Pie Ranch’s Youth Corps Program

Pie Ranch launched a paid work experience program in April 2021 to provide an outlet for young adults to engage in outdoor activities for the healing of body, mind, and spirit. 

The Youth Corps program was an outlet for young adults who had been learning from home and feeling isolated during the COVID pandemic to get away from a laptop screen, spend time outside with their peers, socialize, and build useful, work-related skills. Through a sense of purpose in giving back to the land, we hoped to create space for them to cultivate meaningful connections to “all the little living things” that make up the food ecosystem, including their peers. 

Youth Corps (YC) also helped Pie Ranch to recover from the CZU Lightning Complex wildfire that struck in August 2020 and caused significant damage at Pie Ranch. They helped to clear brush and trees, and assisted with repairs to our irrigation reservoir and various infrastructure projects across the farm.

Today, the Youth Corps program is intended for young adults who would like to develop experience working on a nonprofit educational farm. This position is housed in Pie Ranch’s Youth Programs, under the direct supervision of the Food and Farm Education Program Manager. 

YC engage with sustainable agriculture and food education programming through a food justice and food sovereignty lens. They work alongside our Farm and Youth Education Programs in all aspects of their work week, including but not limited to: working on the farm and in the programs garden, supporting school field trips and other educational programming, assisting with kitchen tasks and culinary events, and goat and chicken animal chores and milking. The learning process is focused mainly on a “learn-by-doing” approach and on-the-job training. 

Activities/Responsibilities

Farming

  • Daily farm maintenance and operations such as seeding, planting, weeding and cultivation, harvest, post harvest handling, packing, irrigation and crop maintenance.

  • Help maintain the youth program plot on the farm for program purposes (harvesting ingredients for culinary programs, educational purposes, etc.)

  • Participate in orchard management, including pruning, thinning, and harvesting

  • Daily record keeping of tasks, time management, and farm inputs

Field Trips and Farm Educational Programming

  • Assist Pie Ranch Programs Team on the implementation and delivery of public programs and field trips for school groups.

  • Facilitation of farm projects and tours, pie bakes (with support of Chef Educator), milling demos, and other culinary and craft projects for programs.

  • Support the entire program (Education and Public Programs) team in executing culinary programs, tours, weddings (tours/set-up), dinners, including assisting site managers during program retreats, assisting Chef Educator as a prep or line cook, and processing harvests for preservation into pantry stores, etc.

Conservation

  • Ongoing maintenance of the Five Pie Ranch native plant hedgerows

  • Invasive plant removal

  • Native Plant identification and Propagation

  • Riparian Creek Restoration

  • Seed Collection

Job Descriptions: Fall 2026 Youth Corps (4 positions)
Application: Fall 2026 Youth Corps (Deadline Aug 14)