Happy House Organic Farm
ReportLocation: Rosario, La Union, Philippines
Come and join us and expand your Philippine experience in a unique way.We're a whole life education center based around an organic farm with 99% of our guests coming from overseas.
The property right now is 1.2 hectares with plans to grow this to 3 hectares over the next 3 years. The farm's focus is education. From mid 2014 we will start running courses on natural health, organic gardening, bio farming, entrepreneurship, integrated spiritually, whole life living and more.
International travellers from a wide range of countries have already stayed with us. We are en-route to or from the Rice Terraces in Banawe and the Baguio - the cool summer mountain capital is just an hours public van/bus ride away. And if you are surfing type San Juan is just up the road one hour away as well.
The Farm was founded in late 2012. Previously it was a traditional rural rice farm. Rice is still grown on the property - we have five rice paddies and one large sloping field and a large vegi garden.
Development of the property began in mid 2013 and is ongoing with plans for a full water recycling system using reeds, bio gas production from the sewerage, swimming pool, fish farm, underground water tanks and full soil management and recovery systems.
We welcome guests from all countries but we ask that you stay for a minimum of 7 days. This is so that we have the time to get to know you and make your stay a great experience for you and for us.
We started a casual work arrangement a few months ago because many of our travelling guests wanted to help out in a relaxed and casual way based on their energy and the temperature of the day. To facilitate this and to allow us to create a high standard of accommodation we asked our guests visitors to contribute 500 pesos per person per night to cover food and accommodation. This has worked very well for everyone. Now our guests appreciate the relaxed space more and the great organic meals.
We are converting the farm over to organic agriculture. No chemicals or inorganic fertilizers are used on the farm since we purchased the property. We are now using worm farming, nitrifying weed vines and Kardis (pigeon pea) to regenerate the soil.
Our focus is to create a magic space where people can come from around the world and connect to nature and themselves and learn new ways of living life with ease, abundance, simplicity and fun.
We need help with building - garden creation, weeding, planting, tree care, harvesting, planting trees, composting and general property care and a little child care some times.
Your hosts are David (New Zealander) and Carol (Filipina) with our little Kyra who is one and a half years old right now.
We can accommodate around seven people but we normally have just 3 or 4 guests at a time until our new guest area is completed in the Happy House (we live in the Little Happy House!) with two new guest rooms and a break out space along with outside a cobo area and hammocks. Accommodation right now is in our shared guest room, garden cobbo and camping if good weather. All spaces are comfortable and have power, fans and mattresses. We will start work on completing the guest rooms in the ground floor of the Happy House (main 1/2 completed building) house soon which will include a large space for guests to relax in away from the Little Happy house where we live.
Here is a lot more info:
http://www.happyhousefarm.com/work-exchange-volunteers
Looking forward to seeing you very soon :)
David, Carol and Little Kyra
We have the following web pages you can view:
www.happyhousefarm.com
Facebook.com/happyhousefarm
youtube.com/happyhousefarm
OUR exact location (paste into Google Maps): 16.210930,120.432660
