Farm Workers to Live in Hemp Tiny Homes
Arnie Valdez of Rezolana Farms poses in front of a hemp sleeper casita made in 2021 in the San Luis Valley. Photo courtesy of Arnie Valdez.
By Jean Lotus
A pilot program to activate agricultural farmland and grow industrial hemp in the Southwest United States is looking for three “agricultural land stewards” to live in hemp tiny homes and spend the summer tending the land.
A new pilot project supported by Fibershed and the Santa Fe, NM-based St. Francis Challenge seeks three volunteers to live in off-grid hemp tiny homes.
“This is an amazing opportunity for a values-driven person to learn firsthand about hemp cultivation, agricultural life, and off-grid living on a multi-generational farm in the heart of San Luis Valley,” wrote Amy Farah Weiss, founder and director of St. Francis Challenge. Two other residencies will also be offered in Paonia, CO and Arroyo Seco, NM.
For the months of June, July and August the residency provides lodging, a monthly stipend of $1,000, and hands-on training in exchange for a required 20 hours per week of resident stewardship.
The land in San Luis Valley is located on a multi-generational farm inhabited by architecture professor and hemp cultivator Arnie Valdez, who also built a field-to-shelter sustainable demonstration casita with homegrown and hand-decorticated hemp and clay adobe bricks.
Tasks will include hemp cultivation and processing, irrigation systems, site planning, Farah Weiss said. Applicants should have current experience or be willing to learn.
An adobe hemp casita was built at Rezolana Farms with blocks strengthened by fibers fro hemp grown and decorticated on the farm. Photo courtesy of Arnie Valdez
In 2021, St. Francis Challenge, Rezolana Farms and Fibershed collaborated in Colorado to build prototype mobile hemp-insulated cabins as part of the Hemp Sleeper Cabin Innovation Project.
Resident volunteers will live in the sleeping cabins that meet California state specifications to provide at least 70 feet of living space with enough room for a loft bed with storage underneath as well as storage and desk space.
Farah Weiss created the Saint Francis Challenge foundation to shelter people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco with a portable sleeper cabin design that contained hemp building materials. Farah Weiss relocated to New Mexico after the 2020 global pandemic, and decided to apply her vision for housing unhoused city dwellers into a rural setting.
Farah Weiss, who once ran for Mayor of San Francisco and now participates in stand-up comedy, thinks big. She has made it her life’s work to develop workable systems to provide help to people experiencing homelessness. For the resident stewardship program, she said she was inspired by her own experience in her twenties, living and working for a summer on a Colorado organic farm.
The resident stewardship idea is beneficial to rural agricultural areas and communities, while also providing support to people who need shelter.
“We are trying to create a path of interdependence,” Farah Weiss told HempBuild Mag. Programs to “warehouse” unhoused people and work on the concept of a “handout” are not effective, she said.
Farah Weiss hopes to scale the pilot program into a genuine workforce program with dozens of farm workers completing residencies and getting paid a small stipend.
“It’s a team oriented stewardship approach,” Farah Weiss said. “We get the best of both worlds: People are getting their needs met but also giving back.”
To find out more and apply for the stewardship program visit this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/residentstewardapplication
Offered as part of a special partnership between USHBA and HempBuildMag. HempBuildMag receives a commission through this arrangement.
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