Join on a family farm and collaborate with people of different cultures in Tonacatepeque, El Salvador

Details

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  Description

  First of all, please excuse us if we cannot reply quickly to all of you, as we get a lot of messages from workawayers, now.
  
  And also, to start with, we want to be clear about the reality of an on going project, and detail the kind of help we really need (See "Help" section) . We started our farm form scratch, on an abandonned land with an old half destroyed house on it, no investment plan, local salaries, local workforce, and so we are far from an AI-generated-ranch-estate kind of farm. It is not an organic farm, just a ranch with horses, cows, goats, chicken, straydogs, ducks, and cats. Step by step, we got to where we are, the place is nice enough to be open to public, yet it needs more than just maintenance work, we are still a construction site, including mess and lots of unfinished, non ideal, or seemingly uncoherent structures. This is the result of the constant negociation with resources and culture we have to deal with daily. Some travelers came with a romantic idea of the farm , then skipping the boring or difficult work after a few days, or even giving up. Other shocked by the conditions, or structures, or staff manners, and overwhelmed by the hundred changes that sould be done. This is our reality. It cannot be done either at once, or the way we would do it in another context or the way we would love to, with more money ! It is a work in process, improving things one by one, where we try to enjoy the road , not the destination!
  
  Please READ THE JOB DSCRIPTION under the "Help" section, and after this, if you are ready to put your hands in the mud, enjoy the challenge of non ideal conditions, can work hard in a hot climate, want to make a difference even small, like to discover life and culture far from the city vibes, you are at the right place!
  
  About us:
  We are a small family made up of a mixed couple (Salvadorian and Swiss), with 2 kids around 11 years of age, living in a little farm in El Salvador.
  Our professions are physiotherapist and orthoprosthetic technician, we work with disabled persons in our private practice and both used to teach, now working on some projects as consultants in physical rehabilitation. We both have a humanitarian past, worked with different NGO and with the International Commitee of the Red Cross.
  We started a project a few years ago to turn an abandonned farm into a rehabilitation ranch. We want to provide disabled persons with both physiotherapy and equinotherapy sessions at the ranch, combining it with any required reparation or fabrication of orthopedic devices. For the moment, therapy assisted with horses is on going at the ranch , as well as some physiotherapy but still no orthopedic workshop on site. in the future we want to start group activities such as Pilates/ physiotherapy, or cross-fit as well.
  
  In order to cover the horses' costs, we opened (March 2025) a small coffeeshop with a deck, where we can host birthday parties, weddings or group events. We had a few opportunities to host activities like a painting contest for kids and adults, or a story teller (losts of urban legends around here) , and in the future, we would like to offer more cultural events , open air cinema, live music nights , for example.
  
  For the moment, clients come mostly to spend a moment or the whole day at the farm to chill and walk, do camping, short horseback tours in the farm, longer horseback tours outside the farm , coffee, snacks, lunch or dinner.
  
  We realized that physical activity is really not what attracts people to our place for now, but one of our challenges keeps trying to make it attractive. So in the plans and dreams we have , there is the installation of a fitness trail to promote healthy lifestyle and opportunity to outdoor activities in a secured area, within the ranch, and a better kids' playground.
  
  The housing is simple, animal facilities are basic for the moment, in construction little by little, and nature is luxurious, with - according to the seasons- mango, avocado, banana, orange trees, some coffe and cacao trees, a huge tamarin , and more. The climate is tropical so we basically have 2 seasons , one with lots of rain, one without any, both seasons quiet hot.
  
  With our work in the private practice and education consulting - plus the kids - we struggle to find the time to get things done at the ranch, so we need people with ideas and initiative to renovate, free some farm areas in order to build new facilities, create and arrange things at the housing and facilities level, cleaning, some basic chores, help with kids' s outdoor/artistic activities & language teaching and perhaps taking the husky out for a run!
  
  We are looking forward to welcome your motivation and energy to participate in the project!

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Language practice

  Teaching

  Creative DIY projects

  Animal Care

  Farmstay help

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  Hospitality/Tourism

  Light maintenance

  Help with Computers/ Internet

  House & pet sitting
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  Living with us on the farm, you will interact and collaborate with people of different cultures: our ranch staff, all locals for the moment, other workawayers, and us , mixed couple (Salvadorian and Swiss), as well as with our friends and extended family passing by (can include French, Belgian, North American).
  As a parallel experience, you can learn to ride and work with horses , as we are preparing some of them for therapeutic equitation, as most of them are still young.
  If you have any health-related competence, such as yoga, or other fitness activity, you could also imagine to organize groups within the project, if the dates can be planned and secured in advance (a few months before) .
  We try to cook and eat as much as possible of the farm's and/or local market's products, fruits, goat milk and cheese, do our own smoothies, bread and so on, so any exchange of ideas on that side will probably enrich our common life.

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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

  Both human resources management and schooling are quite a challenge around here, so we are looking for help at the ranch development side, as well as to free us from some house chores, like cooking, or taking the husky out at the end of the day, to gain freetime for the homework supervision, and and for us to involve more into ranch development/management.
  
  So.... here is the description :
  
  - If you are EXPERIENCED WITH HORSES and can help the 2 guys in charge of 24 horses, your part would be to fill in where they lack time:
  ->work with some of the mares and geldings needing more riding miles to be regularly used for tourists, classes or therapy
  ->groundwork and training of < 2 years young ones.
  -> participate in the cleaning of boxes and areas
  -> if you are a horse trainer , you could work with the guys enhancing their dressage skills (learned on the job), but this means a longer stay , ideally
  
  - If you have SKILLS IN CARPENTRY/BUILDING , you would help repairing and /or building facilities under the guidance of our maintenance responsable ( non English speaker) . It is not always about building a whole new thing, but can be building walls, changing beams , welding structures, reparing roofs, fixing cabin, building toilet cabin (including digging ...) , helping out fixing fences and animal shelters or new horse boxes. If you stay for longer (1 month and more), there could be opportunity to build a whole new room - extension of the house, or a whole fitness trail, or a kid playground structure. And of course: all of this depending on our budget on the moment, and dealing with the tools and materials we can have at the moment.
  
