Job Role: Vermiculture project manager aka Worm Wrangler
Location: Lauriston Farm in North West Edinburgh.
Salary: £26,000 Pro Rata
Hours and work pattern: 24 to 32 hours a week depending on availability with opportunities to work from home one day a week. Very occasional weekend work may be required for events.
Contract length: 24 months guaranteed funding. This contract will have a 6 months probationary period.
Closing date for applications: 12:00 (noon/mid-day) Saturday 28th of September
Interview date: Monday- Tuesday 14-15 October
Start Date: Between 1 November and 1 January depending on availability
Equal Opportunities Policy: We particularly encourage applications from people of colour and people most impacted by climate change or impacted by other kinds of environmental, social, and economic injustice who are currently under-represented in the food justice and environmental movements in the UK.
Successful candidates will be selected on the basis of how well they fit the person specification, as judged by their application and interview. Where two or more candidates are judged to be of equal merit, priority may be given to those marginalised by this racist, classist, sexist, ableist system.
If anything about our application process is a barrier for entry to you please get in touch at info@rhyzemushrooms.org and we will do our best to accommodate you.
The role and the funding:
Rhyze is branching out. After receiving a COOP Carbon Innovation Fund grant we are starting a vermiculture project: using composting worms to turn waste from our own farm and nearby businesses into worm castings (worm poo), a powerful and valuable soil amendment.
The funding we’ve received will cover staff costs for two years as well as the material costs to set up a medium sized commercial vermiculture operation. Our hope is that this post can be permanent and be funded by a combination of further grant income and trading revenue generated through the sale of worm castings after the initial two years of funding are up.
The funding we’ve received from the COOP is focused on investigating the feasibility of using worm castings as an alternative to peat in potting/propagation media used in horticulture. You will investigate this question by carrying out trials, and gathering feedback on the operations and outputs of different vermiculture systems.
Beyond answering this research question, our medium term aim is to mirror the structure of our mushroom project and combine a commercial enterprise which can produce a socially useful good which we’ll sell commercially (worm castings) with the provision of grant funded community and educational output like workshops.
Crucially however, we are not looking for a vermiculture expert. We are prioritising looking for someone with the right transferable skills and attitude, so don’t worry if you don’t know much about worms. There are a lot of resources we can use to learn from and as part of the funding we have a fair bit of money to cover consulting and training costs and we’ll be working closely with Pictish Worms for technical expertise.
Who you’ll be working with:
In the early stages of this project you will work closely with Marco (Rhyze staff member) who will share the plan we’ve developed so far and support you in any way he can to get the ball rolling.
This project is a collaboration between Rhyze Mushrooms and Edinburgh Agroecology Cooperative (Lauriston Farm) and you will also work closely with the growers at Lauriston Farm who will be supporting the project in various ways, particularly in the design and execution of propagation trials.
A bit more about Rhyze:
You can read a bit more about us on our website (although it’s not super up to date). We’re a small Edinburgh-based workers coop. We grow mushrooms from local waste and teach others how to grow mushrooms at home or in their gardens. We’re all about using decomposing organisms to build resilience and in this way vermiculture is a logical extension of what we’ve already been doing with the mushrooms.
We moved our farm to Lauriston Farm in the spring of 2024 and it’s opening up lots of new opportunities for us so we’re in an exciting period of growth and change.
About half of our income comes from revenue generating activities like selling fresh mushrooms, medicinal mushroom tinctures and delivering workshops. The other half comes from grants which we receive for community projects.
Joining our co-operative:
We are a non-hierarchical workers’ cooperative and we are looking for someone who wants to become a long-term member of our team and help our project grow and thrive. As a core staff member you would become a co-director of the company.
It’s crucial that anyone who joins our team has strong alignment with our values and understands that they are not our employee but our equal and needs to have the motivation to contribute to the growth and development of our project. As a co-director of the co-op you will have significant autonomy and opportunities to shape the future of our whole project, not just the vermiculture venture.
We are trying to recruit flexibly and are happy for folk to work 3 days or 4 days a week depending on availability. In the medium term there is scope for hours and pay to be increased to 5 days a week if we get any further funding or begin generating revenue from the sale of castings. We set our own wages and they will increase if the project thrives! We have a pay parity policy so all staff will always be on the same hourly wage.
