woodstove, library, and
electricity. While Portland has a well deserved reputation for rain,
summers are often quite dry especially from July through September.

3. Hands-on work and Theory
The program includes a balance of lectures & discussions with hands-on
experiential learning and field trips. Over time, the hands-on work will
become increasingly intern-directed.

4. Food preparation and sharing
Interns will be provided with ingredients and suggestions as needed, and
will collaboratively create and implement a cooking and cleaning
schedule. TLC Farm is primarily a vegetarian community: we have chickens
and dairy goats for eggs and milk and grow much of our own food.

5. TLC Farm location & history
A unique seven-acre farm surrounded by a 700-acre state park in Portland,
Oregon, TLC Farm demonstrates how sustainable living techniques can
further goals often perceived as contradictory: urban density of human
habitat inside the growth boundary, combined with not only conservation of
natural resources and public greenspace, but actual enhancement of native
ecosystems. TLC Farm was born out of a community effort to save the land
from development and turn it into a community space for sustainability
education. This land now functions as a gathering place, sustainability
education facility, community center and retreat – all within a bike ride
from downtown Portland.

6. Work Study positions
There are four work-study positions available for each intern session.
The positions include two food coordinators and two scribes, who will
interface between the TLC Farm intern coordinators and the interns
themselves in exchange for a 50% program fee reduction. Food coordinators
will help the interns create menus for each week based on food available
at the farm, coordinate cooking and cleaning schedules for the interns and
manage the community kitchen. Scribes will take notes and photographs of
all aspects of the program and use these to create a booklet at the end of
the program. Work trade positions will require approximately 10 hours of
work per week.