Join Our Community!

Interested in farming, communal living, and visioning a better future of food? Join us at Zumwalt Acres in Sheldon, Illinois! We have 5 farm stewards committed for the 2025 growing season, and we're looking for 2-3 fellows to join us for the spring season, or longer. Applications for spring 2025 are being reviewed on a rolling basis and are due by January 15.

Zumwalt Acres (ZA) is a multifaceted farm, community, and educational hub. We steward vegetables, fruit and nut trees, mushrooms, honeybees and chickens. We also conduct climate change research and implement sustainable soil management practices. We host events to exchange learnings, gather community, make music and art, and celebrate Jewish holidays. We work towards regeneration of the local ecosystem, climate change mitigation, providing food for our community, and creating a space where young people can collaboratively implement their vision of an abundant future. 

As a Jewish farm, we are guided by Jewish values of land stewardship and food justice and incorporate Jewish practice into the cycle of events at the farm. As a community, we are interfaith and come together as people with a diversity of identities, faiths, and beliefs. We work together to build a multicultural community that nourishes everyone involved, and encourage fellows to bring their own personal practices (spiritual, religious, cultural, or otherwise) in whatever ways feel meaningful to share.

ZA fellows are self-directed folks, approximately aged 18-28, who live at the farm, co-create community, and support farming operations, event hosting, and other organizational work. Fellows will collaboratively build work and community systems that are mutually supportive and center learning.

What type of work will you be involved in?

  • Farm Work:

    harvesting, weeding, planting, processing produce, tending compost, tree care, mushroom cultivation

  • Marketing:

    maintaining a good relationship with distributors and directly marketing products at Down at the Farms, Watseka Farmers Market, Sheldon Food Pantry (and more); carving paths for equitable food allocation

  • Event Planning: Support farm events by preparing and tending the space and contributing to applicable programming

  • Community Building:

    creating a healthy and conscientious communal living environment with other members of the house and ZA community

  • Community Outreach:

    maintaining ZA’s connections with the Sheldon community, other farmers in the area, other food and climate justice organizations, and participants at community events and research field days

  • Imagining and implementing ideas that excite you and the community! We are excited to engage with applicants who are passionate about our mission -- so if you have a skill set that isn't listed, we want to hear about it in your application!

  • Other Skills:

    grant writing, research proposals
    social media and website management
    art, graphic design, music

When are the relevant dates?

Our spring term will run from March-June 2025

We will clarify the specific dates upon acceptance and ask that you commit to that term.

The deadline to apply is January 15, 2025. You will hear from us within 2 weeks after the deadline about next steps.

Will the positions be compensated?

We supply food and housing for everyone—all living costs are covered. In addition, fellows receive a $650 stipend. We also are happy to discuss with our fellows an equitable plan for distributing these dedicated funds according to need. We are always open to work with potential fellows to identify other sources of funding (such as funding from relevant universities/scholarships/organizations/research grants).

What do the housing accommodations look like?

The farm has a beautiful house on the property that can fit up to ten people. You will be sharing a room, but you will get to enjoy the fully stocked kitchen, washer and dryer, attached greenhouse, and adjoining backyard and woodlands. We are located four miles from the center of Sheldon and a 10-15 minute drive to the closest grocery and drugstores in Kentland, Indiana and Watseka, Illinois. We are a 1.5 hour drive from Chicago.

Who will be living at the farm in the spring?

There are 5 farm stewards committed for the 2025 growing season. These folks have been part of previous farm seasons and are members of ZA leadership. We have a fellow who has been at ZA for previous seasons returning for the spring season (March-June), and we’re looking for 2-3 new fellows to join us for the spring as well!