  - APART FORM THE SPECIAL SKILLS, imagine a farm in a tropical climate, it means a lot of mud, branches, and leaves to clean after every rainy night (6 months) , and a local culture not focused on waste management , lots of dust in the dry season, and animals going around freeely. We expect workawayers to help with the daily cleaning of the farm, to keep the different areas as nice as possible . There is also a lot of digging needed , to improve the non existent rainwater drainage and recovery system. No special skills needed for that except from a lot of energy and good hidration.
  
  - ON THE HOUSE SIDE, I need somebody to be responsible for the cooking and doing some good cleaning, + if possible gardening (planting seeds , move plants and setting a small garden in front of the house) so I can dedicate myself a bit more to huge pending office work , and get some stress free time for kid homework.
  
  - WORKING HOURS: according to the workaway site, 5 hours of work , but sincerely: in order to fit to our rythm , be able to finish projects and get satisfaction out of it, we noticed that travelers working more than 5 hours were those who took the best out of the adventure, and managed to make a difference here. And tbh , if you add to your work out in the farm, a little polite help for dinner , dishes , or some activity with the kids after their homework, you will quickly see that it goes over 5 hours. Forwarned is forearmed!
  
  - DIGITAL NOMADS: If you have a digital job at the moment: we are totally fine to tune the schedule to your needs to be present on line and find a deal allowing purely 5 hours on the farm and the rest free to do your job.
  
  - If you have INFOGRAFIC SKILLS , We need someone to review, renew , create digital and paper leaflets, , create reels for equino therapy , for physiotherapy , Pilates sessions, orthopedic devices , or even help me building my consultancy brand , teach me better use of AI tools , etc.
  
  - LITTLE RESTAURANT : the team building is very fluctuant, sometimes it is better not to add a person to the team , but you can always propose help for specific things, or show new recipe/ learn some at night or on week-ends. For events , we sometines need extra staff , but this is not our baseline for workawayers , as it depends on the event, date , etc
  
  - if you are into SPORTS, MUSIC, ART, help is welcome sharing it with our kid(s). It would complete their local education with a balanced mix of creativity , project-based learning with construction or science subjects inspired from what is available on the farm. The kids will benefit of French or English speakers, and even other totally unknown languages, as already noticed with previous workawayers (German) .
  
  Finally, we decided to add here theWORKSHOP FOR ORTHESES AND PROSTESES , although it is 20 min far from the farm: there is much to do in inventory, building shelves, repairing floors, painting and designing marketing brochures/social media.

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  Languages spoken

  English: Fluent
  Spanish: Fluent
  French: Fluent
  German: Intermediate

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  Accommodation

  We have one room with 1 double bed and 1 single bed in a near but separate house on the farm, where you may be alone or with coworkers (a matress can be added if family of 4) . There is a room for online rentals in the same house, and a bathroom to share with staff, coworkers and guests if there are. For the moment, the bathroom is used by the restaurant clients as well, so it can be muddy during open hours.
  Beside the rooms there is a fridge, and a rehabilitated traditional oven. Otherwise and usually meals are taken with or without us in our kitchen, which is always accessible because it is situated in the outer part of our little house. Most of the workawayers did enjoy family life since we started in October 2021.

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  What else ...

  The farm is at biking/walking distance from the village nearby, where you can buy all necessary items. For more specific needs, a car or bus trip to the city supermarkets is mandatory. As we have our patients practice outside the village it is easy to combine. San Salvador and the "modern" city life is at one to 2 hours drive distance,- depending on traffic and season (tropical climate) . Public transportation are an interesting experience here and may not be recomended by foreign guidelines , but workawayers and other travelers visiting us did use them, and we also have reliable persons driving Uber around.
  Tourism is a lot concentrated at the beach in El Salvador where there are famous surf spots. This is at 2 hours drive distance and perfect for week-ends with friends. In the country side however, there are a lot of interesting sites, like volcanoes to climb, coffee farms to visit , rustic villages, country/village fairs, lakes perfect to paddle, and so on.
  Guatemala is also at driving distance, counting the whole day. Low cost flights can fly you to Nicaragua, or the Caribbean islands of Honduras for a nice rest.
  You can find organized group tours for places in El Salvador, or easily go by yourselves, as the security in the country has quiet improved recently. We may ourselves have the opportunity to go out with a workawayer, but to be sincere, we do not go out a lot, as we are at the beginning of a project, with not much resources, so trying to do as much as we can ourselves - which keeps us very busy at the farm.
  Also just be aware that in this country, one still needs to be well informed about some areas, or neighborhoods to avoid, especially at late hours, as El Salvador has been unluckily famous for being classified a dangerous country. Living here gives of course another perspective as the medias provide, less global, more specific on areas, nonetheless one has to be conscious of the context.
  
  Side note:
  It may seem logical, but out of experience we need to precise the following: please do not select us as workaway hosts if you need to party and drink a lot, as the farm is bit isolated, the nearby village and neighborhood are not a secure place for this kind of activities, our family lives on the farm, and the success of our project also depends on a behavior based on respect and cultural sensitivity from our visitors.

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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

  Wifi connection without problems from both houses. I also work on line , so it is fast

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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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