We are a family of three ( Maiken, Derek and Una, 30, 31, 2) that just mooved to our lovely quinta.
We are in a beautiful area and the view from our quinta shows our pretty valley and the mountains of Serra De Estrella. We have lots of fruit and olive trees, and are situated less than 100 meter from the river Alva.

Right now we can offer a great learning opportunity for sustainable alternative building - EARTHBAG building!

The work you will participate in will be:

- Earthbagging: (We are building a halfmoon shaped, earth-bermed, earthbag (tube) house) with a living roof. The work on the house will also include, depending on when you are coming, turf roof, cob, lime rendering, glass bottle wall and much more.
We also have an a earthbag retaining wall to build and an earthbag toilet to finish.

Coimbra and Center

- Lime rendering and pointing. We are making a small old granite goat shed into a beautifull relaxation room. (We also have retaining walls that need rendering). The goat shed is half way done now. It needs finishing lime render coat and a cob floor.

- Clearing land or other might be part of the weekly work. We want to do permaculture, and are already making plans :)

- babysitting: We would like helpers that want to take care of Una (2 years) a coupple of hours once in a while (off cause included in the work time). For one person this could also be the main work.

You will experience the life on a quinta in progress. Right now we are camping, and there is a lot of nice spots for the tent. We have plenty of fresh drinking water. Outdoor shower and kitchen are also in place. We have a tiny bit of garden, but our focus is to get a roof over our heads.

We are experienced hosts; our project has been fully booked (through 'eco living portugal') early spring this year until we took a three week break middle June. We are recieving new helpers from middle of July (2011).

We are looking for both short and longer term workawayers, but a minimum of a two weeks stay is prefered since it takes a little while to learn technices etc.

We work about 5 hours a day and share cooking and doing dishes. Sunday is our day of where we go to one of the close by towns, a market, picknic a nice place or just relax.

Direct bus from Lissabon to Torrozelo where we pick up, shorter busride from Porto to Torrozelo though, with bus change in Coimbra (at same busstation).

We are looking forward to hear from you :)

Kind regards Maiken, Derek and Una

English, Danish (a little portuguese, german and spanish)

Tent