Help around on our small hobby farm and experience life in the countryside of Vekaranjärvi, Finland

Infos

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  Description

  Hi there! We are a friendly couple, Hanna and Rami, both turning 60 years this year. We are now starting our second year as workaway hosts. We are looking for volunteers who want to experience country living and are ready to lend us a hand in taking care of our hobby farm and animals.
  
  We ourselves moved to the countryside in south-eastern Finland from Helsinki some 13 years ago to start a new, more sustainable way of life. We have not regretted that decision.
  
  Nowadays we both do remote work from home. Meanwhile we also have this small hobby farm where we practice homesteading. Our house is surrounded by nature and close to natural lakes with a swimming possibility. There are over a thousand lakes and ponds in this municipality.
  
  We have some sheep as well as two old Icelandic horse ladies, chicken, ducks and two dogs (one of which will surely want to be your new best friend). We grow vegetables, berries, fruits. We have a greenhouse.
  
  As remote office work taxes our time, the farm also always requires maintenance work. Especially in the summer. There is some painting to do, fences waiting to be fixed, renovations, mocking the animal sheds etc. In short: there is so much to do and never enough time.
  
  However, it is not all just hard work and no fun. We do enjoy hosting guests and making new friends. We are interested in languages and cultural exchange. When we learned about Workaway and got to host our first volunteers in the summer 2024, we immediately realized that hey, this is something that suits us. And indeed, the experience was great the first year!
  
  Now, for the spring/summer/autumn 2025 we are again looking for volunteers to help us with all kinds of seasonal and daily tasks at the farm plus some DIY projects. The tasks could include gardening, animal care, maintenance, small building projects, and also cleaning and household chores, depending on your interests and abilities. At some point we would need someone who has some basic building skills or at least the willingness to learn by doing.
  
  Rami’s parents live right next to us, have also a small garden and a greenhouse alongside of a chicken coop. You would be helping also them occasionally. By doing that, you’ll have an opportunity to learn a lot from the granny about plants and growing vegetables in an organic way. She is quite an expert on everything nature related.
  
  We are looking for volunteers who are able to work independently, are not afraid of getting themselves dirty and who can do things also by their own initiative when they see the need. Some flexibility and good sense of humour is needed here: especially with animals, things do not always go as planned. Every day is surely different.
  
  The work here can sometimes be physically demanding and dirty. So if you have some serious chronical back or joint problems, this is not the best place for you. However, we won’t ask you to do anything we would not do /have done ourselves, neither something which is totally out of your comfort zone.
  
  It would be a big bonus to be handy, to have some background with horses, to have some experience with gardening and/or to be able to create meals with ingredients available… but especially to be open-minded enough to try out and learn new things. No worries if you don’t fulfill all these criteria. Hopefully you can tick at least one or two among them.
  
  Most importantly, you should be able to tolerate some mess and chaos!
  
  In mid-August, a driving license and preparedness to drive are a necessity. We will be organizing a big party and need help with deliveries etc. Otherwise having a driving license allows you to explore the surroundings in your free time if our car is available.
  
  Our goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible, so that the food we eat is to large extent produced by us and organic. Home grown food is topped up with everything you can find in the Finnish nature: wild herbs, berries and mushrooms. Depending on the season, we will show you how to find these treasures of the nature. We mainly eat vegetarian food, but some fish and meat too.
  
  We will share 1-2 meals a day together, but you are also welcome to use the kitchen for snacks, leftovers etc. It would be great if we also could share the cooking to some extent. Help is needed at least when clearing the mess in the kitchen afterwards.
  
  Otherwise we hope you to help 4-5 hours a day 5 days a week - or if you wish, sometimes longer days with more days off respectively.
  
  We have three adult children who are not anymore living with us, but they visit us sometimes with their spouses. As a family, we are somewhat unorganised, but warm, friendly, open-minded and welcoming. Our messy home is always open to friends and visitors from Finland and abroad. So other people are coming and going too, especially in the summer.
  
  We would be happy to host you, introduce Finnish culture and our way of living to you, and to learn new things and insights from you! Please feel to free to ask more, if you got interested.

