VB Home » Europe » Spain » Forest gardening, eco-building and permaculture at a co-housing project in Tenerife, Spain
Forest gardening, eco-building and permaculture at a co-housing project in Tenerife, Spain
ReportLocation: Tenerife, Spain
We are a Co-Housing and Permaculture project located in the laurisilva forests of the NorthWest of Tenerife. We work towards human rewilding and ecosystem regeneration, integrating the cultural reality of the current world and making the most of modern science and technology to enjoy the process of living meaningful lives together.Being taught by experienced Permaculture practitioners is the most valuable thing we offer in exchange for your help: We have a wide range of skills and enjoy teaching others about them - and we're developing many ongoing and diverse projects - so we will be happy to teach you, and you'll get to practice: Permaculture, ecosystem dynamics and regeneration, growing fruits and vegetables, raising animals, growing mushrooms, identifying and using wild plants, preparing herbal medicines, building houses and other structures, setting up and maintaining solar power systems, cooking new dishes...
WORKING ARRANGEMENT
We would like your help* with reforesting the parts of our lands that were cleared out (which involves digging and building garden beds, enriching the soil and planting trees, bushes, covering it with manure and mulch, etc.). And we build new wooden cabins and other structures (like greenhouses and stone walls) from time to time, for which we'd also appreciate help*.
* Physical strength and endurance are needed for those, so we're looking for volunteers who are used to and enjoy physical tasks.
We like to balance work and rest, social and private time, and prefer to organize ourselves flexibly depending on what needs to be done and how we're feeling each day, but a typical day here is having tea together in the morning, free time until the afternoon, and then a few days a week working together intensively on expanding our food forest and other projects. We expect about 15-20 hours per week. We are flexible depending on the work.
Children, smokers and LGBTQ+ folks are welcome.
LIVING ARRANGEMENT
We offer you a private room (it could be shared if we're packed, but normally we aren't) with shared kitchen and bathroom in a wooden house (like the one you can see in our profile picture). Meals are not included in the exchange, but you'll have your kitchen to prepare those, and we'll share with you some farm produce like eggs and vegetables - and you can buy anything else you need in the local farmers' market and supermarkets.
Tenerife is a micro-continent where you'll be able to enjoy forest hikes, desert walks, scuba diving, relaxing beach time and much more - Los Gigantes, Punta de Teno and Garachico are very popular destinations near us. You can move around the island with public transport, but it's not very frequent (especially in remote areas like ours) so having your own car would help you make the most of your free time.
Note that even though Tenerife is a subtropical island, our area is cool and moist (which makes the forest around us possible), so cloudy, foggy and rainy days are common most of the year (think "spring/summer in the UK" rather than "hot tropical beach"). Also note that we're still a small community and value our privacy, so this is a good place for self-reliant people, couples and families - not so much if you like to socialize all day, every day.
