Learn about honnest and radical systemic thinking, sobriety, optimisation and off-grid life, in Dolný Tisovník, Slovakia

Infos

• 

  Description

  Generic messages and copy-paste applications go straight to the bin.
  For a while, I cared about my reply rate (here and on other volunteering websites). From now, I won't care any more.
  Even if my "host rating" is impacted, I won't even answer to irrelevant and/or copy-paste messages.
  What happens at my place is way more important than any host rating.
  
  Long-term partnership welcome.
  
  I'm David, Belgian, fluent in French and English, learning Slovak.
  Before describing what I do and what I offer, I want to address something that will strike many readers as provocative, but which I consider the most important thing I can say.
  
  From childhood, when I asked "why?" the answer was "because that's how it is." I always sought to understand, solve problems, help others see what I was seeing. For decades I tried to find my place in a system that didn't suit me. I failed.
  The way I think and speak about the situation, direct, uncompromising, openly critical of how most people live, is not aggression. It is, in fact, the most genuinely CARING position available. Let me explain why.
  
  When I tell someone that their lifestyle is incoherent with the reality of what's happening, I am treating them as an intelligent adult capable of understanding difficult things and changing accordingly. I am betting on their capacity for growth. The alternative, staying silent, being pleasant, validating their choices, not wanting to create discomfort, is a form of capitulation. It says, implicitly: I don't believe you're capable of changing. I'll leave you where you are.
  
  Most people around me choose that capitulation, and call it kindness.
  
  The people who are genuinely harming the situation are not the ones who say uncomfortable things, but the ones who refuse to listen, refuse to understand, and refuse to change, while expecting to be treated with respect for doing so. They are the biggest aggressors consistently presenting themselves as the victims. I've watched this mechanism operate my entire life, and I have no patience left for it.
  
  This doesn't make me misanthropic. It makes me someone who still believes, against considerable evidence, that people are capable of better.
  I'm one of the extremely rare people who consider it both appropriate and essential to completely reorganise their life in accordance with reality and the 100% predictable part of the future.
  
  The growth curve since the industrial revolution WILL NOT invert, but IS inverting. Not because of politics or ideology, but because of physics. Resource depletion, extraction decline, biodiversity collapse, climate change and demographic pressure are real converging constraints. By far, understanding this should be the top priority of anyone alive today; because these physical and technical realities DO structure and define our existence, whether we are aware of them or not. Ignoring them doesn't make them disappear. It just makes you ignorant, unprepared, and dangerous.
  
  We identify propaganda in history books but can't recognise it in real time. "COVID kills", "Russia will attack the rest of Europe": only fears and beliefs; no knowledge, no logic. People have no idea what their ignorance and credulity are being used for. When you understand that COVID and the responses to it were not a conspiracy in the popular sense, but a symptom of what happens when political systems built on growth promises hit the physical limits of growth, we can start having a real conversation. Politicians and decision-makers clung to their privileges at all costs. Sheep at the bottom keep consuming blindly and protest for more buying power.
  
  Most people assume the big disruptions are still decades away. They are wrong. Everything is accelerating: thresholds, cascade failures, dominoes. The only sane move is to STOP worsening it now. A forty-year smoker with cancer in his lungs has only one rational option left, even though the damage is already done: quit immediately. Same logic as a car hurtling toward a wall at 100 km/h: jumping out hurts, but staying in and accelerating to 200 km/h on failing brakes is infinitely worse.
  
  Minor tweaks? Not enough.
  We CAN'T limit the damage by doing differently: we must STOP doing. Owning less, having fewer conveniences, renouncing things we've been told are rights, becoming genuinely responsible adults. The time and resources being burned right now chasing "green solutions" are gone for good. Every day of delay amplifies the violence of the shocks to come.
  We already know how to build electric cars, greener gadgets and keep consuming; that part is solved. What we don't know yet is how to truly transmit wisdom, get sober, stop the endless consumption, slow down, and reorder our cravings and desires. That's the real challenge.
  
  Even the few people who understand what's happening rarely admit that lecturing others, insisting to convince them, is necessary. They are incompetent at explaining, afraid of conflict, or simply think it's not worth trying. Any attempt to explain or moralise is immediately perceived as a crime, a violation of divine freedom. What is more dangerous? Telling people uncomfortable truths and trying to make them change? Or continuing on this path?
  
  I don't talk politically correct; I hold a historical and systemic view. Resolving everything "with love alone" while overlooking comprehension won't work. Most of what goes wrong stems from good intentions, a lack of knowledge and long-term vision. Love is essential, but it doesn't REPLACE awareness and comprehension.
  
  I left Belgium because I didn't want to stay surrounded by so many dangerous unaware people. I moved to a forested valley in central Slovakia: 4 hectares, northeast exposure. No existing structure, no prior farming experience. In the past, terraced crops filled this valley, but farms gave way to cities.
  1000+ fruit trees planted, animals, wood heat, rainwater collection, and a very productive garden and greenhouse. What I'm building: a walipini greenhouse, an A-frame cabin for helpers, a root cellar, a semi-buried house. In Slovakia, more people still produce part of their own food. Trading with neighbours is one of the most effective practices for facing the future.
  I work every day, don't ask the system to produce everything for me through fossil fuels, factories, and machines. What I don't consume limits my impact and provides a healthier life. I save electricity, water, wood, gas, fuel, tools, clothes. It entirely redefines needs.
  
