I’ve left this page on the site so you can see what we normally do – most of this is on hold for now or it’s already been done.
Volunteering.
I’m excited that finally I’m going to do some major landscaping in this three tiered garden. I have a wonderful plan that should end up with a rose garden, some new raised beds, and a terraced garden and the beginning of this is about a lot of digging and moving earth and stones. So if you’re strong and you want to wake yourself up after the winter with a bit of real physical work, this could be for you. Hopefully we’re installing a septic tank in the spring which will kickstart the redesigning process by generating loads of extra soil and demolishing a retaining wall. We’re going to be making terraces and steps and reorganising the grey water system…just to begin.
There’s lot of other work for people who are not so strong! Last year we began renovating one of our barns to make it an outside living area. We put the first layer of the mud plaster on, now we need to a finish coat and some decoration. You’ll learn about doing things with mud – right from the basics because we have to go and dig up some special coloured soil. If you feel like being creative with a new material, this is your chance.
I’m changing our old chicken house into a smoker so we might be having smoked everything to eat this year. Anyone who’s interested can help me perfect this technique. I also have a field of large garlic to harvest, cure and smoke.
I very inefficiently manage 3 websites and I would love a volunteer who is proficient with WordPress just to help me get things up to date and sort out all the things I can’t do. This is not time related – if you can do this, come anytime.
After we get a drainage system in, I’m going to make an extra toilet and an outside washing/shower area with a grey water system. This will be made out of bricks and mud – lots of fun mud stuff here. This project won’t be happening early in the spring.
We need some new raised beds for vegetables and we need to prepare the ground and plant loads of tomatoes in our veg field.
A few fruit trees, some big, need serious pruning as do all the vines and we need to finish making supports for the present vines.
All sorts of general, day to day garden stuff – seeds, planting, soil, veg, flowers, weeds, everything…..
Painting and decorating our new Therapy Room which keeps slipping down the list but must be finished in the spring. A few days work for someone into interior design.
and thats just for starters……other things always just crop up and we end up doing something quite different…but still fun.
If you’re a member of Workaway, please arrange the volunteering through their website. They’re a good organisation, I like to support them plus its keeps all my volunteer admin in one place.
Autumn 2019 …..no idea right now!
Paid employment.
There are some jobs here that need skills and experience and the right person. This year, we really need someone who can lay bricks and stones – we’re talking about walls, terraces, steps etc.
I’d also really like to meet someone who is clever with wood. We use old wood where we can, plus we have trees and wood that we’ve cut and dried and if the right person comes along, I’ll make sure I have some money for new wood.
Some of the wood related jobs would be:
- building three sets of bunk beds
- being creative with a couple of old wardrobes so that we have efficient storage
- making a sliding door from one or two pieces of something beautiful
- putting dormer windows in one of the barns using old windows
- making window sills from some lovely old mulberry wood
- helping me to give a gorgeous old barn door a new life as a table
- being creative with old wood to produce garden seats, benches, trellises etc…
- doing clever things with old bits of furniture
- any of the amazing things that we haven’t even thought of yet.
Pay is at the local rate – 8leva an hour for an 8hour day. We don’t usually have paid workers who also live with us so we’d have to work that out. A previous volunteer who had loads of great skills, worked for us for 5 hours a day in exchange for food and accommodation then he worked for other people in the village for the rest of the day and on his days off. (he didn’t actually want to have a day off). This is probably a good model – say 20 hours of work in exchange for food and accom and the rest paid. I think there would also be other people in the village who would pay for good wood working skills.We’re always interested in other ways to work things out. If you’ve got the skills we need and you want some freedom to be creative and…. have a great experience in a little village, get in touch.