Come help and house/dog sit in the scenic hills of Strelets, Bulgaria

Details

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  Description

  [We are looking for house/dog sitters in August for a minimum of a couple of weeks covering the period of the 16th to 22nd]
  
  Want to live a simple life in a simple village? We are a couple who have found that this is what we like to do. Come and chill out in quite an isolated house on the edge of a small quiet village, do 'this and that', and eat as much as you want of whatever fruit that happens to be growing here at the time. There can be a lot of fruit to choose from sometimes!
  
  We are Sam (English man 45), Janne (Dutch woman 40), and Lyuda (a youngish dog). We are playful, a bit silly and quite 'happy-go-lucky'. Janne is a pescatarian which pretty much makes Sam one also when at home. Janne also speaks Spanish and Sam speaks a fair bit of Romanian if that's of any use or interest to you!
  
  In 2020 we drove around north central Bulgaria looking for a house to buy. We found a village we loved, then we found and bought the only house in it that we found suitable enough. It's an old house made of wonky wood and mud bricks (not pictures) that needs a lot of work, but we love it!
  
  We have now also come into stewardship of the neighboring house (which we primarily house volunteers / guests in, and is the one in the pictures), so we now have 200% more land and buildings to use and look after than originally planned for!
  
  
  A dream of ours is to one day start some sort of a community, most likely with an emphasis on attracting and accommodating 'neurodivergent' people. Basically anybody who considers themselves a bit different and/or is happy to hang out with people who are a bit different and may find socialising a bit difficult and troubling. Maybe we could start the community here? A first step to doing this would be for it to be more of a norm to have people frequently coming here to stay.
  
  
  At any given time, there maybe both of us here, one of us, or neither of us; and there are three options on how you can spend your time here depending on what the circumstances are . . .
  
  1)
  Help us for a max of 10 hours a week . . .
  . . . for accommodation
  
  2)
  Help us for a max of 25 hours a week . . .
  . . . for food and accommodation.
  
  3)
  House sit and look after the dog
  . . . if we are due to leave . . .
  . . . and do whatever needs to be done to maintain the property; e.g. feed the dog, let people read electricity and water meters, keep the vegetation under control. If we have specific dates in mind we put a note in [brackets] at the beginning of this text.
  
  
  As we are just starting out with volunteers, for now we have a preference for people to provide their own food. Though do not let this put you off if you want us to feed you, we are still happy to.
  
  For house sitting it would be very advantageous to have your own car so you can go to a better location to do food shopping, and also access a cash machine. You could most likely survive by just shopping in the three local shops, but it's not something we would want to do.
  
  
  There is internet here via the mobile network, so we have a standard set amount of traffic totaling 100 GB per month. It's fast enough for streaming video.
  
  
  Depending on the season the available fruit could be:
  
  Mulberries
  Cherries
  Plums (at least 4 varieties, enough to lose count at least)
  Pears (2 varieties)
  Apples (4 or more varieties)
  Peaches
  Figs
  Blackberries and/or Raspberries
  Grapes (red and white)
  Walnuts
  Almonds if you are really lucky

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  General Maintenance
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  You will learn what it's like to live in a simple small Bulgarian village up in some hills. Most people do all they can to live of the land they have. We ourselves like to try and grow some vegetables, herbs and maintain the couple of orchards that we have, one small (barely an orchard really), the other quite big.

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  Help

  There is always garden maintenance to do to keep things under control, but there is so much to do, just let us know what you like doing, or tell us if you think of something that can be done, and we'll see what we can come up with.

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  Spanish: Fluent
  Dutch: Fluent
  Romanian: Intermediate
  Bulgarian: Beginner

  This host offers a language exchange
  Sam is a certified (CELTA / TESOL) English teacher, and has taught at state schools for 1 and half years in Korea and half a year in Georgia, and would be happy to do what he can to help you out with English. If you happen to know Romanian, then Sam would gladly accept any help you care to give in helping him learn more!
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  Accommodation

  You will have your own room, and probably your own house next to ours if there are no other volunteers staying (which is likely whilst we are just starting out on Workaway). The house primarily used for guests consists of two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a shower room / toilet. It has a washing machine and a fridge. In fact the house you will have will be better than the one we will stay in!
  
  Note that last summer, for the first time since we moved to the village, starting sometime in August there was a water shortage and there was no tap water for periods. Consider that this short of thing can happen in many Bulgarian villages. With proper preparation it has never been a huge problem for us or the house sitters that experienced this last year. We have a well on each of the two properties, plus two more on the other two properties next to ours that we also have use of. There is also a big submerged rain water collection reservoir on each of the properties, and a spring about 300 metres away which we use for cooking with.

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  What else ...

  We really like our village. The area we live in is quiet, and we can see the mountains in the distance when the air is clear outside of the summer period. You can walk 5 minutes up the hill where there is a big forest and panoramic views of the surrounding hills and the mountains in the distance.

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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

  Not entirely sure what constitutes a 'digital nomad' and the ability to host one, but we can provide you with your own room with a desk/table, and an internet connection via the mobile network which is good enough for streaming video. We have an allowance of 100 GB bandwidth per month.

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  Space for parking camper vans

  Depending on how particular you are, smaller campervans / motorhomes can be catered for on our property, or outside next to the road. If you park on our property next to the house you would be staying in / using, the limiting factors are the steepness, size and surface of our driveway. There is no surface as such, just grass with maybe hidden rocks underneath the grass. If it gets wet, it can be tricky to get enough grip / momentum to get out of the driveway. There is shade in this spot for the first half of the day. There are two option for parking next to the road. You can park up close next to the house where there is next to no shade and may cause problems for tractors getting past. Or park further away in a spot where there is good shade but is next to a fork in the road that sees cars / tractors passing from time to time.

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  Can possibly accept pets

  If it is a dog you have, it just needs to get along with our dog. Usually if our dog sees we like another dog, it knows that it needs to tolerate it, but it can be a bit jealous and possessive of its territory and owners (food sources) to begin with. If it's a cat you will bring it will probably be chased away by our dog to begin with, but it can learn to tolerate cats.

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  More than two

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  Hours expected

  15 hours/week max, self catering - 25 hours/week max, food provided.

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