posted 9 years ago
No Pay - Work Exchange of 4 hours/day 5/days a week or less for food & camping space - Help us turn three acres of mistreated mountainside into a productive and healthy forest homestead
Up to three visitors at a time - Visits between one week and one month
We are establishing subsistence farming systems for vegetable, meat, and fruit production. If you are looking for experience in starting your own small-scale self-sufficient farm on a tight budget, this would be a great experience for you. As of January 2016, we have eight chickens and eight garden beds ready for improvement. We’re hoping to get to these projects in the first quarter of 2016:
Expand to a secondary garden plot, either loaned by a relative or at the top of our hill
Set up a more reliable seed-starting station with better lighting and heat mats
Complete the structural elements of the kitchen and start on the finishing steps
Prepare a site for the second coop and draft a design
Start clearing for the metal and wood workshop
We’re happy to teach you about:
Brewing wine and mead, which usually takes place during the late summer and fall but we can show you the equipment and processes any time
Fishing and crawfish trapping
Baking with whole wheat without a lot of work or additives, making yogurt from scratch, canning, fermenting, and other fun food activities
Wild plant and tree identification
Herbal medicine like tinctures and teas made from wildcrafted, homegrown, and imported herbs
Rustic instrument making – we like to make percussion and stringed instruments out of recycled materials like cans and gourds
You can learn alongside us as we develop our skills in
Grafting and propagation
Seed starting of native plants to restore the forest
Soil building from the ground up and decontamination via mushrooms and cover crops
Growing over rock with raised containers and hugelbeets
Planning and implementing small scale projects to capture water, heat, and other natural resources
Controlling erosion during seasonal flooding with berms and swales
Covering bare soil with tough native plants that also attract beneficial insects
Expanding into beekeeping with mason bees first.
Our homestead is also focused around developing a strong and personal land-based spirituality, so we’d like visitors who are interested in that as well, or at least willing to put up with it. No previous experience or specific belief system is necessary if you can keep an open mind.
We’re just a few miles up the road from Springer Mountain/the beginning of the Appalachian Trail/the Benton MacKaye trail and about 15 miles from Amicalola Falls. There are rivers all around with countless tubing and kayaking rental companies, so you don’t have to pack your own equipment to enjoy the waters. This is also the Apple Capital, so you can tour the commercial orchards in your time off to get a different look at agriculture.
Right now we only have space outdoors for camping because the cabin has no private space available until we’ve completed the repairs. The indoor bathroom is available at all times (keep in mind you’re sharing it with four cats and all that entails) and the kitchen is already mostly outdoors. We eat two to three meals a day we’re happy to share, and we provide some basic staples for preparing your own meals at other times. We eat omnivorous meals made from a mix of homegrown, conventional, and organic products. We can’t provide a lot of extra snacks or specialty foods because we’re on a tight budget and the homestead itself doesn’t produce any income.
There’s two creeks right next to our cabin and a lake just down our road, so it’s a good place for swimming, hiking, fishing, and other fun. You can hike up the mountain we’re on for breathtaking views if you can handle the steep grade. We’re surrounded by outdoor activity opportunities, yet only 2 hours north of Atlanta so you can see the city too in one trip (or just stay for the weekend without a long drive to get home). We are located 20 miles/45 minutes away from town (Ellijay), so you will need your own transportation to get here or will need to make arrangements with us to get picked up and dropped off in town. We are happy to set up a camp kitchen for vegetarians or anyone else that want to prepare their own food. Our four cats and chicken flock make this place unsuitable for anyone with allergies to either of them.
We cannot accept more than three people at a time, or anyone traveling with pets or children. We are LGBTQI friendly and accepting of alternative religions – as long as your meditation or bodywork doesn’t get in the way of you helping out around the place. We’re working on setting up a website as a handbook about our homestead, what we expect out of WWOOFERS/rules, and an updated calendar of activities going on around the property.
If you made it through all that text and are still interested, contact us via private message and we'll send you our email address.
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