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** Hi Guys - We will be busy pruning in the vineyard during the month of January. We would like to take in a couple of volunteers to help out on the homestead during this time. The work would be helping out with the animals, shepherding, cleaning stalls, helping with horses that sort of stuff. A reasonable level of physical fitness is needed. Accomodation in one of our two caravans. Check out our feedback for more details. We are pretty remote here on the farm so no real pandemic worries on this side. **
We are a couple - Alan (Irish) & Lara (South African) who moved to Portugal in 2011 to enjoy the "good life". On our smallholding we keep dogs, a cat, chickens, geese, sheep and two horses. Our smallholding (Quinta) has a small (non-commercial) vineyard, olive trees and rocky hillside. We have a beautiful view of the Serra d'Estrela national park where it is possible to ski when snow permits. We are currently planting trees and a vegetable garden in order to enjoy our own organic vegetables.
Our mare has a two year old foal so experience training horses would be a big plus.
Gardening
Animal Care
Farmstay help
Creating/ Cooking family meals
General Maintenance
We live on a small farm about 2 kms from the nearest village. Our three dogs are very friendly and we have a very aristocratic Siamese cat. The main town in the area - Seia - is 14 kms away. Our immediate neighbours are Portuguese speaking but there are some English speaking ex-pats in the area. We have two mountain bikes available for workawayers. There are nice walks and views in the area.
Occasionally we do archery practice and a little bit of horse riding for beginners when Sally the mare is fit.
The help will be varied, mainly repairing fencing, helping with animals, weeding and planting in the garden etc. so physical fitness is needed. No shortage of things to do but also plenty of relaxation and some good Portuguese wine to drink.
Afrikaans: Fluent
English: Fluent
Dutch: Fluent
Portuguese: Intermediate
The sleeping accomodation provided will be in one of our two caravans or in our three bedroom guest bungalow. The bungalow is very comfortable with all mod-cons including a dish-washer. Workawayers will often share a bedroom with one other person (twin beds - same sex). For caravan dwellers meals, shower and bathroom facilities will be in the bungalow. There will be a rota for cooking and cleaning the bungalow.
Our Internet connection works fine for email, skype (voice) and browsing but we have limited bandwidth so we can't allow downloading movies or watching YouTube.
We are non-smokers but we do not object to smoking out-of-doors during the winter months. However bush fires are a serious risk here so we cannot accept smokers during the months of May to October.
Lara has a serious sea-food allergy so we do not serve fish, apart from this we cannot cater for special diets (vegan, vegetarian, glucose intolerant, lactose intolerant, Kosher, Halal, allergies etc.) as we frequently have multiple volunteers and it can get very complicated.
We do require volunteers to have health or travel insurance and we have a minimum stay of two weeks.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
4G connection in main house
Campervans welcome. Plenty of space for parking. Electricity and water supplied.
More than two
25 hours, 5 days per week
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