Help building an off-grid homestead in the midst of Transilvanian nature, Romania

Details

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  Description

  Hello!
  We are Eli and Ali, a Swiss couple with four kids between 10 and 2.
  
  After 3 years of travelling Europe, we are growing our roots in the rolling hills of Transylvania.
  We are situated 2km of dirt-track away from the next village and are completely off-grid.
  Step by step we are building our dream of a self-sufficient permaculture homestead.
  The life we chose isn't always easy and we still have a long way to go and a lot more to learn, but we are very motivated to do so because we are convinced that there are so many ways of improving the harmony and living more sustainable and in peace with earth and eachother.
  
  We have great plans and ideas for our property and we hope to find some awesome, likeminded helpers who enjoy the peace and quiet and the beauty of our wild surroundings!
  
  We are unschoolers (free learners / life learners) and love to learn by doing and experimenting.
  We currently live in a walltent and a caravan. We have a garden, grow all our crops from seeds and are constantly working on expanding our growing space and creating more bio-diversity.
  We've planted over 50 fruit trees which are the basis of our food-forest - a constant work in progress.
  We are passionate about sustainable, holistic, healthy and natural living, preserving food, different hand-crafts, natural building, living with animals and learning in general.
  We are vegetarians and currently share our land with many furry and feathery creatures who provide us with eggs, milk and manure but who are also our companions and teachers.
  
  We have a small solar system to charge our phones and use other small devices, for bigger machines, we use a generator.
  We live VERY basic, close to nature and without most of modern conveniencies: We use a composting toilet (bucket system), usually shower outside with cold water - there is a solar camping shower for those who want warm water and have the patience to wait for it - our water comes from a source above our property, though it dries out at times (but there are other sources in the area, where we can get drinking water from), we have no fridge or freezer, our washingmashine runs on cold water and we use our phones for internet access.
  
  We hope to build a small (loose) community with likeminded people and families in this area in the future, for now it is only us.
  
  We are building our homestead completely from scratch. Some days we work a lot, others we are not so productive. We have a bit of a daily rythm because of our animals but otherwise we mostly decide spontaneously on what we want to do, even though our to-do lists are set to last years. ;-D
  
  We are excited to meet wonderful people and families here, learn and work together and enjoy the beauty of this place together!

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Language practice

  Help with Eco Projects

  Gardening

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  Farmstay help

  Babysitting and creative play

  Creating/ Cooking family meals

  Help around the house

  General Maintenance
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  We are constantly learning new things and invite you to learn with us!
  
  From our first four years of being here, we have gathered knowledge about various homesteading skills. Some examples are: (No-dig & inground) gardening, living off-grid, animal husbandry, preserving food in different ways without refrigeration.
  There are so many things we want to learn about. Some, we are just getting started with, some, we can already share knowledge about - our interests are very wide spread, but we are big on exploring true human potential and self-reliance but we also love to share philosophical/spiritual thoughts about pretty much everything existing in this world and universe.
  
  We speak Swiss-German, German, English, a tiny bit of French (though it's rather bad at the moment) and are (slowly!) learning Romanian.

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  Projects involving children

  This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.

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  Help

  The main jobs for which we really need help currently are:
  
  - Preparing and planting our garden
  - Building a new stable for our goats and chickens
  - Cutting back all the brambles along the border of the property and clearing parts of the land
  - Fencing the whole property
  - Collecting horse manure from the pastures to amend the gardens
  - Fencing our garden
  - Gathering and making firewood
  - Digging a pond
  - Cleaning out our old stables (which is a lot of work because we do "deep littering") and spreading that manure around our young trees in the foodforest
  
  There are many other small and spontaneous projects and things that need to be done throughout the year, depending on the season. Some examples are: Getting up hay and animal feed in large quantities, cutting back trees, taking care of the garden, weeding, harvesting food and preserving the harvests, etc.

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  German: Fluent
  English: Fluent
  French: Beginner
  Romanian: Beginner

  This host offers a language exchange
  We'd love to improve our Romanian but are interested in all languages and can teach you Swiss German or German and probably some English too, though we're not perfect at it ourselfs.
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  Accommodation

  We have a cotton wall tent (2x3m) on a wooden platform with a comfortable bed to offer you as accomondation.
  
  In case of families or long-term helpers wanting to stay with us, we are open to expand the accomondation with your help!

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  What else ...

  Our property is only reachable with a 4x4 car (and only when the weather is dry), otherwise one can always walk up and down. We have a "street car" down in the village and an off-road car for here. But we really only drive when the ground is either dry or frozen solid. Otherwise we walk (the way to the village is through the hills and very picturesque).
  
  The next bigger towns are Deva (30km) and Hunedoara (25km) and Oraștie (20km), there are two tiny shops in the village that cover basic needs and are also small pubs. There's a smaller town where you can find everything you need, about 15km from us.
  
  There are ancient Dacian ruins to be discovered, lots of wildlife to enjoy in the area and vast and beautiful landscapes to be explored.
  
  For 2023, we have decided to only host people who want to stay at least a week, though we'd prefer two or more weeks because our past expiriences here have shown us that the first 3 to 5 days are usually more about getting to know eachother than about getting work done and while we're enjoying the exchange of thoughts and expiriences, we dearly need to get things going too.
  
  We are a very openminded family and like to look at life through a different lense by sharing stories and thoughts and the only thing we ask for in our helpers (and we have been super lucky with so far) is that you are openminded as well - oh and that you don't mind getting your hands (feet, arms, legs) dirty and doing physical work ;-) . We are not perfect and neither is our homestead - we are only just getting started afterall, but we love our life and are passionate about nature and exploring ways of life that lead into a more harmonious and holisticly sustainable (regenerative) future.
  
  ... And last but not least (before we can applaud you for reading all of this through) we want to add that we are happy to host solo travellers and couples/friends alike but since we have kids ourselfs, we want to especially invite families who want to expirience this completely different way of living with us!

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  A little more information

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    Internet access

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    Limited internet access

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    We have pets

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    We are smokers

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    Can host families

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  Can possibly accept pets

  We have lots of pets ourself so if you bring your own, we will have to slowly and carefully introduce them to eachother and we would really apprechiate it, that none of our animals get eaten by yours (we have chickens, peacocks, rabbits and guineapigs running around freely at times) but other than that, nothing stands in the way of you bringing your furry or feathery friends.

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  Two

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  Hours expected

  Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week but we are not strict about this and think that we will find the best solutions together!

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