Caretaking couple with many Attributes

About this sitter

I am in my early sixties and am currently augmenting my retirement income by continuing my career as a fine artist. My resume includes Thirty years of fine home construction, including cabinet making and custom furniture, commercial fishing with thousands of hours running a boat in the North Pacific. We have just completed building our home in upstate NY, and seek opportunities for winter housesitting in warm climates. We have spent the last three winters housesitting in Spain, Brazil, and the United States and have references with ongoing invitations to return from all of our previous hosts. My wife is a language specialist as well as a designer, and speaks seven languages fluently, including, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and English. I have a website for my Art, kenkennell.com, where you can find out more about us, and a list of References, under the "about" tab.

Why they want to house sit

We seek to meet new people and experience the authenticity of new locations by residing there for extended stays versus the short whirlwind tours undertaken by most tourists. While I am a student of languages, my wifes fluency in several languages allows us to integrate into the communities and develop lasting relationships with the locals. Since I can accomplish my Art just about anywhere, this also opens the door to the community as I frequently paint the local inhabitants and landscapes and include the community in art workshops, as well as staging local exhibitions.

Their experience

We are in our seventh year of caretaking/housesitting, which include long term assignments on a sailing yacht, an off the grid farm, a villa in Spain, all which included the care of animals and pets, ranging from horses and donkeys to dogs, cats, fish, chickens, birds.

What can they bring to the assignment

We are self sufficient problem solvers. With my decades of experience in construction in Alaska, Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest, and Ana's fluency in many languages there is rarely a situation that we can't handle ourselves. We are very good with people and can manage hospitality opportunities, i.e. B&B's. We love animals and since our traveling lifestyle prevents us from having pets of our own, we derive a lot of joy from the animals of our hosts.