Help us move towards a self-sustaining lifestyle in Livanates, Greece

Infos

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  Description

  Hello Workaway explorers! We are Evangelos (Evans, 34) & Annie(31), a Greek-British couple living in Livanates, Greece. We first met 6 years ago when we lived in a community in Denmark, whilst studying alternative education. In 2019 we moved to Annie’s family home in England, where we worked through most of the COVID pandemic in a residential home for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Then, for a few different reasons we moved to our current home in Livanates, Greece, in summer 2021. The biggest reasons include that because Evans inherited our small home with a large garden it meant we could work towards a self-sustaining lifestyle with the home and land we have here.
  We speak English at home, Evans is fluent in Greek & Annie is learning. Evans speaks some Italian and Annie some French. We welcome language, cultural & thoughtful exchange.
  
  We live on the edge of a small town, Livanates; 5 mins walk from the town centre, 10-15 mins walk to the beach and 7 mins walk to the supermarket. There is a market 2 mins from the house every Monday morning.
  
  We have a very large garden, it’s approximately 100mx50metres. There is a lot of work to get it properly organised, especially because we practice permaculture (as best we can- so weed management can be a challenge) and we are trying to develop a 'food forest'.
  So far we have made a chicken run where we keep 8 chickens and a cockerell, a shed/pen for our 3 goats. We also have 2 friendly dogs who roam the garden, so liking dogs is almost necessary to come because we cannot keep them away from you all the time and they are very enthusiastic. We have a vegetable garden and we have planted fruit trees and herbs around the rest of the garden. We have been building a pond and are close to having it finished. Many times, with the work we have here it can feel like 2-steps-forward-1-step-back, also because we did not have so much experience of this sort of project before and we are learning as we go. But now entering our 3rd year we can feel the progress we have made so far, it's a relief to have most of the 'essential' things done!
  
  We have great views of the hills around and the sea in front of the town.
  The garden is south facing so gets a lot of sun and there aren’t many trees yet to provide shade - so it can be very hot during the summer! Especially as we don't use air conditioning in the house unless we really need to.
  
  We love listening to music, playing board games and watching movies, getting creative and discussing meaningful things in life.
  
  The buses from Athens or northern Greece often stop in Livanates so we’re quite easy to get to, even if you only want to stop off for a day or two as you’re passing.
  Because of the things that we need help with, we don’t need you to commit to staying for a long time, and we find shorter stays of 4 - 10 days work best for us. We are flexible with this, it just depends on ours and yours situation at the time. If you want to stay longer we will not commit beforehand, however if it goes well then we can see while you are here about extending the stay.

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Aide avec des éco-projets

  Jardinage d'entretien

  Projets DIY créatifs

  S’occuper des animaux

  Cuisine/repas pour la famille

  Aide à la maison

  Petits travaux d'entretien
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  Centres d’intérêt

  

  Culture

  

  LGBT+

  

  Politique/justice sociale

  

  Événements/vie sociale

  

  Animaux de compagnie

  

  Dev. durable

  

  Vie en van

  

  Dev. personnel

  

  Ferme

  

  Bénévolat

  

  Langues

  

  Cuisine et alimentation

  

  Écriture

  

  Soin des plantes

  

  Musique

  

  Bricolage / artisanat

  

  Jardinage

  

  Livres

  

  Art et design

  

  Animaux

  

  Activités en plein air

  

  Sports d’hiver

  

  Montagne

  

  Danse

  

  Nature

  

  Yoga / bien-être

  

  Randonnée

  

  Camping

  

  Plage
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  Staying with us you will have the opportunity to practice English & Greek languages. We will happily share what knowledge we have of permaculture gardening, keeping animals and herbal remedies. We are trying to find out more about natural building techniques, and thinking about some small projects we can do in the garden to become confident in them, so we could explore this together. We love discussing culutral differences, what there is to be offered by community living, and would be happy to share with you our experiences from when we met living in a community and what we've learned living&exploring in foreign countries.

