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Host rating
100 %
Last replied
5 Dec 2025
Reply rate
100.0 %
Usually responds within 4 days
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Description
Hi there! We are a friendly couple, Hanna and Rami, looking forward to our third year as workaway hosts. Do you want to experience country living? Are ready to lend us a hand in fixing fences, doing small construction work, taking care of our hobby farm and animals? If you answer yes to some of those, read further.
We ourselves moved to the countryside in south-eastern Finland from Helsinki some 14 years ago to start a new, more sustainable way of life. We have not regretted that decision.
Nowadays we both do remote work from home while also take care of this small hobby farm. We practice homesteading and keep animals. Our house is surrounded by nature and is close to natural lakes - there are over a thousand lakes and ponds in this municipality alone.
We have some sheep as well as two Icelandic horses, chicken, ducks and a dog, who will surely want to be your new best friend. We grow vegetables, berries, fruits. We have a greenhouse.
As remote office work taxes our time, the farm also always requires a lot of maintenance work. Especially in the summer. There is some painting to do, fences waiting to be fixed, renovations, mocking the animal sheds etc. In short: there is so much to do and never enough time. Still, we try to have a relaxed attitude and enjoy what we do. Hobby farming, not professional.
So, it is not all just hard work and no fun. We do enjoy hosting guests and making new friends. We are interested in languages and cultural exchange. When we heard about the Workaway concept and got to host our first volunteers in the summer 2024, we immediately realized that hey, this is something that suits us. Makes life more colorful and provides valuable help. The experience has been great!
Now, for the spring/summer/autumn 2026 we are again looking for people to help us with all kinds of seasonal and daily tasks at the farm plus some DIY projects. The tasks could include gardening, animal care, maintenance, small building projects, and also cleaning and household chores, depending on your interests and abilities. At some point we would need someone who has some basic building skills or at least the willingness to learn by doing.
Rami’s parents live right next to us, have also a small garden and a greenhouse alongside of a chicken coop. You would be helping also them occasionally. By doing that, you’ll have an opportunity to learn a lot from the granny about plants and growing vegetables in an organic way. She is quite an expert on everything nature related.
We are looking for people who are able to work independently, are not afraid of getting themselves dirty and who can do things also by their own initiative when they see the need. Some flexibility and good sense of humour is needed here: especially with animals, things do not always go as planned. Every day is surely different.
The work here can sometimes be physically demanding, dirty and even smelly. However, we won’t ask you to do anything we would not do /have done ourselves, neither something which is totally out of your comfort zone.
It would be a big bonus to be handy, to have some background with horses, to have some experience with gardening and to be able to create meals with ingredients available… but no worries, the most important is to be open-minded enough to try out new things - and especially to be able to tolerate some mess and chaos.
Our goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible, so that the food we eat is to large extent produced by us and organic. Home grown food is topped up with everything you can find in the Finnish nature: wild herbs, berries and mushrooms. Depending on the season, we will show you how to find these treasures of the nature. We eat a lot of vegetarian food, but some fish and meat too.
We will share 1-2 meals a day together, but you are also welcome to use the kitchen for snacks, leftovers etc. It would be great to share the cooking to some extent - but at least you should participate in clearing the table and the mess in the kitchen afterwards.
Otherwise we hope you to help 4-5 hours a day 5 days a week, on the average.
Our daughter, aged 25 yrs, will stay with us this summer as she got a job nearby. The two other adult kids may visit sometimes with their spouses. As a family, we are somewhat unorganised, but warm, friendly, open-minded and welcoming. Our messy home is always open to friends and visitors from Finland and abroad. So other people are coming and going too, especially in the summer.
We would be happy to host you, introduce Finnish culture and our way of living to you, and to learn new things and insights from you! Please feel to free to ask more, if you got interested.
Types of help and learning opportunities
Help with Eco Projects
Gardening
DIY and building projects
Animal Care
Farmstay help
Creating/ Cooking family meals
Help around the house
General Maintenance
Interests
Vegetarian or vegan
Self development
Sustainability
Politics / Social justice
Pets
Movies & TV
LGBTQ
Farming
Events & social
Culture
Plant care
Photography
Music
Languages
Gardening
DIY & crafts
Cooking & food
Carpentry
Art & design
Books
Animals
Yoga / Wellness
Winter sports
Outdoor activities
Nature
Hiking
Fitness
Camping
UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve
Cultural exchange and learning opportunities
You will get experience of Finnish culture and nature in the happiest country of the world. More generally, you will learn about homesteding in our multi-generational family : learn about growing and conserving food; learn about the Finnish nature and finding food in there. Learn about Finnish cooking and recipies. Experience swimming in natural lakes. Learn about animals. If you are interested in martial arts, ask Rami for some training.
