Groundwork Food Systems Fellowship

Our world asks us to radically reimagine ourselves and our society. It’s common knowledge that U.S. society is too destructive to our world to continue into the future, but what does the alternative look like? This fellowship offers a structured space to build a vision steadfast vision for a livable future. Throughout the fellowship, food serves as the lens through which we see our personal and societal relationships with the Earth. Our food systems are a web connected to all aspects of our relationships with the Earth. In our relationship with a single seed, we can see our relationship with water, fossil fuels, climate, land stewardship, histories, economics, supply chains, policy, and culture.

Each morning, fellows help tend to our organic vegetable and seed farm. Mixed into the work of planting, weeding, and harvesting are classes on food and seed systems, building a base of skills and knowledge for fellows to become changemakers with the food system. Through the week, each afternoon brings a different form of learning: Tuesdays are our local farmers market, Wednesdays are academic seminars on cultural shift and post-capitalist theory. Thursdays are “crafternoon”—a hands-on exploration of place-based lifeways. Throughout the week, we engage our heads, hands, and hearts in the practices of remaking ourselves in relationship with the land.

Seasonal cycles set a slow-paced rhythm for the fellowship as we deepen our roots in the land and build a holistic understanding of what a real, multi-generational form of sustainability might look like. In today’s world, living well and growing healthy food is an act of defiance—Groundwork’s farm is a place where we explore what it means to take power back from the flattening forces of industrialism, consumerism, and capitalism. As we engage in creating a life outside of the hustle culture, the farm is a place to find joy, pick fruit, weave baskets, and plan (and plant) the revolution.

We invite those who would step forward and become visionary leaders for change in the coming years and decades to apply. Join us this year to dig deep, invest in your relationship with the Earth, and ask what it looks like to create a just and livable world for a time beyond our own.

Fellowship Highlights

• Gain the skills to become a part of your food local system. Fellows spend mornings tending our 1-acre vegetable and seed farm. We grow seeds for seed companies in our bioregion, sell vegetables at local markets, and grow a large portion of the food we eat. Engage with a community focused on local, organic food production, processing, and distribution. After the fellowship, you should expect to have both a broad and deep base of experience to be a leader in any part of the food system.
• Live a slow, grounded life connected with the landscape of Western Colorado, where the Rocky Mountains drop off into the red rock canyons of Utah.
• Be part of a cohort engaged with the process of finding joy, meaning, and a viable livelihood and outside of the capitalist system.
• Learn what it takes to make a difference in the world by taking part in the operations of an educational nonprofit.
• Experiment and live with “appropriate technology”: easy, sustainable alternatives like solar ovens, composting toilets, earthen building, and passive heating and cooling.
• Attend weekly seminars focused on the intersection of ecology, economics, culture, and place.

“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass