Join Us!

Join the Resilience Project

If you enjoy farming and writing and would like to research and practice resilience and sustainability for a weekend, a summer, a year or several years, consider joining us.

Meadowcreek has two dormitories, several residential houses, crystal clear springs and swimming holes, barns, shops, 400 acres of farmland and 1200 acres of nature preserve.  What we need are more people dedicated to using these resources to create new paths to resilient farms and communities.

Learn about  our project by cruising this website.

Our main activity is research on resilience of agricultural systems. We need researchers with a background in agriculture who could become research assistants on the project.

We use a field test to determine whether you are a good fit for the project.  Potential research assistants are asked if they will travel with the PI to farms, participate in a few interviews and write up the results.  It is, in effect, a short internship.

Good candidates learn a lot about our research area and both candidate and employer learn a lot about each other and whether the candidate is a good fit for the work. This procedure has helped weed out people who can’t handle the work and find people who revel in the work.  The process has helped to produce a very successful, nationally known project exploring resilience of agricultural systems.

The potential research assistant is not guaranteed a job or contract upon completion of the trial interviews.

Meadowcreek visitors.   Meadowcreek gets day visitors often and you are welcome, if you pitch in to work on the current project. If you live close enough, this may be an option. Email delta@deltanetwork.org to set up an appointment.However, we really recommend a 2-3 day visit.

We know you will enjoy spending two nights at Meadowcreek. We like to begin with a tour of the 1600 acres and its facilities and meeting other residents. This is followed by a full day helping with an on-going project, participating in any scheduled workshop, a swim in the Blue Hole and a maybe a hike to Bee Bluff or the Pinnacle. The last morning is planning next steps.

We provide all meals with some or all of the long-term residents–either at the dorm, other long term resident’s houses or at the Resilience House fire pit. Lodging is at our dorm with a certified kitchen for those who’d like to cook with us.

This short visit may be enough for all of us to decide whether you make a good fit for Meadowcreek. Sometimes we all might like to make sure with a two week stay in one of our residential houses. Then you get to know Meadowcreek much better.

If you decide that Meadowcreek is for you, then we’d invite you to come back to stay for at least a season. Sometimes, if coming on visitor visas, people may stay for only 3 months, but we prefer longer commitments. Those who come in the fall are expected to help prepare for winter and stay to help with Spring planting.

We do have two hard and fast rules about visitors, long or short: no drug problems and no aggression problems.

For details about opportunities at Meadowcreek send an email to meadow@deltanetwork.org.

Meadowcreek Resilience Project is especially interested in folks with the ability to perform several of the following tasks (not listed in order of importance):

• Greenhouse production of herbs and processing medicinal and culinary herbs.
• Carpentry, to construct and remodel houses.
• Conducting interviews on resilience with farmers and other food system managers.
• Stonework.  Various projects, including patios, walls for garden beds on hillsides, and our ultimate goal: a stone swimming pool at our biggest spring.
• Webmastering.  Help design and build resilience website to assess and improve farm and community resilience to climate change and other disturbances using existing Resilience Project materials.
• Writing and editing Resilience project papers, books and blogs.
• Growing and helping process food for a CSA through the Gathering Place
• Developing trail systems
• Producing and harvesting mushrooms for CSA and greater markets
• Developing and cultivating food forest plots

We are especially looking for people who are interested in a combination of the above–such as: constructing a resilience webpage with online resilience assessment and gardening to produce vegetables for the CSA or interviewing farmers and cultivating mushrooms.

Meadowcreek is nestled within a nature preserve and before you apply consider that you will be living in a heavily wooded, hilly area that is home to both beneficial and poisonous snakes. Some of our work clearing trails will require the removal of thorny brush and you may encounter poison ivy, which we keep medical cream around for!

During your stay you’ll be provided with food and lodging as well as periodic ventures into larger cities including Little Rock, Fayetteville, and of course the local folk music epicenter Mountain View, AR.  Occasional trips outside Arkansas will be needed to complete some tasks.  Staff have traveled to Montana, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., Ethiopia and Angola in the last year.

We especially encourage those who would consider long term residency at Meadowcreek of 1 or more years.

To apply, send an email to meadow@deltanetwork.org with the following items:

• Your name and best contact information
• Relevant work and/or volunteer experience
• Relevant training and/or education
• From the summary above, specify what you’re most interested in for the Resilience project and alternate Meadowcreek projects

Here are some images of the home you could be living in and some of the other residents who share the 1600 acres with you.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.