Join my young permaculture project in Giarre, Sicily, Italy

Details

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  Description

  ***Looking for 2 volunteers from the 7th of January***
  
  Thanks to be here 🙏
  My name's Alberto, and from 2019 I started this project buying a 7000 square meters field full of lemon trees, grapes and some olive trees.
  I planted many other trees (and there's still place for many others 😁), grafted old ones to have oranges, and started building facilities 💪
  There was nothing here when I have arrived, now I don't know what's missing 🤷😁
  
  The project is 100% off grid, with water from the sky and electricity from the sun 💪
  We have heaters to be warm in winter and a small small pool to be cool in Summer 🥹
  Three meals, hot shower everyday, friends passing by every other day, sea at 4 kilometers (for americans: around 1500 inches 🤣), and a village at just one kilometer 💪
  
  I was living in Milan, and before getting mad I became crazy emptying my bank account to buy this piece of land, my best choice in life so far 😌 Now after years I got the rithm, the experience, and I've hosted so many people to understand I'm a good host 🤪 with a rare sense of humor (it's like marmite, love or hate 🤣)
  
  I host volunteers almost all year long, and I look for people that like to have a daily routine, where we work in the morning, and we chill and dedicate to our hobbies in the evening ⚖️
  Life is easy here, and the work isn't stressful when everyone does his part 🤸
  
  
  
  FYI Before you read I would tell I host volunteers for two weeks as a minimum and four as a maximum 🙏 from April to September I host up to 4 volunteers at time, 3 as average.
  From October to March usually 1-2 people, in depending on the request.
  To be sure to find space in here you should contact me within 2 months in advance.
  There are dogs, cats, chickens always around us, and lot of mosquitos from April to October🙏
  
  The land is 7000 square meters, with many lemon trees, olive, pears, grapes, clementines, grapefruit, a few tropical trees, and herbs.
  I am few kilometers far from the sea, and some more kilometers far from Etna. We are 160 meters above sea level, and the subtropical climate allows us to grow many exotic fruits and live outdoors 9 months per year.
  Anyway we live outside 12 months per year 😎😎😎
  We are not a company, everything we produce is for self-sufficiency.
  Inhabitants of this land are Acab (the dog), Dima (the big one, half cat and half puppet 🥹), Azolo (the black cat and, the king of the Land 🫣), Gilda (the new arrived, a little female that always follows Azolo 🙂‍↔️) 8 chickens and Alberto (the human) 😁.
  I have friends over often and you'll have the chance to know other good souls 🙏
  
  As you can read I am an easy going person, outgoing and funny, also empathetic, open minded and caring 🙂‍↔️
  I behave as a kid when I am happy and relaxed, as an "adult" when we work on priorities 😌
  I Just ask to the volunteers to wake up at time, keep the kitchen clean and honour the daily tasks, and be focused during the explanations I give, expecially for how to use water 🙏🙏🙏🙏
  
  Sometimes thinking about everything is overwhelming and I can lose focus 🙏 that's also why I ask for help 😁
  I like to cook and I do it often. I am not a chef but whatever I make gets finished every single time 😎 I am also happy if someone else would do it ❤️
  I am Sagittarius, Aquarius rising, for anyone interested in knowing 🙏
  
  What I'm looking for:
  My first goal is make people feel comfortable, relaxed and safe, like at home 🙏 then make them independent in the land, punctual and focused.
  I look for people that are making a change in their life, that love DIY, wildness, that are curious to learn and happy to be completely involved in someone's life, kinda of au pair experience, but without an house and just a dog that babysit himself 😂
  I can tell my story, share my experience, teach what I've learnt throught observation and experience.
  I can teach you a bit of everything: I'm not expert in anything, but I have made everything by myself here. Woodworking, prunings, irrigation, electricity, building, networking, problem solving etc... Here there's no chance to give up 💪😁
  I would also learn thousand things, so I am also eager to learn something new every day 😁
  
  There are many little daily tasks that could be done whenever we ask ourselves: "How can I help?" that I will show you the very first days 🤗
  When we are under the same roof we are friends: we work together, talk about ourselves, make food together and help each other.
  There are thousands little things to do here and everything can change suddenly because of weather, commitments, or just feeling weak.
  
  The time here is different: days are longer, and weeks are shorter 🤔 Remember It!
  Good travelling everyone!

