🏡 1. Our Place
We are located in a remote sinhala village near Monaragala.
The property has mountain views, a great biodiversity, and untouched forests stretching along the streams that surround our property. It is the perfect place to disconnect, relax, and immerse yourself in nature. While this isolated landscape is ideal for purely organic cultivation, managing the local wildlife is actually a major challenge for farming!
Our land is also perfectly suited for Eco-tourism/Agro-Tourism/Glamping. We have nature trails running throughout the property, which have incredible potential—but they currently require major maintenance. It is a lot of hard work!
🌦️ Seasons & Climate
The Rainy Seasons: Heavy rains usually arrive around November/December and again around April.
The Summer Dry Period: September and October require a lot of preparation to get the land ready before the next rains arrive.
The Waterfall Season: From January to July, small waterfalls pop up everywhere. This is the absolute perfect time to bathe in the streams.
🚀 Current Projects & Vision
We are currently in the planning /beginning stages of establishing a large fruit forest/ cinnamon plantation/ camping sites/glamping for eco-tourists and a dedicated nature trail.
Additionally, we run a fruit-export business that we recently moved directly onto the farm. We pack and export fresh fruit harvested from our land and surrounding village networks and shipping directly to end-consumers in Germany.
🕷️ Nature & Living Conditions (Please Read Carefully!)
Because we live in the heart of nature, we share our space with plenty of insects, snakes, and spiders around the house. Mosquitoes pass through occasionally, and we rarely—but sometimes—see very small scorpions. You must be comfortable with this environment (and always shake out your boots before putting them on!). If you have a snake or spider phobia, this is not the right stay for you!
You also need to be happy with very basic facilities. However, we do have a solar hot shower for you (though it stays cool on cloudy days), which is a wonderful luxury out here!
👨👩👧👦 Meet the Family & Team
We are a Christian family of five:
Anusha (from Sri Lanka)
Benjamin (from Northern Germany, our "Nordlicht")
Our three energetic children: Sara (2017), David (2019), and Daniel (2024).
Local helper, who works alongside us in the garden.
Aunty, who occasionally helps us with cooking, babysitting, and housekeeping.
We also share our home with a few friendly goats and chickens. Whenever time permits, we strive to live as self-sufficiently as possible.
✨ Our Core Values
Thank you so much for your interest in visiting us! We love welcoming guests into our home. Because we deeply value meaningful connections, we want to be fully transparent about how we live. To ensure our time together is harmonious, peaceful, and truly fulfilling, we look for visitors who share or deeply respect our core family values:
🌱 FAITH & CREATION: Our lives are centered around a firm belief in God as the Creator.
🏡 MEANINGFUL STAYS: We prefer hosting guests for at least one month. We cherish building genuine bonds over time, rather than hosting those looking for a quick stopover or a budget travel option.
🍏 NATURAL & CLEAN LIVING: We are deeply committed to organic, healthy food and a simple, natural lifestyle. To maintain this environment, our home is strictly free from smoking and alcohol.
🌲 EMBRACING REMOTE SOLITUDE: Our home is located in a very remote area, far from city life. It is a beautiful space, but it requires guests who genuinely thrive in solitude, love being close to nature, and do not experience boredom or depression without urban entertainment.
👶 A FAMILY ATMOSPHERE: Our home is full of life with little ones! Being comfortable, patient, and joyful around babies and children is essential to blending into our daily routine.
We share these principles with love and clarity. If these guidelines feel a bit too rigid or restrictive for your personal lifestyle, we completely understand and gently suggest that our home might not be the right fit for your journey.
However, if these values truly resonate with your own heart and way of life, we would be absolutely delighted to welcome you. We are certain it will be a wonderful, enriching experience for us all!
🛠️ 2. Activities & Daily Tasks
As a volunteer, you will get hands-on experience with a wide variety of farm and homesteading tasks:
🐓 Animal Care: Preparing feed for the chickens and cutting fresh grass/branches for the goats.
🌱 Permaculture & Fertilizer: Preparing rich compost with the help of our chickens, and learning to produce our own organic liquid fertilizers, fungicides, and insecticides under expert guidance.
🌾 Traditional Paddy Cultivation: Helping us manage our rice fields as we slowly transition into sustainable, no-till paddy practices.
🍌 Agroforestry: Planting, maintaining, and harvesting bananas, papayas, and pineapples, as well as foraging for fresh greens in the gardens and jungle.
🪵 Land Maintenance: Weeding (lots of weeding!), cutting grass, and maintaining established roads and walking trails.
