Beautiful permaculture homestead in Montague, USA

Infos

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  Description

  Hi lovers of the outdoors, of good food, or sustainable food growing! We are looking for some enthusiastic folks who love to work outdoors together. "We" are Babette and Mark.
  
  We are in our fifth season at our beautiful, permaculture homestead. In 2019, we started from scratch with just 36 acres of fields and woods. Today, thanks to many amazing Workaway visitors, friends, and family, we have two comfy garden homes for Workawayers to stay, a common house with a shared bathroom and kitchen, a flock of heirloom sheep and lambs, chickens, fields of vegetables, berry bushes, and baby nut trees. Our homestead is in the artsy, progressive Connecticut River Valley with a good supply of funky cafés, fun little shops and galleries, music venues, and little villages/towns within biking distance. There are also some lovely swimming places in the area. We are located 2 hours from Boston, and 3 hours from New York City. This is not a working farm.
  
  We do a lot of fun projects and if you come stay with us you are likely to be introduced to any number of skills. You might take the sheep and lambs out to pasture in the morning; collect eggs in the evening; make mounds for a three-sister garden; coppice some firewood; pick blueberries and mushrooms; shovel wood chips; or learn to use a scythe. Babette especially takes pride in teaching guests some simple construction skills. This year (2024) we will be building a chicken food forest! If you want to know what that is, ask us!
  
  If you stay with us you will get to stay either in the Meadow Garden House with a corner view overlooking well, a meadow (!), the Strawbale House, made entirely of natural building materials, or, if things are very busy, a semi-glamping tent (real mattress, electricity, wifi). You'll have a shared kitchen and a shared bathroom with compost toilet. We will provide you with healthy, often local and fresh, food and can usually accommodate special requests ("I really love chicken soup or granola bars", "I am vegetarian"). If we are around and what we're cooking fits your diet, we will love to share dinner with you (often a couple of nights a week), and we usually share lunch on workdays. You are welcome to enjoy alcohol in moderation, but we do not provide alcoholic beverages as part of the exchange. Of course we have high-speed internet and wifi to keep in touch with the wider world around us!
  
  This is a great opportunity to be a part of building a permaculture food forest from the ground up!
  
  CoVid-19. Mark and Babette are both vaccinated.

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  Aide dans une ferme

  Aide informatique/internet
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  Objectifs de développement durable de l’ONU que cet hôte essaie d'atteindre

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  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  We promise you will learn a lot about regenerative, natural farming techniques. In a broad sense, you will learn how we grow food and wool using minimal off-farm inputs and fossil fuels. Specifically, you'll learn how to take care of farm animals, grow vegetables, plant nuts and fruits, get local firewood, grow mushrooms, build things using simple tools and materials - in short, a broad spectrum of skills used on a diverse homestead. We are really proud of how much people tell us they learned here and how much they enjoyed it. :)
  
  We do all our cooking from scratch with mostly local ingredients; we minimize our trash by reducing and recycling; our house run on solar for heating, lighting, car charging etc. plus other carbon-reducing features, so this is also an opportunity to learn about green building and retrofitting.
  
  Also, if you are not from the United States, you will learn about the American culture with us - and if you are shy about English, we speak German, French, Dutch and if necessary a smattering of Spanish.

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  Aide

  If you are traveling by yourself, we would like to ask you to help a total of 20 hours per week; spread over 2-5 days, and this could include some days of animal chores (one to two hours). If you are two or more people traveling together and staying together in one of our garden houses, we ask each person to contribute 16 hours a week.
  
  We'll be working together - with Babette or, with one of the other work-aways or interns. In 2024, our projects at the homestead include: daily care of the chicken flock; rotating our sheep through the pastures; planting companion plants (a polyculture) around our nut trees and berry bushes; planting a chicken food forest; putting in a well; planting trees and berries. We also appreciate support keeping our social media presence lively and engaging.
  
  
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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Allemand: Courant
  Anglais: Courant
  Français: Courant
  Hollandais: Courant
  Espagnol: Intermédiaire

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  Cet hôte a indiqué qu’il souhaitait faire partager sa propre langue ou en apprendre une nouvelle.
  Contactez-le pour en savoir plus.
  
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  Hébergement

  The accommodations will be your very own a garden house - either in the Meadow Garden House with a corner view overlooking well, a meadow (!), or in the Strawbale House, made entirely of natural building materials, or (over-flow situation) a Vervor semi-glamping tent. There is one shared bathroom (shower with hot water and composting toilet).

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  Autres infos...

  Mark and I like to have people around, and we've always enjoyed visitors or the people who stayed and worked with us in the past five years. We don't expect help cleaning up our junk, but we do expect everyone to clean up after themselves, and to help clean up when we've eaten together.
  
  At the farm, we have bikes for guests and people frequently use these to explore the area. Nearby are the lovely Bookmill (well-known and loved second hand bookstore) and the Lady Killigrew cafe; the towns of Greenfield and Turners Falls are a bike ride away, and the area offers lots of quiet roads and forest for biking or hiking. We also have a swimming hole nearby. If you have a car, you will find lots of great hiking and camping in the area, as well as the lovely towns of Amherst, Northampton, and more.

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  Informations complémentaires

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    Accès Internet

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    Accès Internet limité

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    Nous avons des animaux

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    Nous sommes fumeurs

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    Familles bienvenues

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  Possibilité d’accueillir les digital nomads

  Yes we have wifi.

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  Espace pour garer des vans

  There is lots of flat space where a campervan could be stationed for a limited time.

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Plus de 2

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  Nombre d'heures attendues

  20 hours per week spread over 3-5 days

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