Family homestead welcoming friendly volunteers in our garden in County Clare, Ireland

Details

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  Description

  We have a very busy homestead which houses our family of 6, an old cat, vegetable garden, flock of chickens, poly tunnels, orchard and hopefully many more things in the future. Our days start early and involve a combination of homeschooling, chores and working from home. We have four children with disabilities (down syndrome and autism). We have tried school but it really didn’t work so we now homeschool our children so we can more easily adapt learning to their individual strengths and challenges. Learning hand in hand with nature and gardening has become an important part of this.

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Help with Eco Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Farmstay help

  Help around the house
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  We live in north/west county Clare not far away from the ocean. Winter is off-season but Ennistymon, a town 25 minutes from us, is still a beautiful lively village. We trying to create a semi self-sufficient life and creating a warm and safe home and learning environment for our four children with disabilities and love to share this with people who are interested in unschooling/waldorf schooling/forest schooling/homeschooling and family homesteading with a large vegetable garden and how this benefits people and specifically children with disabilities.
  We (the parents) are Dutch. We speak English with our children who were all born here and have been living in Ireland for 10 years. But we do still keep a few Dutch traditions and words in our house :)

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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

  We are looking for optimistic and energetic people to come help us in the garden with a variety of chores and projects. You don’t have to have experience with children but it’s important that you are open to taking a project slower and practice child safety if our children want to see what’s going on and help too. Especially our daughter is really fond of working in the garden with our helpers.
  
  As the Irish weather is very unpredictable, we give helpers freedom to design their own days and week. At the start of your stay we give you a list of all the things that can be done during your stay. You don’t have to finish this list, it’s a designed to give you independence in choosing what you like/are able to do. That way you can start and finish depending weather, lifestyle and plans. We assume you are motivated to learn and do the agreed hours of work and we encourage you to come and ask questions if anything is unclear. We have lunch and dinner together so there is always a moment to communicate anything that has come up. On Wednesday afternoons and weekends we work in the garden (a bit depending weather and other appointments) and shared projects can be done.
  
  The one imporant thing to realise before coming to our homestead is the children. They love to be outside, they love to look/"help"/chat around the garden and homestead. So it is important to like children, be willing to work with children and practice child safety (never leaving tools around the ground unsupervised, being flexible in switching between project as some things cannot be done when the children are outside, etc.)
  
  Special note
  We get a lot of request for stays on our homestead and have noticed that some don’t really read our profile before sending us a message. As it is very important to us that you know all the information we give in this profile regarding our children, lifestyle and homestead: could you please tell us in your message what colour the sky is?

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  Languages spoken

  English: Fluent
  Dutch: Fluent

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  Accommodation

  In our home you will have a bedroom with one king size bed and en-suite bathroom. As we have four young children there cannot be loud music at night and every now and again our children do wake up during the night which you might hear. As we usually go to bed early to have enough energy for the days, we don’t spend a lot of evenings in the living room but you are more than welcome to make yourself comfortable there. All the cooking of the meals is done by us, but of course you can always make yourself coffee/tea and a snack in the kitchen.

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  What else ...

  We live in a beautiful area and we encourage you to go and explore for day or weekend trips. We are happy to bring you to one of the bus stops in the area. We have heard and seen there is great surfing at Fanore and there is a surf school there that runs courses in summer. There are loads of tourist attractions in the wider area (Cliffs of Moher, Aran Islands, Aillwee cave, Doolin cave, and more). Ennis, Galway and Limerick are the nearest cities are are respectively 45 minutes, 75 and 75 minutes by bus. We have one free chair in our car so if you come woofing on your own you are also welcome to come join us on family trips.

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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

  This host can provide space for campervans.

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  Two

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