🌳 Fruit Forest Expansion: Helping us clear grass and plant bananas to establish our new fruit forest step-by-step.
🚧 Fencing & Construction: Planting and maintaining live fencing (Gliricidia), clearing new trails, and working on small building projects like a river dam to channel water to the fruit forest (with the potential of building a ram pump).
🛖 Major Projects: Assisting with big structural repairs/rebuilds of the treehouse and working on our ongoing building project (a new cabana by the waterfall).
💧 Wildlife Management & Watering: Protecting our precious crops from monkeys, peacocks, wild boars, and squirrels, as well as watering plants when needed (mostly from August to October).
🛌 3. Accommodations & Meal Plan
🛏️ Where You Will Stay
Depending on how many volunteers are visiting at the same time, you will share our large guest room (see photos). We are planing to accommodate a maximum of 6 people at a time.
For Adventure or max. Privacy or just to take some time alone you can go camping in our property. If you are interested bring your own tent and ask us about it.
🚿 Bathroom Facilities
The bathroom with a solar-heated shower and local squat toilet is attached. We have extra toilets in a dedicated toilet house just 25 meters from the main building. Those are connected to a bio-gas system.
🍛 Daily Meals
When possible we try to serve very simple, healthy, fresh, and unprocessed whole foods, sourced mainly straight from our garden.
What to Expect: Rice and traditional Sri Lankan curries are our daily staple, so you should be perfectly happy eating rice three times a day!
Dietary Style: Meals are lovingly prepared by Anusha or Aunty and mostly vegetarian. (vegan possible)
Preferences: We do not cook overly spicy food, and we are very flexible and happy to accommodate your personal preferences. We also serve plenty of fresh salads and seasonal fruits from the land.
⏰ 4. A Day With Us (Example Schedule)
We like to get our physical work done early in the morning before the day gets too hot. We ask for a standard 5 hours of work per day, but you are always welcome to do more if you are feeling inspired!
07:00 – Breakfast together 🍳
07:30 – Physical work in the garden and farm (starting early to beat the heat) 🪵
10:30 – Free Time (2 hours to rest and relax) ☕
12:30 – Lunch together 🍛
13:00 – Free Time (2 hours for a midday break) 💤
15:30 – Afternoon tasks: Weeding, watering, general maintenance, cleaning the goat house, harvesting bananas, or cutting grass. 🌿
17:30 – Dinner together 🥣
18:00 – Free Time & Wind Down: Chilling out, playing board games, reading, sharing stories, and relaxing. 🎲
21:00 – Good night! 🌙
⏰ A Day With Us (Flexible Hours)
We work a standard 5 hours per day, but we keep the schedule highly flexible.
Often, we love to start very early to beat the tropical heat. We will pack our breakfast, head out to the fields for one solid morning shift, and finish before the midday sun hits.
Then, you can wash off with a jump into the waterfall pond, eat a hearty lunch, and enjoy the entire afternoon and evening to completely relax, read, or explore!
🧭 5. Free Time Activities
There is an endless amount of natural beauty to explore right on our doorstep during your time off:
🥾 Jungle & Stream Exploration: Hike, climb, and wander through our property, discovering rocky streams, hidden grasslands, and dense jungle.
🌊 Waterfall Bathing: When the water levels are high, you can bathe in the crystal-clear streams and follow them to undiscovered spots. (Please note: streams dry up significantly during the dry season from August to October).
🧗 Mountain Adventure: Take on a real jungle challenge by hiking the local village mountain! There are no set trails, so it requires climbing over rocks and pushing through thick jungle up to the peak. This is a full-day trip, and you will need to hire a local guide from the village.
🛕 Temple Walks: Walk along a scenic road up the same mountain to visit the beautiful, peaceful Buddhist mountain temple.
🤝 Village Life: Take a stroll through the local village to see traditional Sri Lankan rural life. The locals are incredibly warm, welcoming, and friendly!
🐒 Wildlife Watching: If you appreciate animals, our land is a paradise. While the local wild elephants were sadly decimated or resettled about 20 years ago, our property is teeming with wildlife. Keep your eyes open for wild boars, deer, monkeys, peacocks, giant squirrels, land turtles, monitor lizards, chameleons, geckos, vibrant butterflies, and countless exotic birds!
Read more
Learning opportunities
Fruit or nut farming
Grain farming
Methods or systems
Permaculture
Host type
Self-sufficiency property
14
Hectares
|
34.6
Acres