Help
According to your abilities and interests, help is needed in gardening (planting, turning soil, watering plants, weeding...), animal care, small building and DIY projects, painting, wood chopping, mocking animal sheds and all sorts of maintenance and farm tasks. Help is welcomed also in cooking and household chores. Handy people are especially welcomed, so are those with some previous experience with gardening and/or horses.
Languages
Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Finnish: Fluent
French: Fluent
German: Intermediate
Swedish: Intermediate
Italian: BeginnerThis host offers a language exchange
We would be happy to practise more our French, German, Swedish and Italian, languages that we otherwise do not have so often opportunity to speak.
Accommodation
Depending on the time of stay, there are several options. A guest room with privacy (and electricity) is in a separate building across the yard with a 120 cm wide bed. In the summer it is also possible to stay in one of the "summer rooms" in a log building without electricity. Shared toilet and a bathroom with shower are in the main building, old sauna in another separate building.
In the autumn, a guest room in the main building is available. Other places can be arranged in the main building too.
What else ...
In your free time you could eg. go swimming in different lakes, enjoy the company of the animals, join Hanna to go to the forest for picking berries and mushrooms (depending on the season), enjoy traditional sauna etc. We have a small gym where you can train yoga, kettle bells etc. Or then just relax in the hammock.
If you like hiking and camping, the national park Repovesi ( nature reserve) is about 15 km away with nice trekking routes of different lengths and possibility to rent out canoes. We can lend your camping equipment, if you want to spend a night there or somewhere else.
We have bicycles available, we can sometimes give you a lift and you may sometimes also use our car, if it is available. There is a pizzeria in the village a couple of kilometers away, and the the nearest small shop is 4 km away. The UNESCO World Heritage site Verla is about 25 km away.
The nearest town is Kouvola about 30 km away. The public transport connnections are not super good, but on working days, there are a few busses from the village to go there. To be honest, there is not that much going on in the town itself. However, several trains a day run to Helsinki (1,5 hours) and to Lappeenranta (1 hr), which is a nice town in the summer, at the lake Saimaa. Seaside towns Kotka and Hamina (both 1 hr by car) and old Porvoo (1,5 hrs by car) are also wonderful day trips to make, so is the Astuvansalmi rock paintings.
If there is an opportunity, we can also make some day trips together to show you around.
A little more information
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
Space for parking camper vans
This host can provide space for campervans.
How many Workawayers can stay?
More than two
My animals / pets
Sheep
Ducks
Chicken
Pysja
Leista
Maiko
Chat with Workawayers who've visited this host
Feedback (11)
Nous sommes restées trois semaines en octobre et avons pu participer à la préparation de l’arrivée de l’hiver.
Les tâches étaient variées et toutes intéressantes.
Nous avons également découvert des plats typiques de la région, ainsi que des activités… read more
Photos
Chat with Workawayers who've visited this host
Feedback
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Accuracy of profile:
(5.0)
Cultural exchange:
(5.0)
Communication:
(5.0)
Nous sommes restées trois semaines en octobre et avons pu participer à la préparation de l’arrivée de l’hiver.
Les tâches étaient variées et toutes intéressantes.
Nous avons également découvert des plats typiques de la région, ainsi que des activités… read more
J´ai beaucoup apprécié leur accueuil chaleureux et leur manière de me faire sentir integrée dès le premier jour avec les autres workawayers,
Malgré un emploi du temps chargé , ils prenaient toujours le temps d´une discussion ou d´un conseil utile.
Par… read more
Staying with Hanna, Rami, Saga, Maiko, and all the other animals at the farm is an experience we will remember for a very long time!
During our stay, we got to work on a bunch of different tasks, such as fixing a trailer, building fences, taking care of and nursing the animals and much much more. Since there was a lot of… read more
I stayed for 3weeks at Hanna and Rami’s place. It was the best summer of my life.
I was a bit nervous about the first time meeting, but they were warmly welcomed, and it made me very relieved.
Hay work, painting for sauna, cleaning chicken coop, daily work for animals, watering gardens…I enjoyed and learned… read more
I learned a lot about different edible plants and of course a lot about animals, especially sheep. They let me take care of the sheep and have responsibility with the lambs, which I… read more
Hanna and Rami were very kind, tolerant, and gentle, and we had a very comfortable two weeks.
Thanks to their friendliness, we were able to settle in very quickly.
Hanna is very knowledgeable about animals and nature, and most importantly,… read more
Each day, we had to take care of the animals (horses, sheeps, ducks and chickens) : feed them and give water, clean horses… read more