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Help with Eco Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Farmstay help

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  General Maintenance

  Help with Computers/ Internet
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  Interests

  

  Sustainability

  

  Self development

  

  Pets

  

  Farming

  

  Plant care

  

  Photography

  

  Gardening

  

  DIY & crafts

  

  Cooking & food

  

  Carpentry
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  UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

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  What's this?
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  You could learn that you can feel at home even far from your house 😌
  This project is about developing to be off grid, so you can gain plenty of information around permaculture, gardening, building, solving problems et cetera et cetera 😁
  Our supplies are off grid at the moment, with solar electricity only and water from rain collection.
  DIY is the keyword here, and you could expect any kind of work here, in depending on what we are building (or fixing 🥲).
  Everyone here becomes familiar with the pickaxe, the shovel, the rake, the wheelbarrow and their proper way of using them without wasting calories 😁 then gardening is a big task, so you can learn how to prune, to graft, to plan a plantation ect.. in depending on the season you come here.
  Beside that there is always the weekly maintenance of the vegetable garden, so boooring! 🥱
  What else? I do not know yet, but I know will be tiring, that's why I am here 😁
  Life here is as a small familiar environment that turns strangers in siblings, and people here are totally involved in my life, knowing my friends and coming with me the few times I get out from here 😁
  I have used to go with volunteers to many projects around the area, that's why some feedbacks talk about that, but I found this exhausting and I slowed down this a lot 🙏
  I am willing to teach whatever I have learnt about wildlife in these six years outdoor😁
  This project is still rising, so by coming here you'll put your hands in something meaningful that will expand roots and will get bigger and bigger every year 🙏
  
  *Photography: in one of my previous lives I have been a freelance photographer, so I am able to teach everything about whatever camera you'll bring with you 🤗*

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  Help

  Coming to my land is an experience of wild life 😁 It's hard only during the time you need to get used to it 💪
  
  We work 4-5 hours per day in the early morning. Some tasks require also help in the afternoon and the evening (making grape juices, harvest olives...) but in these cases those days worth as two days of help.
  Help are really varius, I cannot make a list 😭.
  Just be ready for workouts 😁 pickaxe, shovel, rake, gloves will be part of your dress code 😁
  I am building a lot of little things, as I said, so we'll do some carpentry, woodworking, plasterings, we use lot of clay, straw and sand for making walls, and we give constant mainteinance to the land and the vegetable garden 🙏
  
  There are two days off every five of help: It must be comunicate at least a day in advance and it cannot be a day we must do some big tasks dealed in advance 🙏
  I suggest to avoid weekends because there are much less trains running and more crowd 😮‍💨
  FYI I have noticed that often volunteer prefer help 2-3 days then get a day off, so we do🙏
  Days off don't have scheduled meals 🙏
  
  Daily tasks are clean up the outdoor kitchen, keeping it tidy at anytime, feed the animals, walk the dog, collect eggs, water the plants, and prepare meals togheter 😁
  Once per week we clean the facilities, the roulottes, we sort the garbage and handwash clothes, we clean the chicken coop and we do maintenance on the vegetable garden 💪
  
  Almost everyday we work on something different, and those tasks change between hot and cold seasons. Also, every day can change because of the weather 🕺
  
  The daily routine is simple🙏
  We wake up at dawn, we have breakfast, then we work till lunch.
  The afternoons are free, and we meet again and hour before dusk to do some work, that could be tidy up, fix tools etc in cold season and water the trees in summer🥳
  
  !!!Advice for "northern" people: July and August are crazy hot, with temperatures over 35 degrees for 8 to 10 hours per day, dealing with mosquitos, flies, ants and sunburns (expecially for really light skins).
  This temperatures affect the energies more than you think, and some people from North Europe have given up after few days because of that, discovering also new allergies 😬 I would say that insects bites and sun radiations are on a different scale here 🙏
  Please consider this advice 🙏🙏🙏 and choose another season 😜 March-April and September-November are the best options, trust me pleeease🙏🙏🙏
  