Probation:
We are a small team and chemistry is everything. A right recruitment decision could help us grow and thrive so we have a six month probation period for this role to make sure that the decision to work together makes sense for everyone involved.
Responsibilities of the role:
This job will require a mix of very practical tasks as well as plenty of admin, community engagement and business development, so being able to handle multiple responsibilities is key.
However it’s important to say you won't’ be doing all the things listed below from day 1, a lot of these are medium term goals for this two year pilot project. It’s also important to say that in all these tasks you will be supported by other members of the coop, so don’t think you’re expected to do all this on your own!
🪱Following an existing prototype built by us in March 2024 you will work with volunteers and local community groups to build the ‘worm bin’ (vermiculture units) that will power the operation. This will be an ongoing task as we improve the design.
🪱Running the worm bins: caring for the worms (up to a million of them eventually), feeding them, watering them and harvesting and processing their poo.
🪱Staying on top of all the statutory health and safety, insurance and other regulatory requirements for the project.
🪱Gathering data from the worm bins and experimenting with different inputs to help us develop a high quality solid amendment.
🪱Working with the veg growers at Lauriston as well as consultant soil scientists to design and carry out trials for the worm castings.
🪱Working with our marketing coordinator to build and develop a business plan for the sale of worm castings, including doing local market research and working with us to develop and branding and marketing for the castings.
🪱Developing and delivering occasional community activities including community builds, tours and vermiculture workshops.
🪱Developing a network of local businesses to collect waste from to feed the worms.
🪱Inputting to and developing a final project report as well as contributing to other media outputs such as a how-to build a worm guide.
🪱Taking on some of the shared admin of running the co-op. This could include any of the following: helping with book-keeping, health and safety, data management, financial forecasting, or the management of our webshop etc.
🪱Attending weekly meetings relating to the progress of your project and the wider coop.
Candidate Specification:
Essential:
These qualities are crucial to this role and successful applicants will likely be able to demonstrate all of the following in previous employment or experiences:
🪱Professional or extensive voluntary experience in a practical, manual job such as food growing, horticulture, gardening, forestry or a building trade like carpentry.
🪱Project management experience (delivering projects including managing budgets, long term planning and liaising with multiple stakeholders etc.)
🪱A track record of being able to take on projects and challenges independently.
🪱Experience or significant interest in non-hierarchical models of organising.
🪱 A strong alignment with our principles and values and a desire to be a long-term member of our cooperative.
🪱Strong sense of professional self awareness and maturity about one’s own strengths and weaknesses and how these play out when working in groups.
🪱The ability and willingness to work closely with others and the confidence to give and receive feedback.
Important:
These important qualities would significantly improve your chances of getting shortlisted for interview:
🪱Basic power tool competency and confidence building and repairing simple structures.
🪱A scientific mind and confidence designing trials and tracking data.
🪱Full driving licence
🪱Experience of small business / self employed administration
🪱Knowledge and experience of food growing, soil science and compost
🪱Experience of volunteer management or community engagement
Desirable:
Bonus qualities that would make you stand out as a candidate!
🪱Knowledge or experience of worm composting
🪱A background or qualification in ecology, horticulture or other related science.
🪱Grant writing experience
🪱Strong written communication skills or other communication skills eg. Media production
🪱Experience of product development, marketing or sales
How to Apply:
To apply for this role please fill out this form and attach a CV and cover letter answering the following questions.
Why are you applying for this job now, at this moment of your life?
Why do you think you could succeed in this role?
What parts of the role do you think you’d find most challenging?
Please include the contact details of two potential references
If sending a CV + Cover letter doesn’t feel possible and you have another format like a video you would like to submit we are happy to consider that too.
We appreciate that this is quite a complicated role so if anything is unclear or you have any questions about the role feel free to get in touch before applying, you can write to info@rhyzemushrooms.org
Deadline for applying is midday, Saturday 28th of September.
If you need an extension to this deadline get in touch but we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to accommodate that.
We will get back to everyone with shortlisting decisions by Tuesday 1st of October and interviews will be held October 14-15th.