Une possibilité de fuite ?

  • Description

    Last minute opening immediately till October 7 for someone who wants to do daily chores and domestic tasks.

    *️️️️️️️️️*️️️️️️️️️ Update: Fall is setting in early this year, we would really love a helper with chainsaw experience to buck down firewood. *️️️️️️️️️*️️️️️️️️️

    We are a small scale developing permaculture farm in the mountains of northern Mendocino county. Our goal is a 0 trash, mostly self sustaining, small community. Our focus is to produce a wide diversity of products, with the goal to produce as much of our own needs as possible, bartering surplus and avoiding the money system as much as possible. We still have far to go along this goal, but slowly but surely we continue to produce more diversity and create more barter networks. Workaway is an amazing tool to help us with this goal.

    We bought this location 2 1/2 years ago, and after spending a year watching the seasons and their impacts on the landscape we began implementing our design plan. We currently have chickens, goats, a vegetable garden and an older orchard we plan to evolve into a food forest. After two and a half years on the property it's amazing to see the changes, but there are still so many more projects in our permaculture design plans. Workaway has helped us move forward faster than we could on our own and we enjoy the social and cultural benefits of having a small community. We are also hosts on other travel sites and have many friends who come for visits.

  • Type of help

    Gardening
    Building
    General Maintenance
    Cooking / shopping
    Farmstay
    Other
    Help with Eco project
    Help in the house
    Animal care
    Art project
    Help with Computers / internet
    Teaching

  • Help

    We always need help with the daily farm chores, we spend the morning getting these all done, from feeding the chickens to running the vacuum, picking up dog poop and sweeping the deck. Washing dishes always needs to be done. There's a simple chart with a list of daily chores to check off. Having these daily chores done well regularly and reliably is important.

    One of the projects we are working on is expanding the kitchen garden, we are putting in a large hugleculture bed (the hole is dug), and building two raised beds, we've started the one with Douglas fur logs and we'll then do one with madrone, fitted together log cabin style.

    If you have building/carpentry skills/experience we would like help remodeling a shed (putting in windows, another door, insulating and drywall, eventually a deck off the back), completing a deck rebuild/addition on the main house, and some carpentry repair work on the chicken coop. If you like to dig, there is plenty of earth moving and trail building to do. If working in the garden is more your thing, weeding and mulching is never ending, we also gather pine cones for mulching the paths, and always, harvesting and preserving the food. Also, I would like a map drawn up of the delveloped part of property; the various gardens, infrastructures and individual components. I've done many small scale garden maps, but this is a bit of challenge for me, if this is something you have experience at or a burning desire to learn, I'd love your help. If you like to clean, a deep cleaning is needed in the main house. I thrive better in a clean house, but don't have the time to keep it as clean as I'd like. If I had the time, I'd do a full deep clean, including spiderwebs, windows, dusting all difficult to reach surfaces, as well as deep clean the oven and the kitchen cupboards inside and out.

    We do forestry work every week, the forest here is overgrown, so we thin for fire suppression and the health of the forest, using these trees for goat food and firewood as well as many of our building projects. If you have chainsaw experience, there is firewood to cut (and split if you want to throw an ax around), if you have a strong body or want to build up more strength we always need help carrying logs and branches up or down hill to the nearest road or the goat pen. We also use these materials to make huglecultures, we have many in progress, any help with them is appreciated, and I'm happy to tell you all about how we do these, my experiences using this technique and show you some in various stages.

  • Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    I love to share my knowledge of permaculture, plants and animals, and especially love to share about our design plans. I'm often told how interesting and quirky our homesteading style is.

    Right now we are deep in dairy season, milking goats, making cheese and loving the baby goat antics. Soon we will be separating cream and making ice cream and butter. We do a lot of canning, dehydrating and food preservation. We are happy to show you what we do on a day to day basis as we continue to increase our self sustaining. I've put together a nice library of books that impacted me strongly and that I feel share wonderful information. Treat then kindly please.

    Mendocino county has a thriving cannabis culture, and as medical patients we are immersed in it, and smoke a lot of it, but we only grow a limited amount for personal consumption. This area has a reputation for its many pot farms, but cannabis is only a small fraction of the plants we grow, we are just a "normal" homestead. 😝 We do not have contacts for trim work, sorry.

