I hold 16 icelandic horses, hens, ducks and 2 cats on the farm. I am Charlotte - norwegian but has lived abroad for years (Brittain, Peru, Chile, Sweden) live here "alone" with wwoofers all year around. Work will consist of (in summer) putting up, checking and fixing fences, checking, watering and moving animals on pasture, helping in everyday work with animals, tree planting, working with winter firewood, easy forest work, cleaning of animal rooms, participation in maintainance of farm. For skilled, longterm wwoofers riding and horsetraining (natural horsemanship) is possible but most horses are little or untrained animals. By skilled, I mean aproximately 500 hours+ on horseback if on icelandic horses, or 1000 hours+ on 3-gaited horses. We don't do leisure-riding. In afternoons in summer we often drive to a nearby lake to go swimming before main, common meal and relax. Wwoofers will, in summer, live either in the house or in one of the tiny cabins on the farm. Winter-wwoofers live in the house. I'm in my thenth year with wwoof and have become a pasionate wwoofhost - for some reason I seem to get the best wwoofers, and my amount of "bonus children" all over Europe seems to be continously increasing.... Lots of them come back again and again, and some come back bringing friends or even their whole family! I was an exchange student in young days and besides having a hand with the farm work, getting to know people from different cultures is my major motivation for attending the wwoof system.
I work outside the farm 3 days a week, so my wwoofers have to be able to work quite independantly. Mostly I have enough people on the farm, overlapping, so the old ones can teach the new ones. Still it takes about 10 days to "learn" the farm, so because of this, I don't take wwoofers for less than 3 weeks. In winter I have 2-3 wwoofers, even if there is mostly just a few hours of work a day. If people come for longer stays during October - January, it is possible to combine wwoofing with online studies.
Over the last months and years I've had some wwoofers who have gone wwoofing, not because of the learning, cultural exchange or personal growth - but simply because they need somewhere to live for free, also having their expenses covered. I know there are hosts on wwoof who mainly need someone to walk the dog and water the garden - that kind of farm can be suitable for that kind of wwoofers, but since this is a very active farm, it is not a good idea to come here as a such. You'll get into bad vibes with the other wwoofers. Also, since I mostly have quite a lot of wwoofers, it is good if wwoofers coming here have a fair interest of socializing, working and living in a cooperative. We live, work, clean and cook together. Wwoofers who hide from work, don't do their share - and then complain about the contitions, would probably be happier somewhere else - or not go wwoofing. Wwofing is a wonderful possibility. Over the 11 years I've been a host, having had between 4 and 500 youngsters here, I see that the ones that leave the most happy (and come back), are the ones diving into what this very different kind of life offers. Groth mostly comes through challenges, not by repetitions of what you already have lived....
We also have a vegetable-garden, and try to grow as much of our own vegetables as possible. This is a proyect that startet small and is slowly increasing year by year.
Certifications: Use mineral fertilizers but not herbicides
Internet access available
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Learning opportunities
Poultry farming
Horse or donkey farming
Forestry
Host type
Production farm
80.5
Hectares
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198.9
Acres
Accommodation
