Share skills and experience country life in Audembert, France

Infos

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  Description

  ***Looking for two more volunteers from May 15th to June 19th***
  
  Hello kind stranger!
  
  Our names are Claire and Michiel, we're a young Franco-Belgian family living on an old farmstead near the coast of Wissant, North of France. For 7 years now we are bringing the old farmhouses back to life, while also bringing up our two daughters: Fleur (4yo) and Perle (2yo). We've been hosts on WorkAway since 2020 and we love the life that a group of volunteers brings to our place. Making you discover French culture, nature and the sea helps us to enjoy it even more ourselves. Teaching French and picking up on your languages widens our world view and help our kids to be future globetrotters - like you! The different nationalities we're welcoming make us feel like travelling the world while staying at home. Every day we're hosting, it widens our horizon and gives us love, laughter and friendship.
  
  So far we've made an old stable into our home, we've renovated a 'longère' (long farmbuilding) into a woodworker's workshop, our workshop and office space, we've landscaped the courtyard and made a vegetable garden and greenhouse. We did most of this with friends, family and volunteers, it's been a wonderful adventure to share with so many different people! Last year we've transformed a former horse stable into a small house for volunteers, so our accomodation is comfortable now. This year we will continue maintaining the vegetable garden while also doing projects at the house.
  
  We're welcoming help repairing the house. With previous groups we've redone the outside of the house, next up is the inside! If you're motivated, we can teach you some basic carpentry, stone masonry and making and applying traditional chalk-hemp insulation on the walls.
  We'll also welcome help maintaining the family vegetable garden, harvesting and conserving (and tasting!) our vegetables and trimming our hedges. The animals will also need to be fed. We have chickens and bunnies at the moment, we also have sheep but they only need feeding in winter. We may also ask you to keep our daughters happy while we're outside doing projects :)
  
  We're taking a winter break to recharge our batteries and plan ahead. In 2025, we'll be hosting in the following timeframes:
  - March 13t until April 30th (fully booked)
  - May 15th until June 19th (2 spots available)
  - July 17th until November 6th (2 to 6 spots available)
  
  If you'd decide to come and live with us for a few weeks, we'd be very happy and eager to get to know you! We have quite some experience in hosting our friends, WorkAwayers and helpers from other sites, people say we're very hospitable :) So far we've hosted 109 WorkAwayers from 26 different nationalities, and that's not counting those who came a second or third time. Each and every one was an unforgettable experience!
  
  We love hosting people and look forward to meeting you!
  Claire and Michiel, Fleur and Perle

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Jardinage

  Bricolage et construction

  Baby-sitting et jeux créatifs

  Aide à la maison

  Entretien général
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  Centres d’intérêt

  

  Vie en van

  

  LGBT+

  

  Événements/vie sociale

  

  Musique

  

  Jardinage

  

  Bricolage / artisanat

  

  Cuisine et alimentation

  

  Menuiserie

  

  Animaux

  

  Architecture

  

  Activités en plein air

  

  Cyclisme

  

  Plage
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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

  In your spare time, you may go for long walks on the beach or on the countryside with a view of the English coast across the channel. There's a lot of museums in the region as well, mostly dedicated to WW2 or the sea and sealife.
  
  Claire is a musician (voice, guitar and violin) and plays in a band. They have a concert once or twice every month, it's always a lot of fun. If you're also a musician, it would be lovely to play together!
  
  We always try to have 4 to 6 volunteers present, so you won't only pick up un French culture and language but also on the other nationalities present. We've hosted 26 different nationalities so far!

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  Projets impliquant des enfants

  Ce projet peut impliquer des enfants. Pour en savoir plus, consultez nos directives et conseils ici.

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  Aide

  For those with green fingers there's our biological vegetable garden to maintain, transforming and conserving vegetables, a few overgrown hedges to be trimmed, wood to be chopped as well as feeding our chickens and caring for our sheep.
  It's an amazing experience to see how much pride our volunteers take in the tasks they accomplish, learning and doing things they don't do in their daily life. Empowering you to surpass yourself is something we really like to do.
  
  This summer we'll start doing tasks on the house, the tasks on hand will depend on the status of our projects. We can tell you the specific things we'll be helping with in your requested timeframe. DIY experience is not a requirement, but being curious and wanting to learn is ;)
  In the first weeks we'll be taking out some wood and repairing the walls. After that we'll do a 'chantier participatif' to insulate the walls with traditional chalk/hemp insulation. There's some lifting as well as light tasks, so anyone should find what suits them! In any case, we'll never ask you to do tasks that you don't feel comfortable about.

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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Anglais: Courant
  Français: Courant
  Hollandais: Courant
  Allemand: Intermédiaire
  Polonais: Intermédiaire

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  Claire is French-Polish, she's fluent in French and English, intermediate in Polish and Flemish/Dutch and knows a few words of Spanish. Michiel is Belgian, he's fluent in Dutch, French and English, intermediate in German and learning Polish at beginner level.
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  Hébergement

  We provide your meals and housing in either our Tiny House or a room in the newly renovated stablehouse. The kitchen is shared in our house. All ameneties on site are available for you: woodstove, barbecue, pergola, terrace, mountainbikes, jacuzzi, kayaks, paddleboards, washing machine, ...
  
  We provide bedsheets and towels, as well as working clothes, safety boots and safety gear if needed. Of course you're welcome to take your own if that makes you feel more comfortable.

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  Autres infos...

  To allow us a family life, breakfast is shared between WorkAwayers in the hosting house, all other meals are shared all together in the main house. Hours and days are decided with everyone present, with respect of the 25 hours/week. We tend to do tasks together from Saturday to Tuesday, so you can have a three day weekend from Wednesday to Friday.
  We LOVE boardgames and we'll often play a quick game at lunch or a long one after dinner.
  Easiest pick-up for us is Calais Frethun train station, which has a direct connection to Paris, London and Brussels. We'll pick you up and drop you off at the train station.
  We're in the middle of the 'Parc Régional Naturel' so there's a lot of wildlife to be spotted around the farm and a lot of nice walking and biking routes around. We're also within the 'Grand Site des Deux Caps', which makes it one of France's hotspots to visit and means that most of the nicest spots are arranged for visitors with explanatory signs etc.
  If the weather allows for it, we'll take you on kayaking trips at sea, we might even have a barbecue on a sandbank 4km off the coast, only visitable a few times a month!

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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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  Possibilité d’accueillir les digital nomads

  Office space would be shared with Michiel, who is an architect working mostly from home. Time to socialise with us and the other volunteers present is really important to us, so we only accept part-time digital nomads, no more than 1 hour/day or 1 day/week.

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  Espace pour garer des vans

  There's more than enough space on our farm to find a nice spot for a van :D

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Plus de 2

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