  The coherent response is a fully restructured life: producing your own food, reducing dependences, staying in one place rather than travelling. This isn't ideology: just taking the facts seriously.
  I'm far from a perfect example of this. I operate within a system designed by and for people who go in the opposite direction, with fundamentally different convictions and priorities. What I'm building here is an ongoing attempt, under real constraints, to act consistently with what the situation demands. That gap between intention and perfect execution is not hypocrisy. It's the unavoidable condition of trying to do something radically different inside a world that wasn't built for it and doesn't want it.
  
  I'm looking for someone who has already left (or is in the process of leaving) a life built on consumption and the illusion of infinite growth, who understands that being openly in contradiction with the dominant culture is not a personal quirk, but the only coherent position available once the physics is understood. Someone who doesn't need social approval to do what's right, who accepts the isolation that comes with lucidity, who sees the big picture, is allergic to the conventional world, felt hurt and alone when billions of believers wore masks, and feels sick when they see what people buy from supermarkets.
  Someone interested in staying long-term, possibly permanently. I'm building something that requires people, not visitors. I'm also open to the possibility of a life partner: someone to build this with, who finds meaning in daily work, honest conversation, seasonal food, and genuine quiet.

• 

  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage d'entretien

  Projets DIY créatifs

  S’occuper des animaux

  Aide dans une ferme
• 

  Centres d’intérêt

  

  Animaux de compagnie

  

  Technologie

  

  Ferme

  

  Dev. durable

  

  Soin des plantes

  

  Bricolage / artisanat

  

  Cuisine et alimentation

  

  Jardinage

  

  Menuiserie

  

  Animaux

  

  Nature

  

  Montagne
• 

  Objectifs de développement durable de l’ONU que cet hôte essaie d'atteindre

  ...

  ...

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
• 

  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  I offer a real apprenticeship in self-sufficiency: orchard management, animal husbandry, food preservation, low-tech construction, seed saving, grafting, fermentation. The full cycle, not just the pleasant parts.
  
  Beyond practical skills, what I offer most is honest, systemic conversation about what's actually happening and what makes sense to do about it. This is rare. Most hosts will show you how to make jam or milk a goat. Few will sit with you and work through, seriously and without politeness, why the world is the way it is, what the physics of the situation actually demands, and what a coherent life looks like in response.

• 

  Aide

  This life actually requires: the willingness to work when it's cold or raining, when you're tired, when nothing is going well; to eat what the season produces; to learn without ego, and to update your behaviour based on reality.
  Physical capacity, patience, meticulousness, the ability to tolerate silence, solitude, and the absence of the thousand invisible services the system provides.
  And the willingness to STAY: not a season as an experiment, but because this is where you DO live.
  Travel is an obsession for many young people today. That was never more absurd. As time and resources dwindle, we waste more of both. I didn't leave Belgium for a holiday before returning to a life of money, consumption and degradation, as many do. I left everything for this.
  
  By the way, the question isn't why I am the way I am, but why others refuse to change.
  
  Concretely, help needed includes absolutely all kinds of tasks, from harvesting and drying fruits and vegetables, to cooking; shearing sheep, gardening and maintaining the orchard; firewood processing and much more. It doesn't end. Patience and meticulousness are appreciated far more than speed or strength.
  
  I don't accommodate veganism or vegetarianism as a fixed ethical position. According to what we biologically ARE, I do eat considerably less meat and animal products than most people do, but still, I raise and eat animals. No religious worldview, spiritual practices, energy healing, astrology, etc. I respect people; not belief systems that substitute feeling for thinking. No woke ideology, identitarian politics, the "everyone's doing their best" framework: most people do what's comfortable; it's precisely how we got here.
  
  I say what I think and expect honesty in return; if your response to direct feedback is to invoke respect, kindness, or safe spaces, this isn't the right environment.
  
  The gap year mindset: two weeks of an off-grid experience in summer, before returning to a normal life, to show on Instagram? Seriously?
  Long stay preferred.

• 

  Langues parlées

  Anglais: Courant
  Français: Courant
  Slovak: Débutant

• 

  Hébergement

  The best would be to come with your own camper, caravan...
  Depending on the weather, you can also sleep in the giant hammock, have a bed in the outside kitchen (covered, but "semi-open").
  We cook and eat together (mostly outside during the summer), I provide hot showers and even a "low tech" washing machine if needed.

• 

  Autres infos...

  My place is remote and calm, in the middle of the forest, in a valley at 400m altitude in central Slovakia.
  The nearest town is Detva (about 20' by car), which has a train station with connections to Bratislava and Banská Bystrica.
  
  Having your own means of transport or a campervan is a real advantage for getting around locally.
  
  The surrounding area offers extensive forests, hills and trails for hiking. The Carpathian landscape here is genuinely wild and largely untouched.
  
  Internet access is limited and available only near the caravan. This is consistent with the philosophy of the place, not an oversight.

• 

  Informations complémentaires

  • 

    Accès Internet

  • 

    Accès Internet limité

  • 

    Nous avons des animaux

  • 

    Nous sommes fumeurs

  • 

    Familles bienvenues

• 

  Espace pour garer des vans

  You're welcome with your van here! You'll have the most beautiful view on the valley!

• 

  Possibilité d'accueillir les animaux

  Yes, if the pets don't interfere in any way, with the other animals (cats, dogs, poultry, goats and sheep).

• 

  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Un

• 

  Mes animaux

  

  M.

  Obviously, the owner of the farm.

  

  Evi & Lajka

  My most involved assistants...

Sécurité du site

Discutez avec des workawayers qui ont séjourné chez cet hôte

Feedback (1)