Do you want to drop everything for a while and go alone? Do you need to find yourself? Do you want to get away from the frenzy of everyday life and resume the rhythms of nature?
There are many solutions offered today between volunteer trips, group tours, cruises on gulets or shared boats, but only one is really new: being guest-volunteers at mountain farms in South Tyrol.
A holiday which perhaps cannot be defined as such. It is more a break from everyday life: it is the opportunity to live in a high mountain farm isolated from inhabited centers where time passes from sunrise to sunset, where you always work but with rhythms of nature, in which there is neither TV nor digital stress, in which it is offered to lend a hand to the farmers in carrying out their seasonal activities!
The meeting with the family, a quick meal, one walk short around the farm are the first moments of meeting and getting to know who will host you, and then - often without too many preambles but with innate courtesy - devote oneself to the first tasks, the jobs that anticipate the real work: help in the stable, the harvest of the fruit, the rotation of the hay, the preparation of dairy products, etc.
Rhythms that are repeated every day from the early hours of dawn to sunset, rhythms that leave peace, efforts that find the right compensation in the afternoon rest time rather than in the evening refreshment, regularity, simplicity, tranquility, immediate integration into the family.
The rapprochement with the rhythms of nature initially has a strong impact for those who have never fully followed them, but a couple of days are enough to appreciate and enjoy every minute, dawn in the morning, snow-capped mountains in winter or green d summer, of the light of the moon that illuminates the landscapes, of the sky that seems starry and immense more than ever thanks to the absence of artificial lights, the view from above on the valleys below, the afternoon walks.
And then before leaving it is easy to nostalgia for the found serenity make room and make yourself aware that once you return to the city you can no longer fully follow the rhythms of nature.
A regenerating holiday. To repeat. As needed.
Without forgetting that it is also voluntary. Packed with personal benefits.
