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Email: info@boxturtlebakery.com
or Call (919)357-6034
or Mail to Box Turtle Bakery; 121 Circadian Way; Chapel Hill, NC  27516
About the Bakery‎ > ‎

Interns, volunteers, labor barter, work parties, etc.

Any bakery is a high labor business and my form of it is that and more.  Overall I like the idea of taking the raw whole grain all the way in the process so I always intended this business as a way to keep myself busy, but its true you can have too much of a good thing.  I'm still working at becoming more efficient or smarter about how I do things and even what I make, but I'm sure there is a practical limit to how much I can improve.  There is also a limit on how much people will pay and currently it looks awfully hard to see how I could employ fully paid labor.  That point might come someday, but it wouldn't work now.  On the other hand I'm doing some things that would be novel and even fun for others to learn and practice.  I've been considering of late a variety of possible ways this could work so I just wanted to put the ideas down as a starting point and go from there.  

Potential volunteer jobs:
  1. Collecting, cutting, splitting, or moving wood: You can find yourself passing stray pieces of wood - I can usably burn most anything.  Softwoods when I want a quick fire to get it started and of course hardwoods.  I can burn pallets too although sorting the nails out of the ash is a hassle.  Tree limbs up to about 4-5 inches in diameter are also good.
  2. Shopping: picking up grain from Lindley Mills, dairy/butter from Maple View, and a few other grocery store trips.  If you pickup milk you can get your own as well for the wholesale price.
  3. Cleaning: Particularly after baking is done, there is a decent size set of things to cleanup.  Tubs, utensils, pans, etc.
  4. Packaging/delivering
Internship work could be more extensive covering all aspects of the process.  I wouldn't however want to write the intern's job description in advance - I would instead want someone to propose something that meets their needs and is aligned with my core principles for the bakery.  Create some project ideas that could improve the bakery in some way and tell me what you will get out of it in the way of personal development.

I also have another type of idea that would fit in with my interest in engineering and sustainability.  It would be great to have some projects that would reduce the bakery's carbon footprint further.  For instance I've seen an African village outfitted with a parabolic trough in a greenhouse heating oil in a pipe that was then used directly as heat and also to power a Stirling engine.  I can use heat directly for lots of things in the bakery and a physical power source could crack grains, mill flour, and mix doughs.  This kind of thing would take research, design, and construction.  If an individual or group was interested in something like this I could provide the materials and give you the space to experiment and create a working design.
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