South Africa
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What we do and need help with:
- training and exercising our horses
- working in our orchard and vegetable tunnel
- helping with fencing, making compost and other small farm activities
- help making goat milk cheese (and soon our cow can be milked as well)
- making goat milk soap
- help making stuffed animals for charity
This is a special request for the month of April specifically - we are looking for (preferably) a couple/two friends travelling together who are willing to stay for 4-6 week while we are away for 2 weeks. We'd like to do some training beforehand and get all the animals and people used to each other before we go away and have a few days afterwards to make sure everything went well.
It is better if you stay longer and get into the rhythm of things, especially with the horseriding. Our best experiences have been with people who came as long as they said they would, and did the things they said they were interested in.
This is a complete overhaul of our profile! We have had 11 workawayers in 3 months by now, and our experience has been very positive. However, we need to point out the following for prospective workawayers:
- we mostly need help with schooling and exercising our horses. If that is not in your area of interest, you'll probably not fit here. You would also be expected to help with fencing and other normal farm activities, but we're always there right next to you and would rarely expect you to work when we don't!
- you must love animals and be prepared to engage with our own farm and house animals, learn their names and personalities
- we prefer to keep a smoke-free zone, We have had great smoker volunteers, and they are still welcome here. But if we find cigarette butts in our plant pots or thrown into the environment, a whole lot of goodwill dissipates
- we expect, and have normally but not always received, common courtesy such as greeting people. If you're going to act like a surly post-adolescent, you will not be remembered kindly
- you need a robust and well-developed sense of humour around here! We laugh at ourselves, at the foibles of South African society, and there are no sacred cows. At the same time we are resolutely non-racist and do not discriminate on any grounds except the points above.
- workawayers are expected to keep their own living and communal areas clean. This is not a serviced hotel!
SO, where are we? If anyone remembers and responded to our previous profile, you will know that we embarked on an ambitious farm project on a 42-hectare farm that we rented and would have bought. We have, however, since become aware that the water situation on the farm was badly misrepresented, and of course we cannot expose our animals and plants (they've all died...) and project to that situation! So, we have decided to pull back everything to our original hectare in Hopefield, where we have had workawayers help us put up a vegetable tunnel, and we will be shifting things around to create accommodation for ourselves and possible workawayers in the future,
That means that now we can only accommodate up to two workawayers at a time. The activities remain the same, but are limited in size and scope; we need, above all, people who know and understand horses and want to help us train and exercise them. We will continue to work towards all the other activities we described, but will have to start over. You can also learn how to make cheese, soap from goat milk, and stuffed animals for charity. We work with various charities in the West Coast region and try to contribute to their activities, and also provide horse riding instruction to kids with talent who can't afford it.
Gardening
Building
General Maintenance
Farmstay
Other
Help with Eco project
Animal care
Charity work
We are ex-tourist guide trainers and know a LOT about South Africa and its cultures. We also have experience in teaching English as a foreign language, and can teach professional cooking at a basic level, as well as share our skills in cheese-making and video production and editing. What we have in mind is providing board and lodging to the usual Workaway standard for the usual 4-5 hours per day, and if you need English teaching to a certain level (exam preparation etc) we can make additional arrangements. You will learn about the real South Africa, with definite exposure to more than one culture!
We would welcome reliable and experienced help in all the above, with specific needs in the area of exercising our horses (even schooling them if you can), looking after them and the other animals, including feeding, cleaning out holding areas. Also welcome is knowledge of fencing, re-purposing existing areas, eco-building, anything that you might find relevant. We will have to put up predator-proof pens for the goats and milking sheep that we intend to get, and we'll eventually want to pave much of the central area where people will be congregating.
Afrikaans, English, German, Spanish
A shared room with a bathroom attached. Comfortable tents and compost toilets possible in future.
Time off can be spent at the nearby seaside resorts of Langebaan or Paternoster, including kite-surfing, kayaking and other marine activities, as well as exploring the fynbos (local vegetation) and local cultures. We make a car available for short trips for volunteers who prove themselves to be reliable and trustworthy (for insurance purposes we don't like to hand the keys over to just anyone). We prefer responsible volunteers with a quieter lifestyle.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Two
As needed