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  S’occuper des animaux

  Aide dans une ferme

  Cuisine/repas pour la famille

  Aide à la maison

  Entretien général
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  Centres d’intérêt

  

  Végétarien ou végan

  

  Dev. personnel

  

  Dev. durable

  

  Politique/justice sociale

  

  Animaux de compagnie

  

  Films et télé

  

  LGBT+

  

  Ferme

  

  Événements/vie sociale

  

  Culture

  

  Soin des plantes

  

  Photographie

  

  Musique

  

  Langues

  

  Jardinage

  

  Bricolage / artisanat

  

  Cuisine et alimentation

  

  Menuiserie

  

  Art et design

  

  Livres

  

  Animaux

  

  Yoga / bien-être

  

  Sports d’hiver

  

  Activités en plein air

  

  Nature

  

  Randonnée

  

  Fitness

  

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

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  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  You will get experience of Finnish culture and nature in the happiest country of the world. More generally, you will learn about homesteding in our multi-generational family : learn about growing and conserving food; learn about the Finnish nature and finding food in there. Learn about Finnish cooking and recipies. Experience swimming in natural lakes. Learn about animals. If you are interested in martial arts, ask Rami for some training.

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  Aide

  According to your abilities and interests, help is needed in gardening (planting, turning soil, watering plants, weeding...), animal care, small building and DIY projects, painting, wood chopping, mocking animal sheds and all sorts of maintenance and farm tasks. Help is welcomed also in cooking and household chores. Handy people are especially welcomed, so are those with some previous experience with gardening and/or horses. In the mid-August a driving license is a necessity.

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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Anglais: Courant
  Finnish: Courant
  Français: Courant
  Allemand: Intermédiaire
  Swedish: Intermédiaire
  Italien: Débutant

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  We would be happy to practise more our French, German, Swedish and Italian, languages that we otherwise do not have so often opportunity to speak.
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  Hébergement

  Your accommodation would be a room with privacy (and electricity) in a separate building across the yard. The bed is 120 cm wide. Shared toilet and a bathroom with shower are in the main building. Old sauna is in another separate building.
  Another place can be arranged in the main building or, in the summer, in one of the "summer rooms" in a log building without electricity.

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  Autres infos...

  In your freetime you could eg. go swimming in different lakes, walk the dogs and play with them, enjoy the company of the animals, join Hanna to go to the forest for picking berries and mushrooms (depending on the season) and learn about which ones are edible, enjoy traditional sauna etc.
  
  If you like hiking and camping, the national park Repovesi ( nature reserve) is about 15 km away with nice trekking routes of different lenghts and possibility to rent out canoes. We can lend your camping equipment, if you want to spend a night there.
  
  We have a small gym where you can train yoga, kettle bells etc. If you have some experience with horses Hanna would be happy to take you for horseback rides in the nearby forests. Or then just relax in the hammock.
  
  We have bicycles available, we can sometimes give you a lift and you may sometimes also use the car yourself, if it is available. There is a pizzeria in the village a couple of kilometres away, and the the nearest small shop is 4 km away. The UNESCO World Heritage site Verla is about 25 km away.
  
  The nearest town is Kouvola about 30 km away. The public transport connnections are not super good, but on working days, there are a few busses from the village to go there. To be honest, there is not that much going on in the town itself.
  
  However, several trains a day run to Helsinki (1,5 hours) and to Lappeenranta (1 hr), which is a nice town in the summer, at the lake Saimaa. Seaside towns Kotka and Hamina (both 1 hr by car) and old Porvoo (1,5 hrs by car) are also wonderful day trips to make.
  
  If there is an opportunity, we can also make some day trips together to show you around.
  
  What else? Finnish summers are beautiful, but especially in June there are mosquitos, Even if our place is not the worst one, they can be a nuisance. But we have survived so far!
  
  Finally, we find important that the communication is as open as possible both ways. Should there be anything bothering you about the tasks, accommodation, food, free time or anything, it is good discuss minor issues before they grow into bigger problems. For the mosquitos we can’t do much, but otherwise things can often be fixed.

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  Informations complémentaires

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    Accès Internet

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    Accès Internet limité

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    Nous avons des animaux

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    Nous sommes fumeurs

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    Familles bienvenues

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  Espace pour garer des vans

  Cet hôte a de la place pour les vans.

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Deux

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