Spring 2025 Paid Work Visits

In Spring 2025, Breadtree will welcome “visiting planters” for 2-5 day paid work residencies. Our goals for these visits are:

  • to continue expanding our working community

  • to get to know new people interested in this work from outside our immediate networks, and

  • to create opportunities for more of our peers to gain hands-on experience with working agroforestry systems.

For farmers interested in gaining more working experience or pursuing careers in agroforestry, this is a great opportunity to:

  • Learn to plant trees for long-term success in working organic agroforestry farming systems, through hands-on experience with Breadtree’s team.

  • Meet others who are passionate about agroforestry.

  • Learn more about how we work, and begin a working relationship with us.

About Breadtree

Since 2018, Breadtree Farms has been transitioning retired dairy land into organic nut and fruit orchards designed to be grazed by sheep and cattle. With a team of 8 people managing ~250 acres of orchards on about 760 total acres in Rensselaer and Washington Counties (NY), today Breadtree is the largest chestnut agroforestry operation in the Northeast U.S.

To support the growth of a more sustainable regional food system, we are developing enterprises and markets for maple syrup, honey, lamb & mutton, organic hickory oil, and organic seaberry products — all produced on our farms. Over the next decade, we also expect to begin producing acorn oil, acorn flour, and (hopefully) wild simulated ginseng. We’re also continuing to push the boundaries of a biological approach to broad-acre agriculture, through a series of trials focused on increasing the diversity of the orchard understory and the fungal communities in our soils, and by experimenting with ferments and other above-ground inoculants to support microbial diversity.

With the support of the USDA, we are renovating our historic barn complex to develop an organic chestnut processing facility that will provide a shared path to market for many other regional farmers who are adopting chestnut agroforestry practices. In addition to developing the capacity for regional aggregation, processing, and distribution of chestnuts and chestnut products, this project involves extensive engagement and technical support for other chestnut growers in the region, as well as outreach and relationship building with retail customers and wholesale accounts to expand the market for organic chestnuts and other food products from our system.

We are eager to connect with peers who want to participate in growing a multi-decade vision of a cooperative, resilient food system in our region.

Spring 2025 Planting Effort

This spring, Breadtree will plant 5,000+ trees on 80+ acres, across several sites in Washington and Rensselaer Counties, NY. We are hoping to host visiting planters in April and May. These plantings will include chestnut, hickory, oak, and seaberry.

Your Role

You’ll be joining our 6-8 person crew to prep, plant, stake, tube, and mulch bare-root trees and shrubs in pre-spaded rows. We will train you and support you to practice all parts of this process in a friendly, educational working environment. For this spring, we are asking visiting planters to make a multi-day commitment. Because of the learning curve and the attention we invest in training new people, we find it takes multiple days of working together for new planters to get up to speed, and for everyone to get a sense of each other and how we work together. That said, we are motivated to be flexible to make this work for your schedule. Ideally, you are able to commit to 2-5 consecutive days within a M-F week this spring, but if that is a barrier to this opportunity working for you, let us know. For example, if a couple of people wanted to do a work weekend, we could reschedule one of our weeks to make that happen.

Requirements

  • Ability to work outside, standing/bending/kneeling/squatting, for 8+ hours, multiple days in a row, rain or shine

  • Ability to lift up to 50lbs

  • Ability to strike a balance between careful attention to detail and moving at an efficient pace.

  • Curiosity and interest in learning how to get better at what you are doing; capacity to welcome input and feedback, including constructive criticism or requests for change.

  • Minimum 4 mo. of experience working on farms or in landscaping preferred

Compensation

  • $18-22/hr depending on experience

  • Mileage to and from site (up to 200 mi total) reimbursed at the federal mileage rate ($0.70 per mile)

  • Lodging provided if traveling from outside the area

What should I do if I’m interested?

Please email Bug at bug@breadtreefarms.com with a brief description of your experience and interest (it doesn’t need to be a resume or anything formal, just give us a sense of where you’re coming from and why you want to participate).