What We’re About

Are you a self-motivated hard-working team player that loves to garden? The Garden crew works collaboratively to grow a wide array of vegetables, herbs, and fruits to provide for the Warren Wilson dining halls and community members. The crew also cares for a flock of heritage-breed chickens, raised for their eggs and meat. 

There are also sub-crews of the garden, including:

  • Herb crew: Runs and operates an on-campus apothecary that provides accessible and affordable herbal care to the Warren Wilson Community and beyond. Their work requires self and peer education in order to learn plant identification, medicinal properties of plants, folk tradition, product making, and cultivation/foraging techniques. Herb crew also hosts workshops led by crew members or individuals in the area to teach the community. 
  • Bee crew: Students work collaboratively to care for the Warren Wilson Apiary and educate the community about honey bees and native pollinators, as well as work on the general Garden Crew. Bee Crew makes products from the hive such as infused honey and beeswax candles.

Student Leadership Opportunities

  • Garden General Crew Leader: The garden leader is responsible for supervising the general crew, leading garden projects, and planning events/long-term projects. 
  • Community Supported Agriculture(CSA) Manager: The CSA manager coordinates the weekly CSA in the fall semester as well as the thanksgiving CSA, and spring planning for the summer CSA. This student will work with the manager to test the implementation of the online platform, GrazeCart for some sales, communicate with customers, and handle weekly CSA distribution. 
  • Wholesale Manager: The wholesale manager will coordinate all wholesale sales and events.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll spend years working alongside your peers with the mentorship of your supervisors.  Part of the experience of work at Warren Wilson is guided critical reflection, which helps ensure that you achieve both your own educational goals as well as our Common Learning Outcomes. These intentional learning outcomes distinguish our Work Program, giving it focus and relevancy that set it apart from a federal work-study or your average part-time job. 

Our Common Learning Outcomes:

  • Professionalism & Work Ethic: accountability, effective work habits, punctuality, dependability, time management, integrity, and commitment to the well-being of the community.
  • Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: working with available resources to creatively address issues and solve problems, and gaining confidence to make decisions.
  • Communication: the ability to convey and receive information effectively with intentionality, honesty, and confidence in both speech and writing.
  • Collaboration & Teamwork: actively collaborate with peers to achieve common goals, Distribute labor fairly, and hold each other accountable as committed members of a group.
  • Civic Identity: understanding your active influence within the community and how your decisions directly impact the work around you.

In addition to our Common Learning Outcomes, each crew in the Work Program identifies crew-specific goals for learning and performance. These are reviewed with you each semester. Your crew-specific learning goals outline skills and abilities your supervisor will teach you during the semester. 

Some of our Garden crew learning goals include:

  • Business practices of a small organic farm, including:
    • Managing a CSA and seedling sales
    • Managing wholesale and community market sales
    • General allocation of garden resources
  • Regenerative agriculture practices and systems 
  • Poultry husbandry
  • Proper tool use for both farming and infrastructure maintenance 
  • Tractor operation and maintenance