Finca La Donaira

OUR FARM ENVIRONMENT.

We are a Finca of 700 hectares in Andalucia, between Sevilla and Malaga. It’s situated in the middle of a mountain between 600 and 1100 meters above sea level. We are surrounded by a tri-centenary oak tree forest, olive trees, vines and fruit trees, one medicinal garden and a vegetable garden.

WE ARE LOOKING FOR flexible and motivated volunteers that can stay 1.5 months minimum.
Please do not send a request if you can´t commit to this time frame.
We have space for 2-3 volunteer at a time, to stay in the community home for staff at the farm.

Currently looking for volunteers who can help us with:

- Food Preparation: If you like cooking we really need an extra hand helping preparing meals for our volunteers and team!
- In the Horse Area: volunteers with substantial horse experience, who can stay a minimum 3 months.
- General Maintenance Area: Are you handy, creative and know how to use with tools? We need you help
- Agricultural Area: volunteers with experience or eagerness to learn about agricultural and garden tasks
- Mucking out: Our horses and donkeys need daily care, for a few hours to keep their paddocks clean

·Life in the Farm

PERMACULTURE & AGRICULTURE.
We have a few projects on going in our fields, like vineyard for wine production, olive plantation for production of oil, vegetable garden, fruit tree garden, medicinal garden and depending on the season and by request of the team we may need help for define tasks.

ECOLOGICAL AND BIODYNAMIC PRACTICES.
We are a farm certified by CAAE for Ecological and by DEMETER in Biodynamic agriculture.
Depending on seasons we must elaborate our own preparations to treat our plantations and soil, we may need volunteers that have interest of soil regeneration and ecological treatments to help and learn about this subject.

STABLES.
Our horses live in a natural environment of immense fields, in their first 3 years of life they get trained under Natural Horsemanship, then to being trained under Doma/Dressage. One of our objectives is to sell horses that are both trusting humans and technically highly performing. Our horses are therefore the main characters in our farm, as our guests can ask for dressage lessons or “rutas” into the wild.

ANIMALS IN OUR FARM
We have other farm animals like cows, donkeys, goats, sheeps, chickens, geese and roosters.

TEAM.
We are big team, great group of enthusiasts, open to new ideas and way of growing. Some of then live on the farm, some others in the small Pueblos Blancos of the region.

LENGUAGES & COMMUNICATION.
We are all from different origins and countries, we therefore speak a mix of English and Spanish. Speaking ONE or both is a big plus for our organizational communication.

VOLUNTEERING PROGRAM
We love to receive people with initiative, creativity, energy and with the wish to learn and teach, live on the farm enjoying in your free time an environment of magic nature that invites us to explore, to do walking and cycling tours or simply to meditate on the beauty we are blessed with.
The volunteer program is a major component in our farm, you can expect to help in a wide variety of fields...

1. In Agricultural/Permacultre Area: Volunteers working with our agricultural team in the olive trees and vineyards. There is also general maintenance and construction work carried out on the farm. The volunteer is required to speak Spanish at an intermediate to high level. It is physically hard work but a good experience for people who want to learn about commercial farming and gain/share knowledge about production of plant fertilisers, preparing firewood, cleaning the forest. Depending of season: planting trees, seeding, weeding, harvesting, taking part in the maintenance of the area.

2. In the Community Area “El Nido”: Handy and creative volunteers that can assist in ou ornamental & herbs and tree Garden and depending of season: planting trees, seeding, weeding and harvesting, also some light construction and maintenance for the housing area of volunteers and staff, like painting, carpentry, collet of fire wood, cleaning etc.
Also help with the Mucking out of the paddocks of our horses and Donkeys

3. In Staff Kitchen Area: Volunteers who help in the kitchen of “El Nido” to prepare and clean up for breakfast and lunch that we provide for staff and volunteers, we look for someone that love to cook, creative and interested to learn about a sustainable kitchen and help to create meals and clean up. Part of the task will be to take care of our small community garden, be a handy person that can assist in gardening projects: construction, maintenance for the housing area of volunteers and staff.
Also help with the Mucking out of the paddocks of our horses and Donkeys

4. In the Horses and Donkey Area: we need an SOME EXPERIENCED WITH HORSES who can stay 3 months minimum.
We need someone able to work comfortably around our horses and is knowledgeable about horse care as you may be required to move horses between fields/stables, help to prepare horses for riders and clean them up after their rides are finished. There may be the opportunity to ride and exercise our horses depending on the level of your riding ability, its not a Riding position. Also, it is requested to speak a minimum basic-intermediate Spanish to work in this area, as our team is half Spanish.
WE REQUIRE:

A great passion for learning as well as a lot of energy, eagerness to help and learn in a very special project.
Someone flexible with our task and schedules.
Someone wanting to live and share space and tasks with more people. Create a new little family 😊
Not being afraid on getting their hands dirty, we are a farm.
Have no problem with physical activity and can lift some weight.
Someone good with communication (communication it’s the key)



THE ACCOMODATION: Our housing is basic and simple: Three shared showers and two toilets, two dormitories that sleep two and four volunteers respectively.

Comfortable housing, kitchen and living room area are shared as well, lot of outdoors space terraces gardens to enjoy good weather days.

THE FOOD: We offer 3 healthy meals per day and follows a vegetarian diet mainly.

We enjoy and share permaculture principles, and we try to reduce to the maximum our use of un-ethical products.

We provide Wi-Fi connection

We provide bicycles as transport around the property and to village.

In the village there is a supermarket, post office, bank and ATM, pharmacy, tobacco shop, medical center, restaurants and café, etc.

You can use our washing machine for your laundry. Designated laundry day is Wednesday

We team up on Wednesday to deep clean our home.

In our community all members take part in our cleaning tasks and help to keep all shared areas clean and tidy.

We have 9 cats / We unfortunately don’t accept other dogs and cats.


-Send an application and we will schedule a videocall before being accepted into our volunteer program

We love to receive people with initiative, creativity, energy and with the wish to learn and teach, live on the farm enjoying an environment of magic nature that invites us to explore, to do walking and cycling tours or simply to meditate on the beauty we are blessed with. The volunteer program is a major component in our farm, you can expect to help in a wide variety of fields...