The Lund Fellows Program for Regenerative Agriculture provides Cornell undergraduate students across disciplines with the opportunity to broaden their perspectives and understanding of natural ecosystems and to learn about ecological and social approaches to agricultural systems. 

The Lund Fellows Program provides students opportunities to gain applied experience working on an agroecological farm and contribute to the farm in meaningful and helpful ways, while learning about the process and considerations involved in managing such an enterprise.

We work to spread awareness about the value and mission of agroecological biodynamic, organic, regenerative, and sustainable approaches to farming, strengthen relationships between the university and local farms and provide assistance to small farms that could not otherwise fund summer internships. 

Host farms participating in the Lund Fellows Program were prioritized based on the following values:  

• Explicitly uses agroecological, biodynamic and/or organic farming methods
• Diversified farm (not just certified organic with industrial farming approach)
• Small-scale farm (less than 200 hectares)
• Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers when possible

Internship description

In your role as an orchard, farm and cidery intern, you will be expected to:

• participate in most aspects of the work that we do here. From working on the farm operations such as orchard maintenance, planting and pruning trees, helping to maintain flowers for our u-pick operation and landscape. In the cellar, the work would include assisting with cider and wine production. These tasks include everything from riddling, disgorging, bottling, labelling bottles, cleaning tanks, filling kegs, etc. 

• You would likely be doing different jobs each week and sometimes each day, giving the intern a wide variety of experience.

Basic Qualifications and Preferred Experience

A successful applicant should have trade skills or at least 1 year’s experience working on a farm, and an interest in learning about organic orchard management. Duties will be split between orchard, farm and cidery work.

Internship schedule 

Hours will be a 40 hour work week Monday-Friday. It is possible a weekend day may be required occasionally during peak harvest. South Hill Cider is located at 550 Sandbank Rd Ithaca, NY 14850. Reliable transportation is required for this position. 

About the farm

South Hill Cider is a small family business located just a few miles from the Ithaca Commons. We grow apples and flowers, make cider (fermented), and operate a tasting room that is open year round. We sell cider onsite and also wholesale cider to distributors regionally and around the country. 

This land, being only 4 miles from downtown Ithaca, is under intense development pressure. So, in an effort to protect it from subdivision and development in perpetuity, we successfully have it protected by a conservation easement. Our orchard is part of a harmonious ecosystem that relies on diversity and fertility as its foundation. We have never applied synthetic chemicals to the farm and use only organic certified inputs. We are not certified organic.