Help around on our small hobby farm and experience life in the countryside of Vekaranjärvi, Finland

Detalles

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  Descripción

  Hi there! We are a friendly couple, Hanna and Rami, both turning 60 years this year. We are now starting our second year as workaway hosts. We are looking for volunteers who want to experience country living and are ready to lend us a hand in taking care of our hobby farm and animals.
  
  We ourselves moved to the countryside in south-eastern Finland from Helsinki some 13 years ago to start a new, more sustainable way of life. We have not regretted that decision.
  
  Nowadays we both do remote work from home. Meanwhile we also have this small hobby farm where we practice homesteading. Our house is surrounded by nature and close to natural lakes with a swimming possibility. There are over a thousand lakes and ponds in this municipality.
  
  We have some sheep as well as two old Icelandic horse ladies, chicken, ducks and a dog, who will surely want to be your new best friend. We grow vegetables, berries, fruits. We have a greenhouse.
  
  As remote office work taxes our time, the farm also always requires maintenance work. Especially in the summer. There is some painting to do, fences waiting to be fixed, renovations, mocking the animal sheds etc. In short: there is so much to do and never enough time.
  
  However, it is not all just hard work and no fun. We do enjoy hosting guests and making new friends. We are interested in languages and cultural exchange. When we learned about Workaway and got to host our first volunteers in the summer 2024, we immediately realized that hey, this is something that suits us. And indeed, the experience was great!
  
  Now, for the spring/summer/autumn 2025 we are again looking for volunteers to help us with all kinds of seasonal and daily tasks at the farm plus some DIY projects. The tasks could include gardening, animal care, maintenance, small building projects, and also cleaning and household chores, depending on your interests and abilities. At some point we would need someone who has some basic building skills or at least the willingness to learn by doing.
  
  Rami’s parents live right next to us, have also a small garden and a greenhouse alongside of a chicken coop. You would be helping also them occasionally. By doing that, you’ll have an opportunity to learn a lot from the granny about plants and growing vegetables in an organic way. She is quite an expert on everything nature related.
  
  We are looking for volunteers who are able to work independently, are not afraid of getting themselves dirty and who can do things also by their own initiative when they see the need. Some flexibility and good sense of humour is needed here: especially with animals, things do not always go as planned. Every day is surely different.
  
  The work here can sometimes be physically demanding and dirty. However, we won’t ask you to do anything we would not do /have done ourselves, neither something which is totally out of your comfort zone.
  
  It would be a big bonus to be handy, to have some background with horses, to have some experience with gardening and/or to be able to create meals with ingredients available… but no worries, the most important is to be open-minded enough to try out new things - and especially to be able to tolerate some mess and chaos.
  
  Our goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible, so that the food we eat is to large extent produced by us and organic. Home grown food is topped up with everything you can find in the Finnish nature: wild herbs, berries and mushrooms. Depending on the season, we will show you how to find these treasures of the nature. We mainly eat vegetarian food, but some fish and meat too.
  
  We will share 1-2 meals a day together, but you are also welcome to use the kitchen for snacks, leftovers etc. It would be great if we also could share the cooking to some extent. Help is needed at least when clearing the mess in the kitchen afterwards.
  
  Otherwise we hope you to help 4-5 hours a day 5 days a week, on the average.
  
  Our daughter, aged 24 yrs, will stay with us this summer as she got a job nearby. The two other adult kids may visit sometimes with their spouses. As a family, we are somewhat unorganised, but warm, friendly, open-minded and welcoming. Our messy home is always open to friends and visitors from Finland and abroad. So other people are coming and going too, especially in the summer.
  
  We would be happy to host you, introduce Finnish culture and our way of living to you, and to learn new things and insights from you! Please feel to free to ask more, if you got interested.

