Nakagomi Orchard
We are growing various kinds of fruits including cherry, peach, pear, apple, grapes etc. We are doing fruit picking as business. We are one of the largest fruit farms in Yamanashi and the largest fruit picking farm in Minami Alps City.
Volunteers can stay in the dorm with free Wifi. We have some facilities such as kitchen, 2 shower rooms, 2 toilets, a wooden desk area for enjoying meals, BBQ site etc. Moreover, our volunteers can enjoy our seasonal fruits during the harvest season from mid of June to October.
During the cherry blossom season, volunteers can enjoy the beautiful cherry blossom just outside the dorm.
We have 5 lovely cats. They are very friendly to people. If you are animal lover, you will have great time with our cats.
During the workdays, we will provide volunteers breakfast, lunch and dinner. On the day off, volunteers have to take care of themselves for the meals. There are some supermarkets and convenient stores nearby with walking distance about 30 minutes.
About the working hours, it would be about 25 to 28 hours in a week (4 days or 5 days of work in a week), depends on the weather and our schedule.
We ask our volunteers with mostly mowing & weeding since our farm is so huge and during spring, summer and fall, we need your big help for mowing & weeding by tools & machines. Of course, We will teach you how to use them from the very basic. In the farming, weeding & mowing takes very important role for whatever vegetables & fruit trees you grow. If you don't keep weeding, they will take all the nutrition out of the soils around trees and the trees don't grow well. It is the same for the case of vegetables also. Some people tend to look down on the weeding, but then they don't understand the farming at all. So, we have to catch up with the weeds and do weeding. Hopefully, this helps you to understand the farming as a basic knowledge.
Beside mowing and weeding, there are some seasonal works which volunteers can help such like trimming the peach flowers, pollination works manually etc. Volunteers will learn the way how Japanese grow fruit.
We will give priority to those who can stay two weeks or longer. Because we will teach volunteers how to use machine for weeding. It takes time for volunteers getting used to weeding machine. Therefore, we prefer to have volunteers who can stay long.