Share knowledge becoming self-sufficient / Opportunity of home and animal sitting in Pieve Fosciana, Italy

Details

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  Description

  Hi !
  
  We are 4 optimists who believe in a different way of living. 3 italian brothers of 35 and 40 years old and a french lady of 37 who felt in love with Italy. We started this adventure in 2018 when we bought our ideal place to start to live as we feel. A remote place between chestnut forest and beeches with water springs and lots of possibilities to live in peace. Since then we started to restore one of the many old buildings we have and settled a luxuriant food garden which can look like an edible jungle once in summer with lots of veggies and flowers!
  10 chicken, 3 cats and an old mule joined also the family!
  
  We are still at the begginning of our path to selfsufficiency and are learning a lot the last years about Nature, permaculture principles, food conservation or house restoration and much more...
  We are living this project with passion and are always around to do something to develop our ideas.
  
  In the next years we wish to be involved in the revaluation of the Appennine mountains mainly abandonned in the last decades, by bringing life again and care of this precious territory. We imagine a place auto sufficient with an agricole camping where hikers or riders can have a rest and enjoy peace, good food and homemade beers.
  
  Today we have lots of ideas for developping this place and we would love to host people who wants to participate to the adventure by offering their experience !
  We would like enthusiast people who are able to do physical jobs and be autonomous as it can happen that you'll be working by yourself (in the garden especially).
  
  Depending on the time of the year, the activities can vary from collecting wood in the forest, taking care of the garden, collecting fruits and nuts or restoring our old stones stables.
  
  For summer and automn time we would especially need help with our vegetable garden which is blooming from everywhere :-) Flowers and lots of varieties of vegetables that we experiment and wish to reproduce. It's a crucial time for harvesting, weeding, seeding and collecting the seeds for our own seeds bank. We also care about medecinal plants and try to collect them consciously to produce our own tisane and natural cures to take care of ourselves.
  It's a lovely time for who enjoy be in contact with Nature !
  
  So if you feel like to help us to develop our dreaming life you are welcome to join our family ! We would appreciate people who can stay at least 2 weeks in that way you have time to adapt yourself here and be really part of the community.
  
  We want the people to feel at home with us, so you will be part of the family. You'll have your own room when possible and you'll be welcome to eat with us! We are living in an rustic stone house which needs restoration. The place is old but the atmosphere is always welcoming, especially in the winter around the fireplace 🙂
  
  We also have many friends who come to visit so you'll get many opportunities to meet people from Italy and all over the world! Plus, we live surrounded by forests with a lot of hiking possibilities, it's the perfect place to breath fresh air and get healthy 🙂
  
  <<< Starting again the season from end of March >>>>>
  
  The vegetable garden is starting his new season! The work is starting again slowly slowly after a calm winter! So we will need people interested in helping to start over the garden and setting up the farm for a new season! Seeding, cleaning... Lots of little work outside to get ready for summer 🙂
  
  Then all along the summer we will need volunteers to take care the garden. Collecting veg' and be able to transform it to get conserves of tomatoes, zucchini... Dry food, do marmalade, and fermented food! Also taking care of the animals (feeding, cleaning...)
  You will need to be autonomous in your work as sometimes it will happen that we will be away for some days to do different jobs in the valley 🙂
  If you like this idea, come and help us as a member of our family 🙂
  
  <<<< Update for winter 2025 : opportunity of cat/home sitter >>≥
  
  We usually never planned our Life so far in time, but in next winter we know already that we will need someone to take care animals and do home/cat/donkey sitter for 2 months or more (need to see the dates together) It would be perfect for a couple with a car who wish to have an experience in our mountains while staying in a comfy and warm stone house (you will found chopped wood for the fire stove)🙂.
  
  We can already have a contact and talk about this 🙂
  
  Hope to see you soon and build together a nice reality 💖

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Art Projects

  Language practice

  Help with Eco Projects

  Teaching

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  Farmstay help

  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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  What's this?
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  We like to teach what we know and what we are learning now. We all did workaway experiences in different places of the world as volunteers and we know what it means.
  We can share knwoledges about restoring house, wood carpentry, vegetable garden, animals care, brewing craft beer, beekeeping, craftmanship, wild herbs.
  And of course we would be happy to practice other languages and to help you with italian, english, spanish and french.

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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

  Volunteers would be helpful for helping in restoring the houses, in the vegetable garden, feeding animals, make firewood, gardening, brewing, cooking, carpentry and self-sufficiency productions.
  We suggest to bring working shoes if you can.

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  Spanish: Fluent
  French: Fluent
  Italian: Fluent
  English: Intermediate

  This host offers a language exchange
  We speak good english and spanish but we would like to continue to practice them, we also like the idea to teach these languages and also italian for who is interested.
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  Accommodation

  You will have a private room or sometimes shared with other volunteers and live in the main house with us.
  We will eat all together and we provide for all the necessary food (mostly vegetarian). For different request for food, we encourage volunteers to manage by their own by buying what we cannot cover (alcool, sweets....)

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  What else ...

  We are in a beautiful area of the appenines mountains where you can do many hikings, we can visit friends around that has vounteers as well. There's a lake close where we are used to go for fishing.
  We all do some kind of art and craftmanship (like pottery, music, wood carving, painting, reading aloud,...) and you can do it as well.
  We all like a lot to play music and sing by the fireplace and would be great to do this all together, so musicians are welcome.

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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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  Can host digital nomads

  We usually have a good wifi connection and who wants to work from his laptop can do it in the spare time. Be aware that rarely the connexion can jump depending on the weather forecast (especially when it is raining a lot like usually in November?

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  Space for parking camper vans

  There is enough space to park campervans close to the houses.

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  Can possibly accept pets

  Because we have chickens and cats we are used to be surrounded by animals so feel free to bring your pet if you know that it will stay well with our animals.

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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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