General House Rules for Long-Term Guests and Interns
1. You eat what we eat, or you buy your own food. We eat plain homestead food, a lot of goat dairy and eggs, our own meat. Not a lot of name brand junk food, but not 100% natural/organic either. We will not be offended if you cannot eat certain things, but we will not drive you to the grocery store on a moment's notice. If it has someone's initials written on it, you can't eat it.
2. You must not be afraid of manual labor, or getting dirty, or interacting with smelly animals, or cleaning house. You must bring clothing that you can get dirty and is appropriate for the job and the weather. This is not a Bed & Breakfast, and if you are here, you'll be expected to help out.
3. A farm intern should not be so disabled that they cannot carry a bucket of water, walk a quarter mile without sitting down, or negotiate uneven terrain. We will make accommodations where possible for guests with physical limitations, but we simply do not have the facilities to accept a full-time intern who cannot do physical labor.
4. You should not be so oversensitive that when we tell you that you've done something incorrectly, you dissolve into tears and are not good for the rest of the day. You should not be so timid that you cannot talk to us about something that concerns you.
5. Please don't be wildly insane. We are tired of people coming to our farm and turning out to be crackers. Yes, our place is peaceful and quiet and is a sacred place, but it is not a mental health facility, a homeless shelter, or a drug rehab clinic. If you come here and decide that it's so peaceful and nice that you don't need to take your psych meds any more, we will be upset with you and ask you to leave before you make us crazy too.
7. You will sleep in the sewing room, on the second floor. When someone needs to sew, that's more important than your need for privacy. There is precious little privacy to be had in this house. If you require more privacy, we welcome you to set up a tent in the woods. We also have a variety of outbuildings you can use at certain times.
8. You may not whine. Period.
9. We have a dog. Your dog is fine as long as it stays leashed and/or behaves while in the house. Your cats are not. They will fight with our cats if they're inside (or our cats will fight with them) and if they are outside, they will get eaten. Believe us. We have a predator problem around here.
10. If you're not sure about instructions we give you, please ask us to explain further. We're good people and will try to help you, even those of us with low social skills. We'd rather explain it five times than have you do it wrong.
11. Although we accept interns of any religious background or affiliation, we are serious religious pagans, and we expect you to respect that while you are here. Don't insult other people's religions or practices, even Christians. Don't mess with altars, shrines, offerings, or any pole or tree that has stuff tied to it. Don't go to the back woods and gawk when someone is doing a private ritual, and talk to us before you do your own rituals there. Don't call down weird woo-woo into our space without cleaning up after yourself. Don't touch anything that we tell you is spirit-owned, or sacred, or otherwise magic without permission.
12. Be nice to all the strange and unusual pagans, transsexuals, and other folks who wander through our home. We are a sanctuary for many of our friends, who come and visit for an hour or a weekend in order to get their heads together. If you find them weird or annoying, be polite anyway. If you're not sure what their pronoun is, ask us.
13. Don't come here expecting to get laid. It's unlikely that will happen, unless you bring your own nookie with you. We are neither desperate nor looking. We don't mind if you have sex with yourself or anyone else in the guest room, so long as you clean up after yourself and aren't at it all day. See Rule 7.
14. We do butcher our own animals. You will be expected to help in some way. What kind of help you give is negotiable. If you don't want to watch them die, or even be skinned and cut up, you may remain safely in the kitchen and wash and bone out and cut up meat, and crank the meat grinder, and wrap stuff in plastic. That's valuable too.
15. Please do not bring or expect to be provided with illegal drugs. You may not get severely drunk on the property without letting us know beforehand, so we know to expect little from you. You may not act inappropriately or abusively while drunk.
16. You may not waste food or other resources. We have little enough as it is. Reckless endangerment of our livestock will not be tolerated, and that includes rough handling and forgetting to latch pens properly.
17. We will respect your gender identity and orientation, no matter what it is, but we will not allow you to use it as a way of getting out of "gender-inappropriate" chores. Being a girl, whether you were raised that way or not, will not spare you from logging, nor will being masculine spare you from kitchen work. This is a real equal-opportunity household, in the purest sense of the word.
18. We will not spend every waking moment educating, entertaining, or counseling you. We have busy lives and many other commitments. We expect an intern to be fairly self sufficient.
19. You may not claim to know how to do all of our jobs better than we do. We do things the way we do them for a reason.
If you have any further questions on internships, or would like to talk to us about a time you might visit, please contact Raven at cauldronfarm@hotmail.com or call us at 978-928-4198.
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