Thanks for your interest in volunteering with Help Yourself! To register as a volunteer, please fill out this form. Please join the mailing list and list serve for updates.

We're on WWOOF USA, and have enjoyed hosting many international volunteers! Sadly, we are NOT hosting WWOOFERS during COVID-19.

Join a working group!
The success and growth of the edible landscape movement comes from its ability to organize large numbers of volunteers empowered with organizing and permaculture skills. Working groups help accomplish specific tasks, and may meet occasionally to organize. If any of these interest you, get in touch to join!

Working with plants:

• Nursery work exchange: By working at Tripple Brook Farm in Southampton, volunteers earn plant credit for HYS plantings and are trained in practical skills like grafting, plant ID, seed starting and more.

• Tree care: Pruning fruit trees increases their health, lifespan, and the amount of fruit produced. Each HYS tree should be visited once in the fall and again in the spring.

• Fallen fruit / Gleaning: Organize to collect, possibly preserve and distribute fallen, unharvested fruit - reducing possibbility of disease, making use of the harvest, and mitigating aesthetic concerns.
• Companion plantings: To minimize maintenance needs, we need to underplant hundreds of HYS fruit trees, and existing city or wild trees with herbs and flower guilds. Help source, propagate in nurseries or your yard, and transplant thousands of understory plants.

Organizational & non-profit:

• Regional organizing: For the movement to grow in regional presence and effectiveness, and in proportion to the need presented by accelerating cultural and economic transitions, we need to network with existing community organizations of many types to form a strong and lasting web of support, more powerful than the sum of its parts. Identifying partner organizations and institutions is critical, as is catalyzing, connecting and supporting local HYS! chapters in the region and beyond.
• Outreach: As more folks who know about and are excited by the movement, the more planting opportunities arise, volunteers are available and resources invested in this work. Flyering, door to door promotion and tabling are key to growing support and membership.
• Fundraising: Most of our plants and materials are purchased with donations. Plant sales, crowdfunding, grant writing and tabling are critical to continuing our planting projects.

Planting area prep:

• Site preparation: Some sites need tree work, brush clearing, soil building, sheet mulching, cover cropping, tree work and more.
• Bioremediation: Many potential planting areas have contaminated soil from a legacy of industrial land use. We test the soil for all planting sites, and hope to remediate areas where needed with plants and fungi. Signs make these methods, as well as knowledge of land use history accessible and transparent.

Capacity building:

• Garden design: Intensive site assessment, base mapping, and permaculture design are necessary for rapid, regional scale perennial plantings. We are looking for permaculture designers of any confidence level and are also working to make these skills accessible for all.

• Location scouting: To continue our rate of growth, we need to find new planting areas in communities where we're already working, and beyond.
  

•  Material acquisition: Have connections? Help to secure compost, mulch, tools, lumber, printing services, plant divisions, seeds, benches, paint and more!
• Mapping / tree recruiting: Find existing and mature fruit or nut trees in the city, planted or wild, and bring them into the fold of maintenance through identification and mapping.
  

Community orientation to plantings:

• Murals and sign painting: Murals beautify our landscape, and offer a medium to promote awareness of plants and nature, and strengthen our cultural connection to land. Help is needed planning and painting murals and promotional signs.
• Education: In 2012, HYS volunteers led over 30 free plant walks in Northampton. We're working to increase the public's literacy in permaculture, food security, wild edibles, while building community. Volunteers are needed to offer workshops and lead walks.