Portugal
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I am José , sculptor, skateboarder, and nature lover, currently living with my partner Maria our baby Graça and our dog Lion in my great grandparents home, a very big house that is about 120 years old and has been uninhabbited for more than 40 years. I need volunteers to help me put this old beautiful house back together.
Gardening
Building
Babysitting / child care
Cooking / shopping
General Maintenance
Help with Eco project
Help in the house
Animal care
Helping with Tourists
Art project
Learning possibilities and cultural exchanges:
•Cooking Vegan food
•Painting with traditional Limestone paint
•Restoring old Furniture
•Portuguese Language
•Nature observation, mushroom hunting, wild fruits and flower picking.
The kind of work that we are doing in the house will vary a lot during the year, and hopefully take advantage of the volunteers best skills or preferences of work.
RENOVATION - Luckily the house doesn't have any kind of structural damage, so most of the work goes around cleaning, covering some holes in the walls, painting, treating the woods and taking care of the old furniture.
We try to use mostly natural materials in the process, we paint most of the walls with limestone/whitewash, and treat wooden floors and furniture with linseed oil. We do this kind of work all around the year, but from November till April this will be my main work.
CLEANING - After a couple of years of having workawayers helping with the renovation, we decided to make this project economically self sufficient by renting a few rooms. We have 4 rooms that we rent to travelers, and a maximum of 7 guests total. This means we have to clean the house daily and keep it beautiful and tidy.
We are open to guests most of the year (depending on our availability) but from May until October this type of help might be more intense.
IN THE KITCHEN - Cooking and sharing meals is also a very important part of this project, so everybody who shares this passion is welcome to join! Every morning we do a different vegetarian (mostly vegan) breakfast, always with sweet and savory options, where we try to use mostly whole, local and seasonal food, and invite everyone to come share some stories at our table (volunteers, friends and guests). Lunch and Dinner is more flexible, we can either have a snack or a feast, depending on how hungry we feel and how much time we want to spend in the kitchen. Of course all the meals are free for volunteers, and volunteers can eat anything we have on the kitchen.
(Important Note: Unpaid volunteers will not be asked to cook/prepare/take orders or serve food and drinks to paying guests).
IN THE GARDEN - We have a little garden where our chickens live, and where we hope to make a food garden soon. But at the same time we are trying to understand about natural patterns, native plants and bugs. We want to understand the soil before making major changes to it, so (for now) it's mostly a learning experience than a way of being self-sufficient.
MANAGEMENT AND PLANNING - Although we really love getting things done, it's very important to think about how we are going to do them first. We love brainstorming and discussing ideas with our workawayers. Sometimes it might be about the schedule of the next days or week, or might be a garden plan for the next month, or thinking how we will redecorate any space in the house.
LION FROM ZION - We have a big dog. His name is Leão (you can call him Lion). We walk him everyday at least two times, and at least one hour in total. We love to walk him but sometimes is also good to have somebody to take care of that task for us. And we are happy if volunteers want to do it for a long time, it still counts as work, and our dog will be very, very happy.
English: Fluent
Spanish: Fluent
Portuguese: Fluent
Russian: Fluent
We can provide a single and a twin room for workawayers. All meals are included and vegan :)
Somethings about my house:
Imagine a 120 year old, really (really) big house where nobody lived for 40 years! It's like 40 years of dust! But don't worry! After two years of having workawayers helping, now we have a clean/living area, where people sleep, hang out, cook and have bathrooms (the 1st floor), and a dirty/working area (the bottom floor) which is being transformed until everything is clean and livable :)
My home is in in Vila do Bispo, a town very close to the beautiful beaches at southwestern Portugal and surrounded by the natural park of Costa Vicentina. You have many ways to explore the nature around like hiking, walking in the woods, birdwatchig, surfing, climbing mountains, watching stars, relaxing, breathing fresh air and feel inspired to make a better world.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
More than two
Maximum 5 hours a day, 5 days a week
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