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Farm and Garden Apprenticeship Application Process

There is a four-part application process to become a Farm or Garden Apprentice at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center.

We begin taking applications in June and will continue to accept applications until we have a full cohort of applicants, but generally applications should be in by mid-January for the following season’s Apprenticeship Program (April-October). We are sorry not to be able to respond to application inquiries from February through May.

Please read and be familiar with all the information on the web site related to the Program before applying. We encourage you to email or call the Apprentice Applicant Coordinator with any further questions about the program or to discuss whether it may be the right fit for you.


Part 1.
Fill out the Farm and Garden Apprentice application [Word] [PDF] and submit to farmapprentice@sfzc.org.

We will review your application for suitability for the program, and will be in touch with you. We may call or email if we need further information or clarification. We will inform you if your application is accepted, in which case you will be invited to move on to the second phase of the application process.

If the Farm and Garden Apprenticeship program does not seem like a good fit, we may ask if you would like to apply to one of our other residential practice programs. See the Work Practice Apprenticeship Program section of the San Francisco Zen Center web site for more information.

Part 2.
Come to Green Gulch as a Guest Student. In order to be introduced to the meditation and work schedule, and community life at Green Gulch Farm, all applicants who are invited to continue the application process for the Farm and Garden Apprenticeship Programs must do a two-week Guest Student stay, preferably during one of the following two time periods:

September 15-September 29 or
January 30-February 12

Once invited, you may contact the Guest Student Manager at ggfstudent@sfzc.org to arrange your stay. The cost of the Guest Student stay is $20/day. Scholarships are not available for the guest student stay. Please see Guest Students (Full Schedule) on the San Francisco Zen Center website for more information.

Part 3.
During the Guest Student stay, you will become familiar with the daily schedule, different work crews, and community life at Green Gulch. There will be opportunities to speak with apprentices from past years, have question and answer sessions with the Farm and Garden Managers, and be exposed to Buddhist teachings from many of our resident teachers. You will have the opportunity to speak individually with the Tanto (Head of Practice), and the Green Gulch Director, and will be interviewed by the Farm and Garden Managers. During the two-week Guest Student stay applicants have the opportunity to decide whether or not to continue the application process.

Part 4.
After their stay as a Guest Student, applicants are asked to reflect on their time at Green Gulch and to email the Apprenticeship Coordinator after a week to let us know whether they still wish to be considered for the program.

For applicants who come as Guest Students in September, we ask that you get in touch with us by early February to confirm your continued interest.

We make an effort to let applicants know whether they have been accepted to the program as soon as possible, and no later than March 1.