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  Aide

  Generally you will work 4 or 5 hours, 5 days a week.
  What we need help with right now:
  -Organising the garden. Clearing pathways and using mulching techniques to make areas for planting more.
  -Planting trees/herbs/vegetables/flowers.
  -Keeping the vegetable garden. Clearing weeds, watering the garden etc.
  -Looking after the animals. Cleaning out the pens, feeding the animals etc.
  -Water saving system. We plan to get barrels or similar to harness the water from our roofs when it rains so we can reuse this in our garden (We’re aware of the worldwide need to reduce water consumption and food waste- we also compost what food waste we cannot feed to our dogs or chickens.)
  -Making mosquito nets for the windows. We’ve just purchased some netting and now we need to make this into suitable nets we can use to keep those annoying bugs out!

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  Langues parlées

  Greek: Courant
  Anglais: Courant
  Français: Débutant
  Italien: Débutant

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  Hébergement

  Currently the accommodation we have available for you is a choice of sleeping in a tent we can put up in the garden or sleeping in our '89 VW campervan . We have plenty of space if you have your own van/tent to stay in.
  
  We will share our kitchen and bathroom within the house.
  
  Concerning food: we usually have fruit/yogurt/fresh eggs for breakfast, salad/soup/leftovers for lunch and a freshly cooked dinner in the evening. We would like to cook together in the evenings- often with workawayers we cook alternate evenings (we cook one night, they cook the next, etc.) and eat together, but this is flexible. We tend to eat either meat or vegan meals, the only dairy we eat is eggs and milk/cheese from our own animals. Annie has many food intolerances so we are also very understanding if you also have allergies or intolerances.

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  Autres infos...

  The biggest attraction locally, in our opinion, are the beaches! There is not a lot of other entertainment venues in our little town, but it is very nice to take a walk into town or down to the beach front to sit and have a coffee and watch the world go by. If you want to go walking in the hills behind us maybe we can arrange a time to go together. It is not recommended to go by yourself because of wild animals, and we should not go when the fire risk is high during the mid summer.
  There are bars open along the beachfront every evening if you like to go out at night- we may join you if so!
  You can take a ferry from the next town, Arkitsa, over to the island of Evia to explore. It has hot springs in the town where the ferry comes in, just a few minutes walk away, and the surrounding hills in the north of Evia are very green a beautiful. If you stay with us for a couple of weeks we think its a cool trip you can do for 2-3 days because the ferry is less than 5euro person and you can find quite cheap acommodation, so its easy to get out and explore there.

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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

  Our Wi-Fi is fast & reliable - unless there is a power cut, as these are reaonably common in Greece. We do not have a particular space but we happily find an agreement for you to use our living room or work on the balcony if you have the need.

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  Espace pour garer des vans

  Our garden is huge- we have plenty of space for you to park up! Keep in mind our dogs may be curious about your vehicle, and there is not somewhere that it can be in the shade all day.

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  Possibilité d'accueillir les animaux

  No cats, unfortunately our dogs will chase them. Same could be said for all small creatures. If you have a friendly dog then they are more than welcome, we will be considerate that we introduce yours with our dogs carefully. We have had visitors bring their dogs into our garden before and we have not ever had a problem with our dogs, but we are mindful that this doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Our dogs tend to say hello then ignore newcomers for the first day or two. Hopefully our animals will get along well because we love them all!

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Deux

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  Mes animaux

  5 Goats

  Our milking does are Gamora and Mantis who are both older then 3yrs, this year they had kids, Ororo, Drax and Randy. We milk every afternoon. They're all pretty friendly, never aggressive, though usually shy with new people.

  30+ chickens & cocks

  Chickens and cockerells of varying ages. We incubate eggs, raise the girls and process the excess boys after 6mo or so. In permanent residence are Sid and Dumbledore who are both very well behaved cocks.

  Thor, Loki, Ducky, Queenie, Zorro, Elvis, Princess Simba

  These 7 cuties are all under 2 years old and were born here from a stray. They're friendly on varying levels, some will eagerly jump on your lap and others more wary of newcomers but usually warm up quickly.

  Arya

  Arya is about 17Kg, she loves cuddles and is usually calm though occassionally gets the zoomies and when playful she might nip slightly but only in a playful way. She was a stray before she came to us and is very grateful now to be loved.

  Morgina

  Mog is 35kg Caucasian Shephard dog. She is very friendly and loves cuddles, sometimes barking loudly to show what a good guard dog she is.

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