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Eco-village life, help us build our little family home in Romãs, Sátão, Portugal

  • Favourited 276 times
  • Last activity: 18 Mar 2024

Availability

  2024 

 Min stay requested: at least a week

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Details

  • Description

    Description

    • Do you want to learn how to build a house with eco-friendly materials from scratch?
    Are you passionate about growing healthy organic food?
    Come share your talents and learn some new ones. Everyone motivated with a can-do attitude is welcomed.


    Hello all you great travelling people!
    We are a portuguese/danish family, Durval, Helga, Alma (13 years) and Zaidi (5 years), living together with several other families in an. Approx. 42 hectare off-grid amazing nature area. Together, we bought this land about eleven years ago with the intend of living in respect and love for each other and nature, aiming for the utopic self-sufficiency (we are doing pretty good so far😊). We are totally off-grid: our water comes from nearby springs, we use only renewable energies as a source of electricity, and we have compost toilets.

    It was an abandoned little village with many ruins, land for cultivation, rocks and forest areas, many springs and a river going through the land! GOLDMINE for eco-village-self-doer-freaks like us. In the beginning we all camped together and build a common-area-shelter, but over the years we spread out and each person or family found their own area to build their nuclear-nest and our family decided for one of the ruins, which came along with two little old animal ruins.

    Eleven years ago, we made one of the little animal ruins into a house thinking in starting small and getting experienced before building the big ruin into our dream-house. At that time, we didn´t think would pass eight years before getting started😊, but coming from a campervan, a little house was enough and other interesting projects came along the way; like planting lots of trees, gardening and building school-buildings for our common home-school-project, teaching in the home-school-project, building the other little ruin into the sheep-stable, keeping bees, lots of good parties, travelling, playing music, theatre, building for other people etc. and lots of time with the life off-grid, with each-other and with all the lovely kids, animals and mama-nature.

    Five years ago, when our youngest daughter was born came the urge and will to finally get on with our dream-house and we started to plan ahead and got started. We have the ruin as the foundation of the house, but we will build with many windows and straw, clay and wood. It will be an approx. 100m2 stone, straw, clay and wood house. Two years ago we finished the foundation and part of the wood structure and one part of the tile roof. Last year we finished the wooden structure, the floor-base and the roofs. This year we wish to finish! This means fixing up the recycled windows and doors and putting them in (March/April 2024), making the walls (different methods: bottle-walls, cordwood-walls, light-straw tecnique, strawbalewalls and wooden walls), plaster the walls and the inner-roofing, water (May 2024), Treating woods (june 2024), electricity, heating system (floorheating (september 2024)) and finish the floor,Eathen floor (September/October)...uhhh, a lot, but with lots of variation!



    We wish you come and stay with us and enter in our little nuclear-community and we wish you stay for as minimum of one week! We can host maximum three/four people!
    We share the good vegetarian cooking (we provide the ingredients of course), we have a shower in our little home and/or a river to swim and LIMITED WiFi.

    So, if you are motivated to help and if you are interested in meeting alternative ways of living, seeing an eco-village from the inside and spending your time in amazing nature, this could very much be your place.
    We are happy to share this adventure with creative and motivated people. We hope to meet people that we can exchange different cultures; people who like to live in direct contact with nature, people who respect nature, and all nature´s creatures that live here with us.

  • Types of help and learning opportunities

    Types of help and learning opportunities

    Gardening
    DIY and building projects
    Creating/ Cooking family meals
    Help around the house
  • UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

    UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

    UN goals
    No poverty
    Zero hunger
    Good health and well-being
    Quality education
    Gender equality
    Clean water and sanitation
    Affordable and clean energy
    Decent work and economic growth
    Industries, innovation and infrastructure
    Reduce inequality
    Sustainable cities and communities
    Responsible consumption and production
    Climate action
    Life below water
    Life on land
    Peace, justice and strong institutions
    Partnerships for the goals
  • Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    We wish to share and learn with whoever cross our way. Before starting life in Enterranha we have travelled a lot playing music and making handcraft and we still love playing music at night at the bunfire...while fire is still legal. We have lived in other communities. Work with theatre, music and producing festivals. Here in Enterranha we have gathered a lot of experience of how to build up a village/community from scratch. We love to learn and get inspired by other ways of living. So please come and share with us!

  • Help

    Help

    Spring 2024:

    The main help that we ask for is with building the house, but we also ask to help in the garden or other tasks around the house.

    May: one big task is to plaster the inner-roof with clay, sand etc

    June: walls and treating woods

    Autumn 2024: finishing the green-roof.

  • Languages

    Languages spoken
    Danish: Fluent
    English: Fluent
    Spanish: Fluent
    Portuguese: Fluent
    French: Intermediate
    Norwegian: Beginner

    This host offers a language exchange
    Any new words in any language is interesting.

  • Accommodation

    Accommodation

    Until mid-end April it can get very cold at night and we don´t have room in our house to, so until then we look for volunteers with own campervan.
    End April and forward the weather is normally warm enough to sleep in tents. We have some spare tents, bedding and mattresses if needed.
    Our family is vegetarian...actually we eat mostly vegan. All we can get from the garden, the wild and the local market we love to use in the kitchen, but we also spend a great amount of money in the supermarket:-(

    We provide breakfast and two vegetarian meals a day. We wish to work as a little community, so we will share the task of cooking with you:-)

  • What else ...

    What else ...

    We live right in the middle of the wild rocky north Portugal, and great walks on days of are relaxing and good for the spirit. Next to our land there is an old quarts-mine and many visitors make their way to see if they have their luck in finding pointed quarts. Next to the river running through the land are many good quiet places to hang out and swim.

  • A little more information

    A little more information

    • Internet access

    • Limited internet access

      Limited internet access

    • We have pets

    • We are smokers

    • Can host families

  • Space for parking camper vans

    Space for parking camper vans

    We have plenty of space to host campervans. But one really good is under a growing oak-tree. If you come in campervan, we can already host you in April!

  • Can possibly accept pets

    Can possibly accept pets

    You are welcome to bring your dog, but our cat is NOT so welcome to dogs...this means that in our house the dog cannot enter...sorry, she really attacks even though we try to teach her not to:-)

  • How many Workawayers can stay?

    How many Workawayers can stay?

    More than two

  • ...

    Hours expected

    Máximo 4-5 horas por dia, 5 dias por semana

Host ref number: 761353699665

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