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  Tipos de ayuda y oportunidades de aprendizaje

  Ayuda en proyectos ecológicos

  Jardinería

  Construcción y bricolaje

  Cuidado de animales

  Ayuda en una granja

  Cocinar para toda la familia

  Ayuda doméstica

  Mantenimiento general
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  Intereses

  

  Vegetariano o vegano

  

  Autodesarrollo

  

  Sostenibilidad

  

  Política / justicia social

  

  Mascotas

  

  Películas y televisión

  

  LGBT+

  

  Agricultura

  

  Eventos y sociedad

  

  Cultura

  

  Cuidado de plantas

  

  Fotografía

  

  Música

  

  Idiomas

  

  Jardinería

  

  Bricolaje y manualidades

  

  Cocina y alimentación

  

  Carpintería

  

  Arte y diseño

  

  Libros

  

  Animales

  

  Yoga / bienestar

  

  Deportes de invierno

  

  Actividades al aire libre

  

  Naturaleza

  

  Senderismo

  

  Fitness

  

  Acampada
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  Objetivos de sostenibilidad de las NU que intenta conseguir este anfitrión

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  ¿Que es esto?
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  Intercambio cultural y oportunidades de aprendizaje

  You will get experience of Finnish culture and nature in the happiest country of the world. More generally, you will learn about homesteding in our multi-generational family : learn about growing and conserving food; learn about the Finnish nature and finding food in there. Learn about Finnish cooking and recipies. Experience swimming in natural lakes. Learn about animals. If you are interested in martial arts, ask Rami for some training.

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  Ayuda

  According to your abilities and interests, help is needed in gardening (planting, turning soil, watering plants, weeding...), animal care, small building and DIY projects, painting, wood chopping, mocking animal sheds and all sorts of maintenance and farm tasks. Help is welcomed also in cooking and household chores. Handy people are especially welcomed, so are those with some previous experience with gardening and/or horses.

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  Idiomas

  Idiomas hablados
  Inglés: Fluido
  Finnish: Fluido
  Francés: Fluido
  Alemán: Intermedio
  Swedish: Intermedio
  Italiano: Principiante

  Este anfitrión ofrece intercambio de idiomas
  We would be happy to practise more our French, German, Swedish and Italian, languages that we otherwise do not have so often opportunity to speak.
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  Alojamiento

  Depending on the time of stay, there are several options. A guest room with privacy (and electricity) is in a separate building across the yard with a 120 cm wide bed. In the summer it is also possible to stay in one of the "summer rooms" in a log building without electricity. Shared toilet and a bathroom with shower are in the main building, old sauna in another separate building.
  
  In the autumn, a guest room in the main building is available. Other places can be arranged in the main building too.

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  Algo más...

  In your freetime you could eg. go swimming in different lakes,enjoy the company of the animals, join Hanna to go to the forest for picking berries and mushrooms (depending on the season) and learn about which ones are edible, enjoy traditional sauna etc. We have a small gym where you can train yoga, kettle bells etc. Or then just relax in the hammock.
  
  If you like hiking and camping, the national park Repovesi ( nature reserve) is about 15 km away with nice trekking routes of different lengths and possibility to rent out canoes. We can lend your camping equipment, if you want to spend a night there.
  
  We have bicycles available, we can sometimes give you a lift and you may sometimes also use our car, if it is available. There is a pizzeria in the village a couple of kilometers away, and the the nearest small shop is 4 km away. The UNESCO World Heritage site Verla is about 25 km away.
  
  The nearest town is Kouvola about 30 km away. The public transport connnections are not super good, but on working days, there are a few busses from the village to go there. To be honest, there is not that much going on in the town itself. However, several trains a day run to Helsinki (1,5 hours) and to Lappeenranta (1 hr), which is a nice town in the summer, at the lake Saimaa. Seaside towns Kotka and Hamina (both 1 hr by car) and old Porvoo (1,5 hrs by car) are also wonderful day trips to make, so is the Astuvansalmi rock paintings.
  
  If there is an opportunity, we can also make some day trips together to show you around.

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  Un poco más de información

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    Acceso a Internet

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    Acceso a Internet limitado

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    Tenemos animales

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    Somos fumadores

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    Puede alojar familias

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  Espacio para aparcar autocaravanas

  Este anfitrión puede proporcionar un sitio para autocaravanas.

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  ¿Cuántos voluntarios puedes hospedar?

  Dos

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