Help us with building, gardening and taking care of animals and kids in the hills of Balșa, Romania

Details

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  Description

  Hello everyone!
  We are Iris (30) , David (34), Felix (7), Norah (5) and Lotte (2) from the Netherlands and we own a small house with around 8 hectares of fields and forest in Balșa, Romania. Here we live with our dogs, cats, pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, chicken, ducks, turkeys, geese, and guinea fowl.
  
  We live in the hills of Transylvania where it sometimes feels like time has stood still. In a good way! So many mysterious and interesting natural places around us.
  We don't like to give a name to what exactly we are doing but we could try to make it a bit more clear. We live in a community. Not a community where everybody lives together and shares everything, but more like a village with people who like each other and have more or less the same ideas about life. About why we live and what's important to teach our children. Within this village we can share, help and learn from each other. Everyone has their own house and land and own projects. So dont expect a real, close community.
  In this valley are quite a lot of people now, with many languages. Davids father bought the neighboring house. His mother bought a house on 10 minutes walking and friends of us, with their 3 kids have built a house on land which we sold them and four other families and some couples bought their houses and lands a little bit more up the hill. All the kids from all the families, 17 in total, vary from 0 to 14 years old. Everyone's within walking distance from each other but like mentioned before, we do live separately.
  We love living here and feel really relaxed most of the time. We are not really in a hurry and we try enjoying our time with each other. David likes to work with his hands. Building things, wood working. Iris likes to create things with wool and is trying to get better at sourdough bread baking. The kids love to draw, to jump on the trampoline, play with all their friends, go on aventure in the surroundings and well, all the stuff that kids love to do. They don't go to school, we teach them everything they want to learn at home. They can be quite wild so be prepared :)
  
  We think we have a really nice spot over here and we welcome you to visit and help create an even more beautiful piece of earth
  
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  Things we would really like help with the coming season are still almost the same as last season and the one before... (3 small kids and many animals are not really letting us work on replacing this roof...) It completely depends on what's happening at the specific moment. The weather, the kids, the animals, disasters :) all influence our priorities.
  
  - Constructing a cellar with a bathroom on top, attached to the house. Working with concrete for lower parts but also with clay and straw for the walls more up. The concrete parts of this cellar are finished and the coming winter David will put a roof on top. As soon as the weather allows it in spring we will start making the walls with slipstraw. An interesting technique of making insulated walls out of straw with a very thin clay mixture that functions as a glue. When the walls are all the way up we will let it dry and plaster with a clay and sand mixture. We could for sure use many more hands to help with this project.
  
  - REPLACING THE ROOF MAN, ITS RAINING INSIDE! Just kidding. it does needs to be completely replaced. a big job where we could use some extra hands. Nothing dangerous, we take all safety measures to work safely and would never ever send you up onto a roof if you feel a slight doubt about it! A big help would be to be with our kids while we do the dangerous stuff ourselves :) We will start working on this when the cellar project is finished, hopefully summer 2025.
  
  - Cooking (we love you if you can cook or like to do dishes)
  
  - Gathering Fire Woodz. That's something you can always do. There's lots of fallen trees in our forest that you can drag out of there and bring them closer to the house.
  
  - Fencing and clearing a new animal pasture. We want to buy a milking cow in the future and want to put an electric fence around a 3 hectare piece of abandoned land. This means a lot of cutting small trees and bushes to make space for the fence.
  
  - Several building projects: a new wood storage, a pig shelter, replacing a shed, etc.
  
  - Feeding the animals and every now and then clearing out their shelters
  
  - Many small jobs that we encounter while living a life like this
  
  - Kid entertaining
  
  - playing boardgames with us and our nearest neighbours and their extensive boardgame collection and music and dances and fun stuff
  
  note for wintertime: Please be aware that winters in Romania get cold. And when it's not freezing, it's muddy. The kind of mud that sticks to your boots and makes them 2 kg heavier. As seen above we don't have many inside projects going on so you really should be fine working outside in the cold. Inside will be a fire to warm yourself up in between. But then the sleeping in a caravan can also be pretty tough. Not impossible, many volunteers did it and were fine. But also some were not.
  On the contrary, summers will be hot. No mud, but rock solid soil. But, nice to sleep outside and during the day underneath the trees it's always very pleasant. And we make sure we take breaks on the hottest moments of the day.
  
  All the other families here have many many projects. If we have things to do you don't like, or when we don't have anything to do at all, they could also use help. (Almost) everyone is on workaway too if u want to check them out just write us and we will link their profiles.
  
