Profile information
Host rating
Not yet rated
Last replied
23 May 2025
Reply rate
75.0 %
Usually responds within 7 days
Feedback
-
ID verified
Email verified
Badges (3)
Details
Description
Hi! We are Mariana and David, a couple of friends in our 40s (not romantic partners) living together on Mnidoo Mnis (Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario, Canada).
Our home is a former rural beekeepers' homestead on 69 acres of evergreen forest and limestone escarpment. We've been here for a few years (Mariana since 2021 and David since 2024), and we're very much focused on giving the house and land all the love and care they need to be renewed and to continue to be a place for gardens, creative projects, gathering with friends and community, etc. This renewal relates both to the physical (the house, the gardens and trails all need big TLC), and to the emotional & spiritual (we're both at turning points in our lives and starting to live out a re-envisioning of who we are in the world). We think about our lives in terms of community... community meaning not just humans, but also plants, animals, ancestors and the unseen beings of the forest and escarpment. We'd love to have you join us to help with the hard work involved and to enjoy a cultural exchange.
Here's a bit more about each of us individually.
Mariana: I’m an artist, therapist, facilitator, coach, and wildcrafter. I grew up here on Manitoulin Island (Mnidoo Mnis) and have a deep love for its cedar groves, rocky shorelines, burr oak savannahs, and soaring escarpments. My ancestors were French and Irish.
My best memories come from living in community.
A perfect day for me involves meditation, calisthenics, going wandering and adventuring on or off trails to take in the beauty and perhaps forage, jumping in the lake, being of service to my community through therapy, coaching, or other healing work, and gathering with friends and visitors from around the world for a hearty evening picnic in the sunset, which ends with music and songs.
I love physical play, dancing and goofing off. Creating beautiful objects of natural materials with my hands also brings me great joy. I’m deeply called to shamanic work and other spiritual practices that cultivate the co-creation of reality in collaboration with the unseen. I love sharing about my experiences and hearing others share as well.
David: I am a relatively new resident of Manitoulin Island. In the fall of 2023, I left my home of three and a half years on a property in the Appalachians of southeastern Quebec. I cast myself out into the world in search of a new home, and after some adventuring, came to the island.
I spent my first six months in the island in Providence Bay and fell in love with the island. On October 1 st last year, I moved to the the house where I spend my time exploring the land, playing with fibre arts, and working away on my remote day job.
My guiding light in this life is my intuition. I follow the guidance of my intuition and find ways to integrate this guidance through intention and action into my everyday life. My foundation is my practice of acceptance and gratitude for life exactly as it is including beauty, pain, and the mundane. It is my belief and my experience that my actions better contribute to my life and to the collective when they are grounded in a peaceful heart.
I’m excited to be on the land here, and I am excited to meet others that are called to come and participate in the community here.
Types of help and learning opportunities
Help with Eco Projects
Gardening
DIY and building projects
Farmstay help
Creating/ Cooking family meals
General Maintenance
Interests
Politics / Social justice
Events & social
Sustainability
Fashion or beauty
Culture
Self development
Farming
Plant care
Music
DIY & crafts
Books
Art & design
Languages
Photography
Gardening
Cooking & food
Writing
Performing arts
Drawing & painting
Nature
Camping
Winter sports
Dancing
Beach
Outdoor activities
Hiking
Cycling
Cultural exchange and learning opportunities
Mariana is franco-Ontarian, and can speak with you in either English or French.
We often go to a weekly local ukelele group, to socialize and sing. In the summer, the group meets outdoors.
We love to go out to beautiful hiking spots in the area, and there are many!
At solstices and equinoxes, we gather both as a household and in a larger community group to create intentions.
Throughout the summer, there are powwows happening in the Anishinaabe communities nearby and they are open to everyone. We love attending.
The Café in the Woods, an intimate folk music concert series, happens just a short walk through the woods from us.
We both do fibre arts, Mariana does some hand quilting and David some spinning, weaving, and knitting, we can teach you. Mariana does wildcrafting and art making as well and there's space for creative work that you can join in with.
Mariana is a Gestalt Therapist and can share about psychotherapy.
We hope to learn from you with regards to your worldview, your hopes & aspirations for the future, your culture, etc.
Projects involving children
This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.
Help
We're looking for help in various areas, many of which involve carpentry skills, gardening skills, cooking, and just plain grunt work . Let us know which of these interests you.
1. Building a woodshed: We need an outdoor storage area with some weather protection to store and season firewood. Do you have building skills?
2. Firewood stacking: We're expecting a delivery of 15 cords of firewood in May or June and will need help stacking it away.
3. Outbuilding restoration: We have both an outhouse and cabin structure that need to be gutted and restored.
4. Trail maintenance: There's a network of trails in the woods that need tending--removing fallen logs (chainsaws required), removing saplings, fixing bridges over creeks or wet areas, etc.
5. Garden & yard work: Depending on the month, help us prep beds, plant, weed, water, etc. There's always work to do here! We also need help caring for trees, removing poison ivy (safely) and doing yardwork in general. We grow raspberries, garlic, some medicinal plants, and whatever other vegetables we have a craving for. We also have a ornamental perennials garden.
6. Indoor organizing: There's a workshop and a large pantry / linen closet that need to be de-cluttered, perfect projects for rainy days.
7. Cooking and cleaning up: We like to eat meals prepared from scratch, with products from a local organic farm share (including meat). If you have cooking skills, we would love to have you take on some of the cooking (for 3-5 people).
Note that for about half the time you'd be working alone, and for the other half, you'd be joined by one of the two of us.
We can provide guidance and instruction for garden work, indoor organizing, trail maintenance, and cooking. For the building tasks we're looking for someone who has some carpentry experience and knows what they're doing already!
Languages
Languages spoken
English: Fluent
French: Fluent
Spanish: BeginnerThis host offers a language exchange
Mariana is very interested in improving her Spanish.
Accommodation
Workawayers can choose to stay in the loft (inside the house) or in the trailer (2 minute walk from the house), depending on availability.
What else ...
In your time off, you can read (we have a large library of books), go for hikes or swims, go bike riding (depending on bike availability), connect with other workawayers in the area, play music (we have a guitar, a piano, ukeleles).
House rules
- Communication and respect
- Quiet hours in the house are between 9pm and 8am.
- No substance use. Alcohol can be ok on occasion.
A little more information
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
Can host digital nomads
We also do some remote work. If you're needing to do 8 hour days, 5 days a week, it may be too much to do on top of the work hours here.
Space for parking camper vans
There is ample space to park a camper in the woods, however there is poison ivy along that road, and so together we'd have to take measures to mitigate risk.
How many Workawayers can stay?
More than two
