There are many places you may try. Have you looked into being a WOOF-er? What you are asking is exactly what WOOF-ing offers, however it is a voluntary position and not for pay. Several organic local urban farms in Atlanta take on interns for pay (but it is not enough to live on), such as Love Is Love farm at Gaia Gardens. You could try contacting The Funny Farm (blog is Happy Food - Funny Farm) who used to run a business called The Urban Gardener in Atlanta but now run a permaculture based suburban farm. Normally they charge for any kind of lessons and classes etc. However these are all in an urban setting, and I really don't know of anyone at this time in Georgia myself with a more rural permaculture farm or homestead other than some folks who charge for teaching the skills you want to learn.

I find that people have a tendency to go to extremes and to be rather anal about things, when it is absolutely not necessary. I found this to be true when I was raising guppies and swordtail fish when I was a kid. I found it true when I was raising finches later in my late 30s. Now, in my late 50s, I find it to be true in gardening. The fact is, nature pretty much has all this stuff figured out. Its been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years, without you or me being involved at all! This is my first year gardening ... totally a learning experience for me. I am reading a lot, watching tons of YouTube videos, and talking to folks that garden, and at the gardening centers. I'm finding out its much more important to pay attention to what you should not do, than what you should, and mostly that means, DO NOT GET IN THE WAY OF MOTHER NATURE. Just give her the tools (seed, good soil, water) ... and stand back and be amazed.

An emphasis on students finding information for themselves, and focusing on topics that they are interested in, is important throughout school, and I would argue, grows more important as students grow older and are able to make better choices. Here is an article that studied how children retrieve information from a library online catalogue. Without intending to, the author found that students being taught with a more student-centered curriculum (he doesn't use that term) were far better at finding information creatively - the way we all do in life, with no multiple-choice options. It is kind of a long article, but here is an excerpt: "Important contributors to children's information retrieval behavior are their motivation, purpose, and interest in their topics. During the course of this study, it became clear that some students were more involved in the information retrieval process than others. For some, it was an adventure and challenge that carried them to new understanding of the material they were studying. Their products went beyond copying facts from their readings to point out discrepancies and unanswered questions and, thus, to display their critical thinking skills. These children's experiences also led them to develop more advanced information skills, which they needed in order to pursue their interests in depth. For instance, the group of first graders studying planets soon began to share information about their planets and to propose theories that related the characteristics of the planets to their size and distance from the sun. Their written reports contained ideas and questions about such matters as what it would take to allow people to live on presently uninhabited planets. "For others, that spark of interest was missing. These children found the minimal information they needed to satisfy the assignment but contributed little of their own thinking and did not advance their information skills. Their products were simple lists of facts without interpretation or comparison. For instance, when fifth graders were asked to write reports about the states, their assignment sheet contained a list of pieces of information to be included in each report (e.g., population, area, major cities). Not surprisingly, their actual reports provided 'just the facts.'" Here is a link that might be useful: Children and an OPAC

re: cow names - I was a city kid moved to dairy country. Learned all those terms, but the hardest to remember/figure out was Polled Herford vs heifer. And with horses, the difference between a colt and a foal, colt being kind of the generic term many use incorrectly for a foal. That definitely wasn't the limit to my ignorance about country living, that's for sure, but the folks there were equally ignorant about some of the things those of us raised in the city were more familiar with. Usually it has nothing to do with brain power, just exposure. One of my favorite stories about common sense is a cousin who married young, with no domestic skills at all (her mother did everything for her). I was visiting and her husband went to the kitchen to get us some refreshments. He call out, "Susie, why did you put the ice cube trays in the freezer without filling them with water?" She replied, "But we didn't NEED ice cubes." She's not lived that one down.