Enthusiasm and motivation for permaculture projects in our ecovillage, in Ariège, France

Details

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  Description

  ➜ ⚠️ IMPORTANT TO READ ⚠️ - well, actually it's important to read the whole page, please !
  
  Long-term volunteers (several months) very welcome!!
  
  • We're looking for 3 volunteers with wood skills (very good handy(wo)men. You can use a drill ? a screwdriver? a strimmer?) ! Motivated, enthusiastic and hard-working people, also creative because we value that a lot :). And... Who can cook for several people. The perfect volunteers ☺️
  
  ➜ Our place is a non-smoker area. 🚭
  ➜ And no pets 🐈🐕 (not to bother wildlife already thriving here).
  
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  ❖ Who are we? ❖
  I am Florane (31 years old). My partner is Florian (35) (we're called the Flos!), and we have two daughters : Gaïa (5) and Yin (born in September 2023), we are French! There's also Jean-Marc (French), Gaëtan (French) and Claire (Dutch), Nat, Tom and their son Pom who are living here, and little by little some more people settle. We also have some chickens :).
  
  ❖ The project ❖
  We bought a place very recently (April 2023) and we are transforming it into an ecovillage. There are 45 hectares of forest and green grazing lands, we can see the Pyrennees mountain from up the hill, there's a big pond where we can hear the frogs and the ducks... Several houses are already built and need to be renovated.
  The goal is to create :
  • 🏘️ A living area - several families are in the process of joining the project already and become residents ! That's our first step : renovating the houses so that people can live here and bring their energy into the project.
  • 🌱 A permaculture collective farm : vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, algeas, nuts, honey, maybe cheese ; our goal is to create a resilient farm, with several farmers, that can provide food for the residents and nearby villages.
  • 🚸 A place to learn and share : hosting retreats, workshops, trainings, conferences, even festivals one day!
  
  This is really the begining of our project. You're like a small water drop, and one day a wonderful river will flow, thanks to all of you. We need YOU to keep the project alive ! We really want to create here the atmosphere we had so many times during our travels, when we were volunteers : a group of people from many different places doing projects together and creating something wonderful !
  
  ❖ Hosting ❖
  Volunteers are part of the project (we've been volunteers during several years during our travels and we would like to host now!). To be able to host other families to live here, we'll have to renovate several houses. There's also projects in the gardens and forests... We do projects with always the concept of permaculture in mind.
  We welcome: motivated and enthusiastic people ! Eager to learn and who are happy to work. We also find RESPONSABILITY very important : we want you to be able to wash your dishes without us asking for it, not to wait until the compost toilets overflow to empty it in the compost bins, who are able to use a vacuum cleaner when the floor is dirty... Responsible people :) And we don't welcome phones-addicts ;)
  We prefer to host people for at least one month as we want you to feel at home in our place, and we can know each other better... :)
  
  ❤️ We really want to thank all our volunteers who came here to help us and to share their great vibes! Rosie, Warre, Andy, Fanny, Ires, Madeline, Yuval, Louis, Rut, Amelia, Alberto, Alice, Max, Aleth, Nathalie, An, Luca, Alex, Tereza, Kristof, Luna, Catherine, Marjon, Eke and little Kyan, Gabriel, Emma, Baptiste, Olly, Marion ! ❤️
  THANK YOU SO MUCH ! ❤️

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Art Projects

  Help with Eco Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  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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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  ❖ We offer ❖
  
  - A chance to learn more about carpentry and building wood houses.
  - Shared lunch with other volunteers and most of the time with at least one ecovillager.
  - Moments of relaxation, going to swim in the huge lake nearby (in summer!),
  - An amazing place to meditate (or sing or danse or just walk!) in the forest...
  - Deep conversations (and not deep also!) about our dreams, our pasts, sharing visions of the world...
  - A change to learn about ecovillages thanks to our knowledge and experience.
  - A chance to learn about permaculture and other interesting subjects, thanks to our library, but unfortunately the books are almost all in French ;)
  
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  ❖ Something we cannot offer ❖
  
  If you're looking for being with a French family all the time, like an immersion in a French family life, always cooking together, spending every evenings and days off together, etc. That's not the right place for you. Here live several families who also need their time just by themselves. We are now sharing the house together and with the volunteers but we cannot be always with people : we need to be alone sometimes (it's maybe because we have children and because we have a looooot of things to do for now - the beginning of the project). Just to be clear about this expectation we cannot meet.

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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

  ➜ We provide everything for safety : safety shoes, safety glasses, gloves, earplugs, masks, old t-shirts for painting or dirty stuff...
  
  ❖ What's on the menu at the moment ❖
  🏠 We are at the beginning of building 8 wooden houses with Gaëtan, a carpenter who lives in the ecovillage. He needs some help ! So, there this, which is the main thing, and around this, there's also:
  - Cut and store the firewood for next winter !
  - Create a parking lot
  - Dig all the trenches for water/electricity...
  - Make phytoepuration (water treatment with plants)
  
  
  And daily tasks are basically:
  - Taking care of the chickens (feeding them and opening the chicken coop)
  - Cooking for the volunteers,
  - Leaving a clean and tidy kitchen after meals,...
  
  ➜ Our way is giving a lot of freedom for volunteers:
  After two weeks we would usually ask you to have your "creative project", for example going around the place and say : "hey, I have skills to draw something beautiful in your living room, are you okay to buy some paint for me?" or "oh, this tree is so beautiful, can I build some benches to put around it?". Someone made a furniture to hold all the spices jar in the kitchen, another draw the map of the whole place...
  To leave a small piece of you here :)

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  French: Fluent
  Spanish: Beginner

  This host offers a language exchange
  Some volunteers came here to improve their French, so of course if you want to speak in French it's a good place to come ;) Some residents here speak also Hebrew and Dutch fluently, if you're interested! I'd personally like to improve my Spanish.
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  Accommodation

  ❖ Accommodation ❖
  In the main house, several bedrooms with simple beds or bunk beds (there is a picture in the gallery), with a bathroom and toilets shared between volunteers.
  
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  ❖ Food ❖
  ➜ Organic only
  ➜ Mainly vegetarian (we love rice, vegetables and eggs / houmous !). We barely don't eat dairy. But we are NOT vegetarian, so sometimes we eat meat (for example, the hunters come and give us wild boars pieces now and then), but we cook it separately. Just so you know.
  ➜ We provide vegetables, fruits, eggs, legumes (lentils, chickpeas...), bread, rice/pasta/etc, soy sauce, spices, tomato sauce... Things for simple menus.
  ➜ But we cannot provide things as cheese, alcohol, coffee, chocolate, peanut/almond butter, or stuff like that! If you need it, there's a small supermarket not so far, we can lend a bicycle :)

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  What else ...

  There's no reception here. We put WiFi a few hours during the day (not all day, and off at night) in the main house. When we want to have a "private" conversation, it's better to go on top of the hill to call!

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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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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  More than two

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  Hours expected

  Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week

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