Learn about wildlife and our life on our finca in southern Catalonia, Spain

  • Favourited 405 times
  • Last activity: 18 Mar 2024

Availability

  2024 

 Min stay requested: at least a week

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Details

  • Description

    Description

    Hi! We are looking for self motivated people to help us on our farm with maintaining our olive grove and forest areas, helping to improve accessibility and biodiversity. Projects we are working on now and would love your creativity and help with are: building a second compost toilet, upgrading our outdoor kitchen into a more welcoming and warm structure (using straw bales and cob), and building steps with bottles, stones and mosaics.

    🌞✨🍂🐈🐈‍⬛🐈✨🐔🐔🐔
    We are looking for someone to live in our very basic second house during March to lend a hand around the farm whilst we prune our olive trees. The house has a wood stove to keep warm but so far no plumbing, and the solar system needs a bit of setting up. There is no internet or telephone reception in the house, so if you are looking to disconnect from society and reconnect with nature this is a great opportunity. The work would involve around 3 hours per day in the olive grove - moving branches and cutting them to size to prepare for making biochar, as well as helping us tend the fires. It's a very dynamic, beautiful and elemental time of year! Please get in touch for more information. 🙏🌻🙏

    ✨🐝🤱🏻🌾💪🏻
    STRAW BALE BUILD of outdoor kitchen and volunteer space is well underway, we are now doing the cob plaster, lime wash, ceiling, insulation and flooring - now we have a 7 month old baby so we need more hands to help with this! If you can join us for a week or two and would like to get involved please get in touch today ☺️🙏🛖

    🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳

    Do you have experience in building🔨 simple structures? Please get in touch and join⛓️ our future mission to build... a dome (cúpula) for sound🎶, bath house, shade shelters, building with cob and glass bottles, cutting and milling wood (pine) into useful timbers, tree houses, benches, outhouses for storage and shelter, root cellar...
    Please come and join us by sharing your skills, as we are now at the stage where we want to welcome skilled and independent people to collaborate and cocreate with us longer term 🌰🌱🕸️ 💗

    🌻🍀🌼🌸💐🏵🌹🌺
    Hi! We are Silke and Nick. We moved from Scotland to our finca, a 20 hectare valley of olive grove and mixed pine forest, in Southern Catalonia almost 7 years ago. We are following our instincts to live in harmony with nature; to care for, restore and cultivate this land. Now we invite good people to work, rest and play here, to join us in learning, growing, creation and exploration.

    Our dream is to co-create a community of like minded people who will join us in holding a healing space for sharing skills and abundance, so that people such as activists can flow through to build and restore their capacity to contribute to the healing of this world. We have just brought a beautiful baby boy into the world and are focused on his care and wellbeing, so need more help around the farm.

    Silke is a sound therapist and a facilitator for The Work That Reconnects. Nick is a practical handyman, creative gardener, and stone wall builder extraordinaire! We both love cooking, foraging, hiking, permaculture, being silly, learning new things and welcoming people to our amazing land. We have high hopes to meet the right people, to invite to join our project and live here with us in community to cocreate projects and steward this land.

    Our place has got so much wild space to explore. We are developing a network of colour marked paths through this beautiful and peaceful valley of long abandoned terraces. It is a richly biodiverse ecosystem full of magic and mystery, and it is a total joy and honour to be here, witnessing beauty and observing and learning about the interconnectedness of all the plants, animals, insects, rocks and soil around us. We are working hard towards self sufficiency and future food security. A huge part of our vision is to create the space for people to deeply connect with nature in many ways, as from this a mutual healing of people and planet emerges. We always say that "the land has worked on us more than we have worked on the land". One of our main ongoing projects is the designing and planting of a forest garden in the olive grove behind Silke and Nick's house. So much to do, so much to learn! But how? That's where you come in!

    We are looking for self motivated people with energy and enthusiasm. We absolutely love to share what we have learnt and also learn from others. We are equal beings here, working together and taking turns to do everyday jobs like cooking and washing up. We have backgrounds in working with communities, running workshops, foraging, permaculture and gardening. We have no official permaculture training however, we are self taught, so are really interested to hear the experience of others. We are seeking to learn and share, exchanging skills to increase the sustainability of our lifestyles for the maximum growth, learning and wellbeing for all. So get in touch and tell us about you :-)

    Our place is in the hills about 30 minutes drive from a few towns, and totally off-grid with solar panels and only rainwater catchment, so if you come here you need to be EXTREMELY careful with water. No hot running water and composting toilets. Telephone reception is limited; you need to climb a couple of minutes up the hill to get signal, but we do have satellite internet in the house. We have space for volunteers to park up a camper van and will normally accept travelling pets. As for animals, at the moment we have three cats, two dogs and 12 chickens. We live simply and try to reduce consumption and waste as much as possible. We treat the land as provider and teacher, so please do not bring non-biodegradable cosmetic products.

