South Africa
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We are a family living on a twenty hectare Organic Farm.
Our aim is to be as self-sufficient as possible and farm in a morally responsible manner, placing value on our environment above profit. Our kids have been home-birthed, home-schooled, and home-fed in our home-built house.
We have no aspirations to compete with commercial agriculture, but would rather sit back and enjoy some delicious homegrown and homemade food cooked with fuel from our farm.
Although we do eat meat produced on our farm, we support vegetarians and can easily cater for them.
We have +/- twenty cows which we milk, eat and use as fertilisors. When there is surplus milk we make butter and cheese for our own consumption and for sale.
The pigs provide us with ham bacon and sausages and the chickens are kept for eggs, meat and as de-tickers.
The herd of goats is for land-clearing and milk and cheese, while their manure feeds the bio-digester for gas in the kitchen.
Our horse, mule and donkey are for grazing rotation and the Great Danes, besides being pets, are for breeding.
We also have a few hives of bees for honey and a generally overgrown, out of control vegetable garden that always needs weeding.
We are lucky enough to live in an area with abundant fruit, so a big job in summer is to process and preserve fruit for the rest of the year.
Having experimented with self-sufficiency on the farm since 1995, we have managed to grow and produce many of life's essentials (and luxuries), but still battle to produce all of them all the time.
In response to the very visible increase in air-pollution in our once pristine valley, and the shocking evidence of climate change, we have started our own atmospheric carbon harvesting programme in the form of a sustainable reforestation project. We have planted the first 100 or so indigenous trees and hope to establish a new mistbelt forest.
We greatly appreciate the way that volunteers help us to finish our projects and give us inspiration to start new ones as well as refreshing our enthusiasm for our goals.
The activities on the farm are highly seasonal, but we always have a backlog of unfinished work that needs a happy and enthusiastic volunteer to complete.
Gardening
Building
General Maintenance
Cooking / shopping
Farmstay
Other
Help in the house
Animal care
Teaching
Travellers will have an opportunity to try their hands at various aspects of a self sufficient orientated lifestyle in an African environment.
We can facilitate an overnight stay in Indaleni Township with a Zulu family.
By prior arrangement, we can also arrange a day trip to the nearby Tala Private Game Reserve.
Our workday is very flexible, starting at eight, tea time around 10:30 and ending at lunch time. Volunteers can also be asked to help with evening chores or supper preparations.
As a result of the diversity of our farm there is a large range of things to do at all times. As a working farm, the time of year will determine your activities. Examples include:
Milking/herding/slaughtering animals
Making hay
Forest regeneration
Working in the garden
Fire wood collecting/ wood chopping
Weeding/clearing of fields
Puppy feeding
Cheese and butter making
English and Dutch
Volunteers will sleep in a building separate from our house with beds and bedding provided. The accomodation is very rustic but adequate.
Nearby is the volunteer's kitchen, showers and toilets. Water is heated in a donkey boiler, so if you want a hot shower, make sure you can light a fire!
We provide oats and maizemeal, milk, tea, coffee and sugar for volunteers in their kitchen for breakfast. At tea time and for lunch, there is homemade bread and a variety of toppings available in our house and we share a communal dinner.
In your free time there are beautiful walks and hikes in Mist Belt forest, plantations and grassland.
There are mini-bus taxis to the nearest town, Richmond, on a regular basis from just outside our gate.
Next door to our farm is the Oaks Hotel which has all the facilities of a country hotel.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
More than two
max 25 hours a week, 2 days off
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(5.0)
Cultural exchange:
(4.7)
Communication:
(5.0)
