Italy
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Hi, my name is Clementina, I'm 47 years old and 7 years ago I bought an old stone house in the middle of the forest, in the "appennino ligure" hills.
The project consist in renovating the house using natural materials and care for the land following permaculture principles.
Part of the house is dedicated to the activities and workshops we organise and often host. We have a nice yoga shala, a classroom for more manual activities and many facilities openair such as compost toilets, showers, outdoor kitchen, sweat lodge...
The idea is to start a small ecovillage, where we can live 4-5 people in harmony with nature.
We are a group of friends who are involved, on different levels, in the project, some come for the weekend, some will come and stay long term during the summer, although at the moment it's only me living full time here.
We are located in a beautiful wild forest in the north of Italy. We almost finished renovating the farm stone building from the 17th century but there's always something to fix or to build...
We constantly work in the vegetable garden, planting trees, keeping the brumbles down, ecc. There's a lot to do as the place was abandoned for 20 years!
The property consist of 50 hectars (mainly forest) in a natural park, we have a swimmable river near the house, a lot of nice walks, mountain bike, etc.
The nearest city is Genova (40km), the closest town Ovada.
We offer vegetarian food, mostly grown on site or from neighbouring farms.
We have amazingly good spring water coming out of a rock in front of the house!
We have two cats: Fumo and Cobra and a dog Savia.
Help with Eco Projects
Gardening
DIY and building projects
Animal Care
Farmstay help
Creating/ Cooking family meals
Help around the house
General Maintenance
Travellers who come to our place will experience living in harmony with nature and trying to be as much as possible self sustained. There's always friends coming to the house so you will learn more about local culture.
The help required will be around 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus sometimes cooking together. We need help in the renovation of the house with natural materials such as cob and wood, we also need help in the gardens, we will work in the synergic vegetable garden, cutting grass, preparing wood for winter, collecting wild edible plants, planting trees. Part of the volunteering job will consist in the general maintenance of the house and we will share the cooking duties (also making bread and pizzas with sour dough in the wood oven), we might have some animals like hens and donkeys in the future, so we will need to look after them as well.
VERY IMPORTANT: Thanks for applying ONLY if you are adaptable to rustic life and willing to work in team
We try to have a sustainable way of living so please don't bring any chemical soaps and try to avoid food with a lot of packaging, we also use compost toilets to be more in tune with nature.
Languages spoken
English: Fluent
French: Fluent
Italian: Fluent
Spanish: Intermediate
This host offers a language exchange
I would love to learn more about spanish and portuguese
You can choose between privacy in your own tent as the land is big and we have some basic camping facilities (compost toilet, outdoor shower), or a shared basic accomodation inside the house (max 4 people sleeping in a mezzanine)
during time off you can enjoy the surrounding nature, go for a walk or swim in the river, you can also reach genova with a train (from ovada station).
IMPORTANT: WE ACCEPT ONLY TRAVELLERS WITH INSURANCE.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
There's a nice office space for digital nomads, the internet connection is good but not amazing, expecially for upload. Zoom meetings work well.
We can host a small or medium campervan in a nice, flat and shady field, 300 mt from the house. We cannot provide electricity nor water in the field but closed by you can recharge and refill... the compost toilet is not far neither.
We can accept workawayers with very calm and kind dogs, only if you sleep in tents or campervan. Most of the land is not fenced so it is the workawayers responsability to look after their pets
More than two
Maximum 5 hours a day, 5 days a week
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Cultural exchange:
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