We are a Swiss-Norwegian familiy living in the country side of Southern Norway. Our boy is ten and we have a dog, a cat and chickens. We love nature and being outdoors and try to live a sustainable life. It is important to us to buy used things whenever we can, fix things and both produce our own and buy locally grown, organic food. Our big vegetable and flower garden (mostly permaculture principles) is central on the property, we have plenty of own vegetables and love to try out and learn more about growing our own food every year. The chickens give us eggs and create manure as fertilizer for the garden and we use our own compost as fertilizer.
Our dog is also a central part of our daily life. She needs quite a lot of activity and loves to learn new tricks. We are very glad if people who stay with us want to play with her and take her for walks in the forest that begins right behind our house.
Ståle has a workshop for doing woodwork and he has a lot of knowledge about traditional building, restoration and everything from making wooden bowls to carving knives and spoons.
Stefanie studied history and philosophy a long time ago and teaches now yoga as a full-time job. She is also an Ayurvedic nutritionist. If you are interested you can learn about how to stay healthy or treat existing imbalances with food habits, how to use herbs and spices as medicine, etc.
There are mainly five areas wwoofers can/will be contributing to. Some depend on the season and availability of projects, others are stable:
1. Gardening/vegetable growing: You will be able to learn about growing organic food. Sowing seeds indoors and later also outdoors between February and May (some as late as July), planting out small plants and taking care of them. Learning about what kind of vegetables need manure/fertilizer, what kinds do not need that much or nothing at all in order to grow well, watering, weeding, helping to harvest stinging nettles and other wild foods, berries, cherries, apples, ...and making pesto, jam, etc. of whatever we harvest.
Taking care of the chickens by feeding them and cleaning their coop is also part of the vegetable garden activity.
2. Working with wood: Depending on the season you might be alble to help with splitting wood, building compost bings, cutting back tree branches or building/fixing wooden fences.
3. Helping with our dog: play with her, go for long walks with her (in summer she will also love to swim and play near the water).
4. Letting our ten year old son be part of what's happening around here. He's often up for physical activities, playing games, swimming, sleeping outdoors, etc. So yes, it helps a lot if you like kids.
We are mentioning this not because it is. a "daily chore", but because our experience of hosting wwoofers for some years shows that it is most fun for everyone if you want to join some activities like e.g. playing table tennis in our basement or playing games, joining us to sleep outdoors, etc.
5. Possible to learn about and participate in (mostly vegetarian) ayurvedic cooking and baking bread, cakes, etc. (mainly sourdough, some with yeast). All wwoofers are encouraged to move and play and get some fascinating new experiences as far as they are up to it. Until now all twelve of them found it felt really good to practice yoga and swim in the river near the sauna (also in October with freezing temperatures). Some of them also got to sleep under the open sky where birds were doing their mating dance in April/May, others slept in a tent near a frozen lake and shared the experience of northern lights with us in November.
At some point in 2026 we will build a dam. We have dug the whole but there is no water in it yet. There are already some toads and frogs that have been coming back to our garden for several years. Probably because there is a creek just beside our property.
What could a WWOOFer's day look like at our site:
Garden work (sowing, watering, planting, harvesting, working with compost...), if interested cook, make bread and chutneys, jams, etc., help with woodwork (depening on projects), tend to the chickens, set up a wooden fence for the vegetable garden or create new beds (e.g. permaculture "hugelbeds", go for a long walk in the forest with our dog, on some weekdays/nights possible with excursions and sleeping outdoors or sauna and swim in the river, join a yoga class, ...
We have irregular schedules due to Stefanie being a full-time yoga teacher and mainly working late afternoon and evenings. No day is the same due to the teaching scedule. It is good if Woofers can enjoy being some hours home alone when Stefanie is teaching and Ståle is out with our son for his sports activities.
We love to be outside, go for walks, make a fire, sleep outdoors and if interested we take our wwoofers on forest or mountain trips and swimming (with or without sauna) all year round. Right from our doorstep you can walk into the forest. There is a small lake where you can swim and there's a river nearby too. We have a bike or two that WOOFers can borrow and the mountains (lifjell 1200m) are right beside us. We are just a bit more than an hour from the sea.
FOR FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN: We are only interested in hosting families with children above the age of 6 years. Our place is better suited for them. Kids (and their parents!) need to be ok with a big loving dog who might want to play or lick them in the face in affection.
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Learning opportunities
Vegetable farming
Flower farming
Aromatic or medicinal plants, teas
Seed saving or production
Bakery
Traditional crafts
Green Building
Renewable energy production
Methods or systems
Biological pest control
Permaculture
Regenerative agriculture
