Living the Dream: Zen and the Art of Navigating Bureaucracy (a Cramooztopia update)
Many of you are probably wondering what we are up to, where things stand with our project, and what we are doing with our days. I have to admit, I have been pushing off the writing of this blog for months in the hopes that instead of a lukewarm update, I could share some epic and exciting news. Today, I have decided to rip off the Band-Aid and share the frustrating truth – but rest assured, all that means is that the big news is on hold. Let
The Olive Harvest
When we agreed to participate in the Vinha da Manta olive harvest, my mind conjured bucolic images of a team of volunteers bundled up in the cold November mornings but stripping down to t-shirts as we worked in the warm sun throughout the day, shaking down olive trees and gathering the fruit they delivered on nets placed on the ground. We had a great team, with eight people flying in to help for the week. Most were Dutch, with two Canadians thrown into the mix – and us, of
The Ups & Downs of Living the Dream
Are you wondering what we’re up to? Curious as to what has been going on after the year of traveling around the world and the summer spent learning new skills & volunteering on glamping sites in Portugal? Fair enough. Looking back, I notice that I have been posting very irregularly. Once, maaaybe twice a month. I harbor no misconceptions that this blog is going to turn into daily reflections (we can both breathe a sigh of relief now) but I think I can do better. I want to do better. With that
Woodworking & growing our tribe
Last summer Francois looked up interesting projects in Portugal that we might want to visit or connect with once we landed there come Spring 2017. One caught his eye in particular, and he encouraged me to check out their website – but I kept being distracted (classic) and so the tab stayed open for months. Earlier this year, it finally got to me to have this tab giving me the judgey eye every time I used Chrome. So I finally took a look, and Terra Alta had just started
Building muscles in Uruguay, one smile at a time
Up in the hills outside of Rocha, a small town North East of Uruguay’s capital Montevideo, sits what looks like a hobbit house. Three geodesic domes built of wood, mud, and thatch sit overlooking a gently sloping piece of land called “Tierra Alegre” or “Happy Earth”. This is Juli and Libre’s little piece of paradise. They moved here a few years ago when Juli was pregnant with their son Indi – who has the longest eyelashes I have ever seen and is now two years old. Also a part
For the love of Avocado!
Fact: avocados are delicious. I am not sure it is possible to get tired of eating avocado – its versatility as a food is limited only by our imagination. I have heard of replacing butter with avocado in baking recipes as well as breading and frying slices of avocado as fries. All that to say, we would love to have avocados on our future farm. So as we perused Workaway, we decided to look for an avocado farm to go spend some time on and learn what growing avocados
Tasmaniac Campervan Adventures
Itinerary Hobart – Paradise – Cradle Mountain – Launceston-ish – Bay of Fires – Wineglass Bay – Hobart Our Campervan Adventure Tasmania blew our minds, and we did not even see half the things there were to see on the island. After our two week stay at Tiger Hill Farm in Buckland, we spent a few days in the quaint city of Hobart – with more second hand bookstores than pubs, and a lot of pubs – before heading off to explore the North of the island. The challenge was
Reflections from halfway around the world
Can a year of travel and experiences change a person? Or maybe I should ask how could it not? Being at the “halfway mark” of our one year around-the-world belated honeymoon “sabbatical”, both geographically and time-wise, it seemed like a propitious time to pause and reflect on our adventures so far. To date, we have visited a selection of countries in Europe, East and South Africa, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Next is South and Central America. We have narrowly missed bombings (Thailand, August 2016) and two earthquakes
Gardening Yoga & happy farming in South Africa
The first challenge of volunteering on a farm in a country you are not familiar with is getting there. As we were headed to Happy Toes Farm in Groot Marico, South Africa, we took the bus from Johannesburg and almost ended up in Botswana! Somehow we got off at the right gas-station-in-the-middle-of-nowhere and Jeannine, the farm and volunteer manager, was there to pick us up. Happy Toes stands on a piece of land of roughly 3 hectares, and when the owner - mysterious ex DJ Byron who was unfortunately away during