    We are actively involved in the flow arts and festival community. I spin hula hoop, poi and fans, and also dance with fire and John does fire safety for our local troupe. We host a Free Hula Hoop Camp here at the Homestead each fall. The peace and quiet up here is remarkable, a great place to step off grid and experience living in the woods.

    Artistic types are highly encouraged to create while up here, I have a bunch of painting supplies, there is a scrape pile and an old dump and plenty of tree branches and logs for various supplies, and the woods are full of goodies for mandalas. In particular we'd love to have more benches and seating, more signs, and wind chimes and hanging art calls to me. I'll happily share some inspiration photos. But don't limit your imagination, we enjoy providing space for artistic expression after the necessary work is done. If cooking is your artistic expression we can provide amazing ingredients and the help is always appreciated.

  • Languages spoken

    English

  • Accommodation

    Accommodations vary depending on the season and current occupants. There is a double bed and a twin mattress in the rustic off grid cabin, with a woodstove for heat, oil lamp or solar for light, but no power; composting toilet is a bit of a walk until we build one closer. (Edit: almost done with the new toilet!) There is an extra large and tall tent with proper mattresses set up on a flat space near the camp kitchen, and there is space for additional tents. If you have your own gear, please let me know, this helps accommodate more people. We do have a few extra sleeping bags and pads that have been graciously left by previous travelers if needed.

    We are 25 minutes from town, and there is no public transportation to our house. Happy to provide rides, but please inform me if you do not have your own transportation. We do make trips to town 1-2 times a week and you are welcome to snag a ride. Please stock up before you head out here (we can go to the store when you arrive in town) if you don't have your own car. We will gladly pick you up in Willits or Ukiah at the bus stop and drop you off when you are ready to leave.

    You can expect to be fed one large meal each day (including days off) you are here, (It's currently the mid day meal for the summer) but be prepared with your own food for other meals. John is an excellent cook, the meals here will be some of the best you have ever had. For example, today we are having Ling cod John caught yesterday with a salad made from wild and cultivated greens from the garden with a homemade dressing and a variety of toppings including homemade goat cheese. Meals are usually high quality, mostly organic, nutrient dense, locally sourced. I eat gluten free and we are happy to accommodate diet preferences. There can be extra eggs, milk or veggies available depending on the season. Right now we are producing a small surplus of eggs and milk.

    There is a covered outdoor kitchen space with running water, plenty of counter space, a random smattering of pots/dishwear and a camp stove that you are welcome to use. There is a large refillable propane tank for communal use. Grey water friendly soap is provided, we encourage refilling when the container gets low, but please avoid buying more plastic bottles. Please keep all food products put away so no animals (domestic and wild) get into it. Don't feed the dogs please. We do live in bear country. We have not seen them around for awhile tho. Don't worry, these bears are scared of humans, just clean up your food when you are not cooking or eating please. Also it is important to pack out your trash every time you go to town.

    We have 22 acres of woods, mostly steep hillsides, but there are some established paths to take for walks. Please do your best to stay on our property.

    It generally does not work out when people bring their pets. Even well behaved pets can upset the balance here. If you think your pet might be the rare exception, feel free to convince me to change my mind.

    We do not have wifi up here. Cell service is poor at the property with the exceptions of US Cellular and Verizon. You can walk up the road a short bit to an open area where reception is better for other carriers. I can hot spot from my phone if needed, but only in moderation.

  • What else …

    As you might guess, we often have more interested people than we can accommodate. Please be serious when contacting me and clear in your needs, expectations and plans (or lack of plans😉). Long and thoughtful emails with proper sentences and punctuation are a great way to catch my attention. If your plans change or you choose a different host please let me know. Others are likely interested in the opportunity to come up here, and your clear communication helps make this flow smoothly.

    I have a work hard, play hard mentality and we have a lot of fun up here. After the work hard part is handled, we like to show workawayers the local sites, including giant redwoods and rugged coastal beaches. Also happy to bring you along to our fire spinning practices or shows, hoop jams and local concerts. Sometimes I get a bit lost in all my projects up here, so if these experiences are something you really want to do, please speak up and remind me.

    Thanks so much for taking the time to read all of this. We greatly enjoy the workaway experience.

  • A little more information

    • Internet access

    • Limited internet access

    • We have pets

    • We are smokers

  • How many Workawayers can stay?

    More than two

  • Hours expected

    5 hours a day, 5 days a week maximum

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