  Practical stuff:
  
  - We prefer a minimum stay of two weeks. In our experience we noticed it takes around a week to get used to each other, after that it gets more relaxed and things start to run smoothly. If this is not possible for you, just let us know so we can figure something out.
  
  - We are not strict about working times and we don't count hours, as long as we're moving forward and getting things done everything is fine. We do expect responsibility. About working but also about our stuff and our house. Everything we own has a certain value, maybe only sentimental or just expensive. Just be thoughtful when handling tools, materials or other things like for example cups and plates when doing the dishes. We don't ever buy anything new, we thrift and collect so most things are somehow irreplaceable.
  
  - Your stay will most probably be in a guestroom reachable by ladder, off-grid caravan (with woodstove) or tent that we will provide, including a comfy mattress and all the blankets needed. The main house is being renovated so there's (almost) no place to sleep inside. But we'll discuss this before you arrive or upon arrival.
  
  - Our farm is situated on a 15 minute walk (2 km) uphill, away from the village.
  
  - We eat meat and milk and eggs. If you are eating vegan or vegetarian we'll have to get creative but it's been done before, no big deal!
  
  - Please leave your scented beauty products (spray deodorant, soap, shampoo, perfume, etc) at home. We're not used to this smell anymore and prefer our surroundings without it. Also our waste water ends right in the field where our animals live so we don't want toxic stuff in the water.
  
  - Expect chaos. We are both chaotic and not tidy at all. We have a lot of stuff (material, tools, and even trash (which in Davids eyes is in some cases material)) laying around and it can often be a complete mess. Once in a while we clean and sort everything out but if you need a tidy surrounding to be able to function, this is probably not your place.
  
  - We have a reliable and fast satellite internet connection.
  
  - Arriving here is usually not hard. There's a possibility someone from the valley can come to pick you up in the nearest city if they're going for groceries.
  There's also a minibus going once a day. And hitch-hiking is pretty easy around here.
  
  - Message for families with kids:
  We've hosted families before with mixed feelings. Since we do not have a separate living space for our volunteers and our kids are pretty sensitive beings, we decided its probably not a good idea to continue hosting people with other kids. Spending all day everyday together with other and new kids is just a bit too much. There's no space here to be with just your family and same goes for ourselves. If you own your own everything (like a campervan) and you're willing to spend most of the dinners and evenings separately then it would be possible! You can always write us to check.
  
  - And last but not least: We are not vaccinated and will never be. So if you care about that don't bother writing us :)

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  Farmstay help

  Babysitting and creative play

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  General Maintenance

  House sitting
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  UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  We live in a multi cultural village. Languages you can hear or find here are: Dutch, English, German, Romanian, Spanish, French, Swedish, Finnish, Latvian and Russian. Everyone has their own background and own story to tell. There have been a lot of volunteers, friends, family members and other random guests here and we expect this to continue all the time.

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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

  Like mentioned above, we do not expect anything. We could use help with keeping the kids happy, fixing the house, gardening, make plans with the land etc!

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  Dutch: Fluent
  Romanian: Beginner

  This host offers a language exchange
  Do you speak Romanian? Please come and teach us all... We could use some lessons. In exchange we can teach you one of the most useless languages existing: Dutch.
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  Accommodation

  We have all the sleeping equipment. Air mattresses, lots of blankets and pillows. Last year we moved a caravan here with a comfortable 2 persons mattress and woodstove!

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  What else ...

  We really like it if people can play an instrument. We don't play anything ourselves but Iris loves folk dancing and music from mostly eastern Europe and feels passionate about this. We own a guitar, a bass guitar and some other random instruments. Neighbours have more instruments like a accordion, flute, ukulele. Campfires are better with live music
  
  This area is very beautiful and i am sure we have not discovered all of it ourselves. We are not that far from Deva and Hunedoara which both have big castles.
  There's a beautiful walk you can make, it goes through the river in the village, through the hills, to another village (Mada) where's a big cave to explore.
  We also have bicycles which you could borrow to make a tour through the area.

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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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  Space for parking camper vans

  The road to our house is especially in winter not useable for any vehicle that does not have 4 wheel drive. Campers can be safely parked in the village. During the summer the road gets better but it's steep and has many holes and bumps. Only small campers can make it all the way up.

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  Can possibly accept pets

  Our very big protective dog found a new home, meaning we are open again to guests with pets. However, we don't allow animals inside our house or inside guestrooms! They should be completely fine with staying outside. They should also 100% sure be okay around other animals, especially chicken but also dogs, cats, rabbits, sheep and pigs. And small kids of course :)

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  More than two

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