VOLUNTEER DAYS: We host regular volunteer days for people living locally. Come volunteer for 5-6 hours and be rewarded with a farm-to-fork lunch and good company. We work from 9:00am to 4:00pm with a break for lunch midday.
Next volunteer days: Tuesdays in March (March 17, 24, 31). Make sure to RSVP and receive confirmation from me in advance.
FOR RESIDENTIAL VOLUNTEERS: We currently have one sleep shed available that can sleep 2. We also have camping spaces and tents, and a flat shady spot for camper vans. We have a rustic bathroom to support the camping field. Volunteers usually stay anywhere from one week to a month. If we discover that you're a good cook, we will ask you to stay longer!
Welcome to our homestead in Albarraque, Sintra. Here, we start from organic principles of taking care of the soil, and we experiment with various regenerative and ecological agricultural practices. We grow lots of delicious and nutrient dense fruits and vegetables. We follow no-till/no-dig methods and make our own compost, vermicast, and soil amendments. We try different composting practices, and we haul and compost the kitchen and food waste from a local school.
Regular tasks for WWOOFers include:
- Sowing seeds in the nursery and planting in the garden
- Garden jobs e.g. mulching, weeding, fertilizing, making compost, trellising
- Making and applying homemade soil amendments like worm manure, ferments, and extractions
- Caring for laying hens
- Constructing fenced areas for chickens or other farm animals
- Harvesting and washing vegetables and fruit
- Cooking (if you enjoy cooking!)
- Keeping farm tidy
- Taking photos that we can use in some maybe future social media presence
From time to time, we host public events on the homestead, and our volunteers often benefit from or help with those. In the past year, we have held tomato tastings, house concerts, "noites de fado" (fado shows), natural building workshops, soap making workshops, and a "bioblitz" (cataloging of local biodiversity).
Volunteers with experience in natural building, carpentry, cooking and preserving, or mob grazing, are especially welcome. Are you mechanically inclined? We have projects for you!
Animal inhabitants at our homestead in Sintra include laying hens and our English setter dog.
A sample WWOOFer's weekday often looks like this:
8h00 - 9h00 Breakfast on your own (we get our kids to school)
9h00 - 12h00 Volunteer work (in garden or with animals or on building projects)
12h00 - 13h00 Lunch with host and break
13h00-16h00 Volunteer work
16h00 Free time
20h00 Dinner on your own-- we provide a meal or the ingredients for you to cook
You can start earlier and end the day earlier to have more of your afternoon free. Volunteers spend their afternoons exploring the area, working digital jobs, or hanging out in the (unheated) pool. Volunteers have also taken the bus or an Uber to the beach and to the town of Sintra, a 10-minute drive. The Sintra mall is a 15-minute walk from our house, and it has all the shops.
We are flexible about your schedule, but we expect 27-30 hours a week. In exchange, you'll get your food/meals, accommodations, and some useful knowledge and skills about how we grow food and our efforts to steward the land and build community. Often times you may be working by yourself or with one other volunteer, but we always make sure you understand the task and feel comfortable with asking questions. We expect you to clean up after yourself and keep the kitchen tidy after you use it.
Please include "Já percebi" in your message to me to show you have read and understand our expectations. It means "I get it."
We pivoted from other careers and have learned farming mostly from books, podcasts, and YouTube. We welcome WWOOF volunteers who are also curious to learn and share their knowledge of regenerative, no-till, and organic farming practices. Farmers and authors who inspire and teach us include Briana Bosch, Jesse Frost, John Kempf, Charles Dowding, Joshua Sparkes, Jenny Love, Eliot Coleman, Allan Savory, Youngsang Cho, and Nigel Palmer. Here in Portugal, we are inspired by the farmers at Quinta d'Arminho, Lugar da Terra, Quinta de Sant'Ana do Gradil, Quinta do Pisão, and Aldeia do Vale.
For entrepreneurial and skilled people, we are looking for longterm partners to run their own businesses or operations on our larger farm, Quinta da Távora, in the Guarda District. This farm has a herd of cattle, nut orchards, and oak/pine forests. We envision becoming a "farm incubator," hosting other enterprises that build soil health and restore biodiversity and productivity while supporting decent livelihoods for the people who run them.
Read more
Learning opportunities
Vegetable farming
Fruit or nut farming
Grain farming
Poultry farming
Forestry
Vegetable or fruit preservation
Green Building
Methods or systems
Biological pest control
Holistic management
No-till farming
Permaculture
Regenerative agriculture
Host type
Production farm
Certified organic
1
Hectares
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2.5
Acres
