Are you a budding urban agriculturist? Join Concordia’s City Farm School

Greenhouse growing, seed production, organic gardening — these are just a few of the earthy things you’ll learn during Concordia’s City Farm School internship program.

Open to the public, it’s an eight-and-a-half-month commitment, requiring 180 hours from March to mid-November. The program is designed to create urban farmers who are interested in taking their veggies to market, while also working collectively to design and manage a typical-scale community garden plot. The application deadline is January 30, 2016.

City slickers welcome

Don’t worry if you don’t have farm experience. The internship is an introduction to urban agriculture, assuming that students are new to the field.

“While experience isn’t necessary, we need our applicants to be passionate and enthusiastic,” says Chesley Walsh, co-coordinator of the City Farm School. “Often, students take our internship as a stepping stone before applying to other farming internships. It’s a good way to see if they want a life in urban agriculture before making a bigger commitment.”

The internship, in its sixth year, is divided into three sessions spread across the growing and harvest seasons.

“This is the first time the internship is portioned in this fashion, in order to allow students to take part in the program if they can’t commit to three sequential sessions,” says Walsh, who notes that the average number of interns per year is 25.

Three sessions across the seasons

Beginning in early March, the first three months is the Greenhouse Growing session, focusing on the skills and sciences behind greenhouse planting, soil and seeds.

Next is the Farm to Market session, where interns work on the land to farm their own produce, develop a communal garden and sell it at rotating markets throughout the city. There will also be a focus on identifying food deserts in the city and strategizing how to bring affordable produce to those areas. It takes place at the farm on the Loyola Campus.

The final workshop is the Food Sovereignty and Tranformations session, starting in August, which focuses on harvest and transformation techniques. Interns learn how to preserve what they grow, how to use gardening and growing as a source of community engagement and what is happening locally and globally in terms of food sovereignty and systems. 

Healing with herbs

City Farm School also offers a six-month Medicinal Herbs internship, with registration opening February 1 and ending March 20. The internship takes place at both the Loyola City Farm School Herbal Medicine Garden and the Concordia Greenhouse.

“Students will learn the basics of how to grow, harvest, preserve, transform and apply some common herbs,” says Walsh. “It’s practical because we teach how to make salves, balms, tinctures, throat lozenges, syrups and suppositories, just to name a few.”

Support from Concordia

Interns who complete the programs get a certificate from the City Farm School. Applicants don’t have to be Concordia students. Both programs are open to the public.

“We get support from many sponsors, including Concordia’s Environmental Health and Safety and Roger Côté’s office, [Office of the Vice-President, Services],” says Concordia alumna Jackie Martin, BA (Human Environment) 10, the co-founder and co-coordinator who works with Walsh.

“We also get funding from the Sustainability Action Fund, plus access to the greenhouse and Loyola gardens. The Loyola Sustainability Research Centre helps us with funding applications, and we hope to collaborate more with them in the near future.”

Learn more about Concordia's City Farm School internships.

Prospective interns must fill out an application form and email a CV to jackie@cityfarmschool.com. Interviews begin in early February. Applicants will be notified within a week of their interview if they have been selected for the internship.

Please note: If you do apply, please put TRANSFORMATIONS SESSION in your subject line.