YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Foam Lake, SK – Springer Family Farm

Are you an aspiring rancher looking to gain experience in regenerative farming integrating biodiversity through intercropping, cattle, composting, and bees! in a way that’s good for the planet?  Springer Family Farm is excited to offer an apprenticeship just for you.

About the Farm

Springer Family Farm is located on Treaty 4 territory, near Foam Lake SK. 

Kris Springer, and his wife Jay,  operate a mixed grain and cattle farm.  Biodiversity is at the core of the Springer family farm, focused on growing diverse cash crops, cover crops for grazing, and feed crops.  Kris incorporates crop rotation with vermi -extract, compost tea, and leafcutter bees. They use adaptive planned grazing to ensure goals are met for rest periods and leave biomass to feed soil biology. Bi-annuals are used to extend the growing season.

The farm runs 200+ plus head of cow-calf and yearling heifer enterprise. June has the release of leafcutter bees. There is an alfalfa seed enterprise, intercrops, making vermicast extracts and teas to apply to seed and cash crops. The farm houses a moderate size worm farm to expand in the future.  Springer farm sap tests their crops to identify any nutrition issues and shortfalls.  Cover crops diversity and added biology are used to reduce the use and reliance on synthetic fertilizers.

About the apprenticeship:

The apprenticeships run from mid-April – October/November.  Dates are flexible for students. Summer work hours start at  8 and end around 6. In seeding and harvest, apprentices will work later and earlier, but the farm values the need to stop the work.

The apprentice will be learning what it involves to rotationally graze with electric fencing,  running equipment, and how to implement the soil health principles with growing crops, seeds, and forage.

They are going to have four significant experiments  on the farm this year

• 1. brewing an amino acid foliar and soil-applied amendment
• 2. strip tilling cash crop, forage, and bi-annual species into old pasture using different pre-seeding impacts
• 3. using an alfalfa pellet to replace the starter fertilizer and add carbon to the seed row
• 4. use our water supply line to water a pasture after a short duration graze with reduced rest time(30 days0).

About the farm mentors: 

Kris and his wife Jay moved to Foam Lake from Alberta to farm in the community they grew up in and raise their kids. They have 3 children that work and live away from the farm. They are invested in building their local community and encouraging regenerative farming.

Skills this farm has to teach: 

The following skills are being offered by this farm. While you’ll get exposure to many of these areas, it is likely that not all will be covered. Apprentices will work to identify the skills they want to develop through a learning plan with the host farm.

Skill required of the apprentice

Springer family farm is looking for apprentices with the desire, curiosity, and passion to learn, think creatively, be self-motivated, to learn hands-on regenerative farming. Basic quad and tractor-driving skills are an asset.  Apprentices must have attire for work on a farm.

Housing, Wages, and Duration

• Wage is negatiated based on expereince min wage (15$) – 18$ an hour
• Housing – TBD. Housing will be off-site.
• The apprentice is responsible for their own meals and lunches.
• A full driver’s license is required 

About the Community and Land

Foam Lake 12 miles away has 1200 people and there are stores to serve the community, groceries, hardware etc. Yorkton a bigger center is 1 hour away. Fishing lake park has great beaches and good fishing. We are a part of a holistic management group that meets monthly.

To show our respect for the history of the Land and People, Young Agrarians acknowledges:

This farm is located on Treaty 4 territory and the traditional and ancestral lands of the cultures, languages, and People from Cree, Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, and Métis roots. These communities have a deep relationship with this land based on, among other things, a spiritual connection and subsistence extending back thousands of years.

More Details about this Apprenticeship and How to Apply 

Deadline January 31st, 2025

Contact Saskatchewan Apprenticeship Coordinator with questions:
saskatchewan@youngagrarians.org 

Interested in an Apprenticeship but this isn’t quite the right one? Check out other Young Agrarians Alberta Apprenticeships being offered in 2025 here.