  The land every year requires some big jobs that I ask for help with:
  January: prune grapes, dig out oaks and blackberry shrubs;
  February: prune olive trees, pear trees, ivys;
  March: graft olive trees, prepare the summer vegetable garden, seedings etc.;
  April: graft and prune citrus trees, harvest lemons;
  May: look after the vegetable garden, harvest medlars, weedings, work on safety against summer bushfire;
  June-July: build with mud 😍 water new plants, weedings, dig out oaks and blackberry shrubs;
  August: water new plants, make tomato sauce (1 to 3 days)
  September: harvest grapes (1-2 days), make grape juice, harvest hazelnuts (3-4 days), harvest prickly pears, new plantations (trees and vegetables)
  October-November: harvest olives (biggest task of the year! 3 days of heavy work and 2 extra days of rest after 😁), plant onions, fennels, peas, broad beans;
  December: harvest lemons (2-3 days);
  
  As I've learnt in a facilitation course, Dreams have more chances to become true if you tell others, so here they are 😁:
  - I am planning to build a little earthship from spring to fall🥳
  - I would love to make a documentary of what we are doing 🥹 a good one! 90 minutes! 🥳
  - I would print my own tshirts for volunteers here without electricity and with natural materials: any idea from where to start? 🫣
  - I'd love inviting Keanu Reeves here, do anyone has his number? 😂

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  Languages spoken

  English: Fluent
  Italian: Fluent
  Spanish: Beginner

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  Accommodation

  Volunteers will sleep in a cozy roulotte (with heating system in wintertime) 🤙 It's made for two volunteers (always same gender), with independent lights and spaces 🦸
  
  The outdoor shower has hot water every day 🥹 and It has been made to work 100% on passive energy.
  The water tank is few meters above the shower, so the water gains good pressure. Then a pipe gets into a boiler inside a old fridge full of rocks and the sun heats it during midday. If it's cloudy or rainy I can switch to another boiler over a old wooden stove to heat with the citrus prunings!
  Oh, forgot! The water is from rain collection 💪
  
  One thing to know about the compost toilet: I ask to pee in it as less as possible, and pee behind the tree you prefer that day 😁 this drastically reduce bad smells, emptying it is much easier and we do not have to find a way to get rid of tons of urine 🙏🙏🙏
  Curios fact: we use coffee grounds for absorption, because a friend of mine has coffee vending machines and we both have found a way to get rid of it! It works very good!!
  
  Water is really precious, so we ask to use it very very carefully :) A daily hot shower is guaranteed 🤸
  If you bring shampoos, soaps ect., please look for biological ones, because water goes directly to the trees 🙏 I provide natural soaps and handmade toothpaste made out of clay, essentials oils and coconut oil 😁 If you feel is "too much" for you feel free to use your own products 😅
  
  Kitchen requires lot of water and I have developed methods to reduce water consumption at his minimum, be sure to follow exactly the instructions I will give 🙏🙏🙏
  
  I can provide you all the working clothes you need (tshirts and trousers), safety shoes (must be used for many tasks), extra towels and extra warm clothes. I have a full closet of all kinds of clothing (sweatshirts, pants, bathing suits, blankets) so pack extra socks and underwear rather than an extra heavy layer 🙏
  
  ***Volunteers must have a head lamp (USB recharge), plastic shoes and one towel for the shower, single bed sheets and a pillow case 🙏***
  
  ***It's something rare, but consecutive days of rain could make us run out of electricity and bring us back to middle age for a while 😁 using candles, knitting scarfs around a big pot of legumes that keep us warm 🎉***
  
  We handwash underwear and socks and we use laundry machines in a nearby town for all the other stuff , only when we reach the critical amount of clothes 😜 I pay for wash all the clothes I give to you for working and I would love to have a contribution to wash yours if an extra washing machine is needed for this 🙏
  
  I would suggest to travellers outside Europe that stay more than a month in Italy that it's worth buying an italian simcard. It cost around 25 euros with a month of service included. You can use its data keeping your old number 😎 be sure there's space for a second simcard in your phone 🙏 I have lots of data and I can make my phone a hotspot when needed 🙏
  
  Life's here is totally outdoor and pretty tiring for the body, but also wise and satisfing 💪
  Some tasks in the land are boring, some exciting, some tiring for the body, some tiring for the brain. And they are all chances to know each other and learn something new togheter every day 🥹
  
  We'll always cook and eat togheter. I give every meal. I have a big pantry always full of stuff, enough for surviving months 😁
  Like cruises, alcohol is extra 😌 I do not buy it 🙏
  getting dizzy here is allowed, getting drunk is totally forbidden 🧐 among all my jobs here I am also the safety manager 😁
  
  In this place animals are completely free, so don't be scared of a chicken try to jump to the table to chase your food, or the dog sitting next to you gently waiting for you giving him a piece of what you are eating 😁 and then...cats! 😼

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  What else ...

