United States
Favourited 70 times
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20/05/2021
We are a married couple who started an educational nonprofit in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. The mission of our organization is to teach skills for sustainable living and self-reliance. We have 16 acres of forest, a pond, and a 4-bedroom/2-bathroom house. We're developing gardens and sustainable energy sources so that we can offer off-grid semester-long courses in sustainable living for college students. Our residential students will grow their own food, maintain infrastructure to produce our own energy, and learn how sustainability relates to all academic disciplines. While we eventually plan to fill the house with lots of people, right now it's just the two of us and our cat, Romeo.
We like to cook, bake, read, hike, travel, and play music. Travis plays the guitar and banjo, and Lindsey is learning the ukulele.
Gardening
DIY and building projects
General Maintenance
Creating/ Cooking family meals
Farmstay help
Help with Eco Projects
Art Projects
We love learning about diverse cultures and sharing our own through food. We cook with local organic ingredients that are in-season. Because of our organization's mission, we're constantly learning about and experimenting with plants that are native to the Appalachian region. We are happy to help visitors practice English skills, and we speak conversational Spanish. Our town has many music venues for hearing bluegrass and folk music which are traditional in Appalachia.
As a startup organization, we need help with a great many things! Our first priority is building. We're building an outdoor classroom, camp sites, and our own cabin so that we can move out of the public house. We also need help with a few indoor remodeling projects. Aside from building, we'd love help with gardening, creating and/or installing artwork on our campus, developing videos for marketing, and cooking our shared meals.
English: Fluent
Spanish: Intermediate
The first floor of the house has 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. Workawayers will stay in one of the bedrooms on the first floor in either a twin-sized bed or a full bed. Aside from when we have additional guests, workawayers will have the first floor bathroom to themselves. We'll share kitchen and living room space on the second floor. We cook most of our meals from scratch and welcome help in preparing them.
Our location near Athens, Ohio is great for outdoor enthusiasts, music lovers, and lovers of microbreweries. Hocking Hills State Park is a 20-minute drive away. It is Ohio's most famous park, full of waterfalls, caverns, and great hiking. We're also surrounded by Wayne National Forest and 3 additional state parks. We're located 5 miles from a bike path that connects our town to nearby Nelsonville, OH. We enjoy going to Nelsonville to see live music and theatre performances at Stuart Opera House. Our house is located in the country, but a short drive to town can get you to 3 local breweries, 2 wineries, a cidery, and many restaurants serving food from local farms. Athens is home to Ohio University, so the university offers access to musical performances, sporting events, touring entertainers, and public lectures. Athens is regionally famous for offering numerous festivals in summer and fall, including the annual Pawpaw Festival which celebrates a traditional fruit of our region. We don't have a designated vehicle for workaway participants, but we drive to town daily and can share our vehicles with licensed drivers. Athens is a small town of 30,000 people, and is very walkable. For an urban experience, visitors can take an inexpensive bus to Columbus, Ohio's capital city. The bus ride takes 1.5 hours.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
More than two
Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week
