Gail & Randy

• 

  Description

  Randy and I retired several years ago, sold our acreage home, and have spent the past two years house and pet sitting while traveling in Europe, Central America and North America. We have taken this time to explore various cultures and countries, learn about other people and ourselves, and realize that we love a simple life style. (For your information, we are including a link to our house-sitting website: https://gailrandy.wordpress.com )
  
  Although we are still in the house-sitting/traveling mode, we have begun thinking about when we do decide to settle down again. In our future (grown-up?) lives, we have visions of building a home with natural materials (straw, cob, rammed earth), living mainly off-grid, having composting toilets and grey water systems, and being very self-sufficient. We, alternatively, are playing with the idea of renovating an older home in some neat, eclectic neighbourhood. Our dilemma is that we don't know if these are pipe dreams or possible realities. We hope to use workaway as a means of being exposed to these skills and ideas, learning and sharing with others engaged in their own projects.

• 

  Type of help

  Gardening
  Building
  General Maintenance
  Cooking / shopping
  Help with Eco project
  Language practice

• 

  What skills do you have?

  We have extensive gardening experience, have raised chickens and turkeys, and have some experience with building. Randy has plastered, logged, poured concrete, laid asphalt, built rock walls, helped an electrician and worked with a furniture maker and refinisher. Gail has done some dry-walling and mudding (not my favourite job), done interior and exterior painting, wall-papering, and helped with laying flooring. In our recent Baja workaway, we both did rock facing on a tall gatepost; Randy created a stone walkway around the casita; we helped cutting and laying tile, as well as painting and cleanup work.
  We both enjoy cooking, are very good cooks, and would be open to sharing some of this task; however, we would not want this to be our main job.
  While our building and renovating skills are growing but not extensive, we are energetic, hard-working, optimistic and very willing to learn from and with others.

• 

  Languages spoken

  English, French, some Spanish

• 

  Age

  65 & 62

• 

  Nationality

  Canadian, Canadian and American (Randy)

• 

  What else ...

  We just completed a workaway in the Baja Mexico for the first two months of 2018. (You may read our review below). We would enjoy finding another workaway which would allow us to gain experience in natural building, especially cob, or in renovating/building (western Canada or the US). From mid-May, we are booked until mid-August, after which we are again available (western Canada and US).
  We are seriously considering heading to SE Asia from mid-November and would enjoy hearing from people looking for help in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. We are especially interested in natural building, but would consider other types of work depending on location.
  Thank-you for getting in touch!

• 

  Some more information

  • 

    Smoker

  • 

    Driver's licence

  • 

    Allergies
    No

  • 

    Special dietary requirements
    No

Photos

My Photo Album

We sold our acreage two years ago and headed off with backpacks to experience the world.

We planted 40 Wichita Blue junipers by hand to give a shelter belt to our acreage. Randy dug the holes for them with a post-hole digger.

We tried various experimental ideas in our garden area; raised beds, plastic hoops and planting in straw bales. The raised beds were marvellous, the hoops good for starting plants and the straw bales a dismal failure.

Weeding our perennials and vegetable garden was a never ending process.

We planted 40 Wichita Blue junipers by hand to give a shelter belt to our acreage.

Randy deconstructed this old greenhouse to make way for our new chicken coop and run.

Here, Randy is gluing together one of the drawers he made while working with the cabinet maker. (The facings are also his work.)

Show all photos

After a full day of working, we are both filthy but smiling.

Our signature project in Baja was doing the rock facing on this gatepost. We loved the creativity of this upside-down, inside-out jigsaw puzzle.

While in Baja, Randy built this stone walkway/patio area around the casita; several tons of rock and gravel moved by hand, sand sifted and ground levelled to create a forty foot long area.

One of Gail's jobs in Baja was painting the trim on the casita.

We both worked laying the tile in the casita; Randy also did much of the cutting and grouting while Gail had the chore of scouring the final product to remove residual grout.

The final 'layer' of the eight foot gate post facing.

Feedback