  We are 30 km north from Catania, not far from the Giarre exit of the A18 highway.
  It is possible to reach us by train from Fontanarossa Airport (CATANIA! 🤪)
  Take a train going toward Messina that stops at Carruba (is a minor station half an hour far, and not all the trains stop there, so double check this please and ask to me if you have any doubt 🙏).
  Plane+train usually is the best solution for reaching me. Purchase tickets only throught Trenitalia site, double check also this 🙏
  I will come and pick you up at the station, no worries 🤗
  
  If you come by plane you must buy one that lands before 17:00 (5PM), would be better of you get to my Land at least a hour before dusk 🙏
  For leaving Sicily: unless you wanna sleep at the airport don't purchase flights before 9:00 (AM) 😏
  
  If your plans aren't set already, I also suggest you to wait to be here 3-4 days before purchasing the return ticket, so you'll know if you want to stay longer (or shorter 🫣)
  
  Walking around the surrounding area is possible but a bit awkward because the roads are not suitable for pedestrians 😟 use bikes is possible but remember all the roads here are pretty steep 💪 we are over a Vulcano 😁.
  
  There is San Leonardello Village, only one kilometer far from the land, that has a bar, a bakery, a tobacco shop, a fruit and vegetables shop, and a post office. Much closer to the land there is a chinese store that sells any kind of stuff, good if you need a mosquito spray, a charging cable, a memory card or just the pillow case you forgot to bring 😜
  There are two grocery stores twice the distance of San Leonardello Village 🙏
  
  I will pick you up and drop at Carruba station when you'll travel by train in your days off.
  You can reach Taormina, Acireale, Catania, Siracusa, Messina and other beautiful cities for nice one day-trips 😎
  Buses can bring you everywhere in Sicily, they departure from Catania station.
  Hiking on Etna is something we do once or twice per season, but if you enjoy going there I can drop you there and pick you up if someone pays for petrol 🙏
  
  We are building a big community of people that have lands and help each other, so during the stay you'll participate in parties and meetings with other people who have permaculture projects, also going to their places helping for what they need 😁 some hosts in the surroundings are my friends 😌
  
  Weather:
  Here humidity is high all year long, but you can manage it. Lowest temperatures are in January-February, going less than 4 degrees during the night, and maybe reach 15 at lunch time. The highest are in summer, we can go over 40 degrees...yes! Forty! But we go to the sea everyday when this happens 😁 and days are so long and nice that you forget everyday you have worked that morning!
  
  Mosquitos...we deal with them from February to November, being really annoying in May-June and September-November 🤷
  
  Spring is always the best season, unless you have allergies to pollens 🤣 sun, rain, wind, everything growing fast with colours and scents everywhere 🤩
  Summer is very hot, and that humidity makes you sweat all day long. But temperatures at night are just perfect 🥹
  Fall is intense, with lot of various works that change everyday, and is the chance to learn many little things instead of a few but big, as can happen in Winter and Spring.
  
  Every candidate will have a half an hour videocall to make me show the Land, give further explanations and ask her/him some questions to be sure we are creating a win-win situation 💪
  
  I have hosted more than a hundred people in these years, and more than half of them come from workaway ❤️ I love this site and the wonderful work of moderators, that make everything simple but also efficient and transparent 🙏
  There was a time a felt the need to talk more about myself, now there are these wonderful reviews that do this for me 😌
  Also my description is so detailed because in the time I always ask to the volunteers if there was something missing till they started to say no 😎😛
  I always have times more requests than the ones I could accept, this means that I always can choose good souls, eager to learn and help, and keep a high-vibe mood in this little paradise we are making 🙏
  Thanks for your time reading me 🙏
  
  Alberto

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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

  Evenings are always free from work here. I do not have wifi but I have lot of data and I can use my phone as hotspot whenever is needed 🙏 Signal here is very good 🙏

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  Space for parking camper vans

  Can't make you throw any water here 🙏 The maximum lenght could be 6,5 meters to fit 🙏

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  Two

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  My animals / pets

  

  Chickens

  

  Gilda

  

  Azolo

  

  Dima

  

  Acab

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