Volunteer · mid Wales, near Machynlleth
We host skilled, willing folk through WWOOF and Workaway, year round: comfortable accommodation and good food in exchange for your help. These days we're especially after experienced, skilled people with the enthusiasm to work as a team and get stuck in.
It's a jungle out there, and it always takes more than one pair of hands. After almost fourteen years and over 350 residential volunteers through WWOOF and Workaway, we still love welcoming willing folk to come and work alongside us. These days we're especially keen to hear from experienced, skilled people with the enthusiasm to work as a team and really get stuck in.
Blaeneinion is a busy, working valley, and the more you bring, the more you'll take away. These are the kinds of hands and know-how that make the biggest difference here.
Confident hands for the veg beds, the polytunnel and propagation. Folk who've grown food before and know the rhythm of a long season: sowing and pricking out, weeding and watering, succession and harvest, saving our own seed. If you can read a plant and tell what it's asking for, you'll be worth your weight here.
Practical carpentry, fencing, a bit of stonework, and the general DIY that keeps cottages, cabins and structures sound and characterful. We build a lot of what we have ourselves, from locally sourced timber, so if you can frame a wall, hang a door, or just fix the thing that broke this morning without being asked twice, please do get in touch.
Coppicing, clearing and keeping paths open, hedge-laying, and tending the wetland and woodland the beavers share. It's outdoor work in all weathers, and there's a lot of it. A chainsaw ticket and your own boots are a real bonus, but a strong back and a willingness to be out in the rain matter just as much.
A feel for how our solar, water and wood systems actually work, and the everyday problem-solving that comes with living lightly off the land. We don't need an engineer, but someone who isn't frightened of a battery, a pump or a wood-burner, and who can nurse a system along and spot trouble before it becomes a crisis, is gold to us.
Calm, reliable care for our hens and the rest of the stock: the daily rounds morning and evening, feeding and watering, mucking out, shutting up safely at dusk against the fox. Nothing here is hard once you know it, but it has to be done every single day, in all weathers, and done properly. Folk who are steady and kind around animals are always wanted.
Feeding a hungry crew well, often from whatever we've just pulled out of the ground, and helping put the year's glut by: bottling, freezing, jams and chutneys, drying and storing. If you love cooking honest food for a table full of people, and hate seeing anything go to waste, you'll fit right in.
This is residential volunteering: board and lodging in exchange for your help, year round, not a paid job. Here's the plain shape of it.
Your own comfortable, warm accommodation while you're with us, not a tent in a field. Somewhere proper to rest at the end of the day.
Three meals a day, much of it grown right here, eaten together as a household. Vegetarians and most diets happily catered for; just tell us.
Roughly thirty hours of work a week in exchange for your board and lodging, with proper time off to rest and explore the valley and the coast.
A real, hands-on share of twenty years of growing, building and living self-sufficiently. You'll leave knowing things you can use anywhere.
Busy days, good food eaten together, and evenings that are yours, with the wild beavers feeding by the fire pit as the light goes.
If you've recognised yourself in any of this, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a hello and tell us a little about yourself.
