Heather Lekx has managed Ignatius Farm since 2001, when she arrived to start a new CSA program at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre in Guelph, Ontario. She currently oversees the vegetable farm, an extensive community garden, and land management for a multitude of independent enterprises at the Centre’s farm, which has served as the well of sustenance for the Jesuit community in the region since 1913.
Heather provides insights into the dynamics of farming with an institution, including how the CSA program and the farm developed in a vacuum left by previous programming and how the farm became a focal point of the Ignatius Centre’s identity. We discuss how her role has changed through the years from the initiation of the CSA program to its current ten acres of production alongside of 250 acres of additional farm production as part of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre’s larger mission.
We also dig deep into Ignatius Farm’s process for hiring great employees and interns, from advertising and interviewing through the onboarding process and beyond. Heather helped to start the CRAFT program for Southwest Ontario, and she shares the ways that her farm provides a mission-driven internship program that also provides for the needs of the farm.
The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.
Heather provides insights into the dynamics of farming with an institution, including how the CSA program and the farm developed in a vacuum left by previous programming and how the farm became a focal point of the Ignatius Centre’s identity. We discuss how her role has changed through the years from the initiation of the CSA program to its current ten acres of production alongside of 250 acres of additional farm production as part of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre’s larger mission.
We also dig deep into Ignatius Farm’s process for hiring great employees and interns, from advertising and interviewing through the onboarding process and beyond. Heather helped to start the CRAFT program for Southwest Ontario, and she shares the ways that her farm provides a mission-driven internship program that also provides for the needs of the farm.
The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.
Sponsors
Vermont Compost: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.
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Quotes from the Show
We believe very strongly that our internship program needs to not just offer work experience but the theory behind it. When interns come for training, if they have questions, there should be time to answer those questions.
[The Catholic community in Guelph] is a big community, and it’s important for us as farmers to be part of that, to be able to speak to it in ways that engage as many people as possible with the land and with the food.
You can only run one year on adrenaline, and after that you have to change your systems.
The biggest skill I’ve built is hiring – knowing how to select people that I want to work with, and knowing when… a decision needs to be adjusted.
An internship is just like a new worker. And a new worker, or a young worker, is the person who is most likely to get injured on the job, and is most likely not to know their rights, and is most likely to not ask all the questions that they need to know to be sure that this is the right job for them.
[The Catholic community in Guelph] is a big community, and it’s important for us as farmers to be part of that, to be able to speak to it in ways that engage as many people as possible with the land and with the food.
You can only run one year on adrenaline, and after that you have to change your systems.
The biggest skill I’ve built is hiring – knowing how to select people that I want to work with, and knowing when… a decision needs to be adjusted.
An internship is just like a new worker. And a new worker, or a young worker, is the person who is most likely to get injured on the job, and is most likely not to know their rights, and is most likely to not ask all the questions that they need to know to be sure that this is the right job for them.
Show Links
Ignatius Farm provides an extensive information about its internship program and additional resources online.
Heather was involved in the founding of the CRAFT program in Southwest Ontario.
Heather was involved in the founding of the CRAFT program in Southwest Ontario.