    We love music, singing and dancing! Please bring instruments and teach us how to play ours! In the evenings we also like to play games and watch films, or take space and time for ourselves to walk, meditate, read and study.

  • Types of help and learning opportunities

    Types of help and learning opportunities

    Art Projects
    Language practice
    Help with Eco Projects
    Gardening
    DIY and building projects
    Animal Care
    Farmstay help
    Babysitting and creative play
    Creating/ Cooking family meals
    Help around the house
    General Maintenance
  • 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 love to share our growing knowledge of the wildlife here, as well as our experiences and processes on the finca, such as how we prune the trees and maintain the forest, making biochar from the prunings then processing, charging and applying the biochar to the land.

    There is so much to see in the surrounding areas, especially if you like walking, cycling and exploring. We are about half an hour to drive to the sea, and we are also very close to the Ebro delta with its rich variety of water birds. Inland from us you can find ancient cave paintings, a gorge to swim in, and lots of old villages rich in history and crafts. It is a very inspiring place to live and we are looking forward to exploring it more ourselves.

  • Projects involving children

    Projects involving children

    This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.

  • Help

    Help

    Things we work on throught the year: building an outdoor kitchen and compost toilet for a yurt, building water storage, digging swales, making paths, pruning and maintaining the olive grove (we prune the trees in January and February, and we normally harvest at the end of October/ start of November), making and processing biochar (composting and infusing charcoal with organic matter to build and improve the nutrients and water retention of soil), transplanting trees and plants. If you really want to get your hands in the soil then come and see us!

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    Here are some specific activities and skills we would love to learn about or have help with, so if you can do any of these we'd love to hear from you... even if you don't have experience in these but have bags of enthusiasm and energy then we'd love to see you too!

    Knowledge of growing food in a semi-arid climate. We are learning and experimenting all the time. Any experience of optimising water collection and usage will be particularly appreciated. We have plans to expand our rainwater catchment and storage areas and want to develop these very soon. We are currently deepening our knowledge with a practical regenerative soil science course.

    Map making and development of marked paths through out the valley. We want to create beautiful hand drawn maps and a guide book of our land to show paths and landmarks, to help increase access for walking. Wildlife photographers, drone operators, treehouse builders and geologists will be particularly welcome!!

    Building! Benches, swings, signposts, storage sheds, huts, treehouses and one day.... a dome for sound! Please get in touch if you would like to go on the list for helping us to build the dome. We want to start this in about a year or two maximum.

    Woodworking and forestry. We need people to help us with forest management, surveying, felling, extracting, milling, building a lathe, etcetc!

    Language exchange. We are learning Spanish and Catalan so if you can speak them with us then excellent!

    Website and social media. We are notoriously terrible with updating our digital platforms. Some help and encouragement with this is always welcome... Calling photographers, graphic designers, and anyone who is more computer literate than us... Which isn't hard! 😂✨

  • Languages

    Languages spoken
    English: Fluent
    Spanish: Intermediate

    This host offers a language exchange
    This host has indicated that they are interested in sharing their own language or learning a new language.
    You can contact them directly for more information.

  • Accommodation

    Accommodation

    Accommodation - we have the choice of a caravan, a yurt and tents for volunteers to stay in and we hope you will be very comfortable and happy. There is also another house that needs a little work (no plumbing or electric yet).
    We have a dry compost toilet that we take turns to empty (about once a week depending on how many people are here). Cold, quick showers only.

    If you like to cook, great, we love cooking together and sharing recipes with new friends. We eat a mainly vegan diet apart from eggs from our chickens and very occasionally some meat or fish if it has lived a good life.

  • What else ...

    What else ...

    We are quite tucked away and don't like to drive out and use too much petrol unnecessarily, so if you want to go out and about a lot whilst you are with us, you will need your own transport. In your time off you can relax here on the finca, walk, create something, whatever you feel. We are two hours south of Barcelona, in Tarragona region, and the closest city is Tortosa, closest town is El Perello (25 mins). There is so much nature to explore surrounding us, with sights such as the Ebro river and Delta, the cave paintings on our doorstep, and the amazing caves in nearby village Benifallet, the Coves de Meravelles. There is also some good cycling along the nearby via verde, an old train line.

  • 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

    Our driveway is quite narrow (approx 3m) so get in touch if you have a large vehicle to discuss

  • Can possibly accept pets

    Can possibly accept pets

    This host has said they are willing to accept those travelling with a pet.

  • How many Workawayers can stay?

    How many Workawayers can stay?

    More than two

  • ...

    Hours expected

    Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week

Host ref number: 872955135383

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