We offer a 5-6-month residency at Quail Springs that is grounded in community living and care, and the non-human relations who sustain us. This is a space to deepen connection with yourself, and the place-based social and ecological systems while practicing day-to-day practical skills of sustaining a rural off-grid farm collective in the high desert.

We are calling for folks who wish to embrace the profundity and resiliency of remote and rural living; people who are assertive learners, curious, mindful and oriented to community care, creative, and open to the diverse and emergent rhythm that the social and ecological systems here demand of us.

This trade includes a commitment to 25 hrs per week for a 5-6 month period. Weekends are friday/sat, or sunday/monday. These hours are oriented to work on the farm with our garden and animal systems, as well as tasks supporting our facilities and infrastructure team. This work is alongside the farm and facilities teams, or delegated by directors in these realms. As a bee in our community hive, this agreement also includes 10-15 hrs of weekly community tending.

In gratitude for this share of work, we offer accommodations, high quality food–meat, fresh goat milk and eggs, produce from the garden, locally sourced grains and staples, and access to our facilities on site.

Work-traders are a part of the teams that run the farm and support facilities maintenance. Folks gain skill, understanding, and confidence through hands-on, field-based immersion into our daily life.

Worktraders are also members of our community and are fully included in Quail Springs community life. This includes attending our regular Tuesday Townhall meetings, participating in circles (aka subcommittees) of interest, signing up to cook dinner or wash up post meal ~2 meals/week, and contributing to regular weekly communal and land tending chores and needs. Although everyone on site contributes to the labor of the farm and the community, the farm, garden, and facilities tasks are a daily focus for worktraders volunteers and select staff, while other staff spend their days focused on non-profit organizational tasks (e.g., programming, administration, advocacy).

An average day for a worktrader will begin with an early morning (7am in the peak of summer, 8-9am in the winter) jumping into your task for the day, whether it be turning on an irrigation system or feeding the chickens. Tuesdays include a noon-time hour long community townhall meeting with all folks on the land present. Wednesdays and thursdays are work-party days, where the farm team (farm directors and worktraders) and/or the whole community spends 4-5 hours together in the morning working in the garden or tending to land/facilities projects. The rest of the day will be shared completing your farm/facilities task for the day, some time caring for the commons, and ends with a community meal, communing with others, or alone time. Weekends are a beautiful opportunity to rest, connect with the land or others outside of work, or run errands/ explore the land beyond QS.

Once monthly, the farm team and other staff collaborate with the Cuyama Family Resource Center Imagination Garden and Cuyama families in skill-sharing, workshops, and working in the communal garden. There are additional optional opportunities to collaborate with the Cuyama community in our programming and advocacy work.

As a fully off-grid community in a remote location, we do not receive phone reception and wifi is limited to specific spaces. We are also dependent on our photovoltaic solar panels, which means we have to be flexible about which machines we use (kitchen appliances, projectors, refrigerators in personal homes, etc), especially on cloudy days. If any of this is a concern please speak with us about what is available.