Family farm and cheesery in Laudona, Latvia

Details

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  Description

  We are family of 5. Steffen is German, has been studying geology,lived in Norway and traveled a lot around Europe with his Landrover Defender, likes old technic, motobikes, interested in social topics, politics, travels, life stories and history.
  
  Ruta is Latvian, latvian sauna master and SPA (massage) teraphist, and in a heart a farmer lady, loves nature, animals, cooking, handcrafts, folkloric and my family.
  
  We have 3 boys: our oldest one - Rūsiņš is nearly adult (this year- 17), learning in gymnasium and music school, has a passion in music, guitar playing, books reading, history and language learning/ practising, can be also a proper help on the farm and show you how to do a heavy works.
  Jurģis is 9 years old, loves bike riding, outdoor activities, lego building, drawing and have chatts about world and animals.
  Johannes will be 6 this summer and even in character very different from Jurģis, he follows and learns from his brother a lot. They all three speaks latvian, german and english.
  
  Since 2012 our main bussiness is cheese making. We make different kind of cheese - fresh cheese, feta style, Camembert, Mozzarella, semi-hard and hard cheese. Most of the cheese is going to be sold each weekend in the capital - Riga (170 km away) and some other markets. In summer time we use to have also some tourist groups for excursion and degustation in our cheesery.
  
  Earlier we used to have a lot of goats - around 150, unfortunately because of a lot of work and hand missing most of them we gave up. Now we have 30 goats, some sheeps and a colofull diversity of different chicken breads.
  
  For summer time we have our greenhouse and our small vegetable garden for our use. We make our own bread, collecting berries and mushrooms in the forest. We are NOT VEGETARIANS, but we often eat vegetarian food. When we have meat for our meal - usually it comes from our farm or its a wild animals meat, what we get from local hunters. We do support SLOW FOOD philosophy. Our farm is organic sertificated.
  
  BE AWARE: Our home / farm in the middle of a lot of nature. There is a lot of huge forests around and no neighbors in the closest surroundings. The village is 10 km away - that means some human beeing civilization, but basicly there is nothing more as a small kiosk, school for boys and the closest possibility to catch up public transportation. So most likely we live in NO-WHERE, you will not find anything else around as a rich wild nature. So you definitely have to be a nature lover, who is not anoyed of too much silence around and " not much happening".

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Art Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  Farmstay help

  Babysitting and creative play

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  General Maintenance
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  UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

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  Projects involving children

  This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.

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  Help

  At the moment we have a permanent worker lady for cheessery, who is teached and does the most cheese making jobs. Since we are not working dayly in cheesery ourselfs anymore - WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TEACH YOU CHEESE MAKING!!! Specially not in one or two weeks!
  
  As a volunteer you might be busy here with many other random things as some cleaning arround, small works in a garden, helping with construction building for Steffen or some painting jobs, firewood making, etc.
  
  We welcome cooking lovers as we do like to have diversity in our meals.
  We do expect you if not cooking sometimes, then helping with preparing meals and washing dishes.
  
  A company for our children would be amazing, they love chatting, playing table games and its always a good practise of languages.
  
  Some artistic talent is always very welcome for decorating some of our walls.
  
  In summer we have a lot of mosquitoes as we live so close by forest and some bog lands. It´s always just a question of how you are dressed and how much you are able to stand it :) Another thing is that we have here ticks, which you might pick up just in the close nature, so if you are not sure about - please contact your doctor for deciding about vaccine for tick encephalitis.
  
  You have to be aware that we are a working farm and not a pet shop: starting from amazing cute new life and lovely goats till also accepting that not always all animals we are able to keep...... It depends how is your personal attitude to the things: it can be a nice romantic fairytale over here or a hard shitty farm life. For us its definitely more the first :)
  
  We are also looking for the same minded people to share not only works together, but also some of the free time - with nice food, tea, chatting, changing experiences and having sometimes even a long philosophical evenings. At the end - we would like to build up something like a community, if someone would be interested to participate - there are many different ideas and possibilities for it.
  
  Families are welcome!

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  Languages spoken

  German: Fluent
  English: Fluent
  Latvian (Lettish): Fluent

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  Accommodation

  Your accomondation will be in one of the rooms in the second floor of the cheesery.
  You will get your own private room with a double size of comfortable bed, the common kitchen, WC and shower dowstairs in the first floor.
  
  We eat together 3 x a day.

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  What else ...

  Our farm is situated 170 km away from Riga (capital) to the east. There is plenty of nature, woods and peaceful country side around for a nice walk, wild berries or mushrooms picking in the woods. 3 km away from the farm is an amazing nice lake for swimming in summer time. We can offer you bike for a biger distances.
  
  We are sitting between two amazing nature reservations: the one is Teiču reservation - a huge 20.000ha swamp land and the other one - Krustkalnu reservation - a really wild forest.
  
  30 km away from the farm are two nice small towns - where is a bigger civilization:) - to the North - Madona, to the south - Jēkabpils. We would say - there is not much to see, but also this "not much" you might be able to see, because time to time we might go there anyhow for something.
  
  Each weekend we go to Riga for cheese selling. Even if we can not promise to you the possibility to come with us each weekend - RĪGA is a city definitely WORTH TO SEE. It has a very nice old town, art Nouveau area, ethnographical open air museum, interesting other kind of museums and activities for each taste, nice farmers and handcrafts markets - one of the most popular and nice one each saturday where we are selling our cheese - Kalnciema market.
  
  But basicly - LATVIA is NATURE. Still a lot of wild and rich nature.
  And if you are lucky and have possibility: Latvian sauna by sauna master - is something you have to experience one day! The same like latvian traditions - summer soltice and other soltice celebrations, latvian singing festival - these are things which you will remember forever!

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  A little more information

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    Internet access

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    Limited internet access

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    We have pets

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    We are smokers

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    Can host families

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  Can host digital nomads

  This host has indicated that they love having digital nomads stay.

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  Space for parking camper vans

  This host can provide space for campervans.

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  Two

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  Hours expected

  max. 25 hours a day :o)

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