With maple syrup season behind us, Luciana Vila Funes and her team have plenty of sap buckets to clean out.

“Tony, put them over there to dry, please,” Luciana said to one of the young men who was helping her as she finished spraying down one row of buckets with a power washer.

Luciana, who’s known to her coworkers and neighbors as Lu, is in charge of the crew that takes care of the grounds at Camphill Village, a sprawling community in the town of Copake.

“Tony is such a good person to have,” Lu said. “Doing these tasks that are repetitive, he’s really good at it and he really enjoys it.”

Tony is one of nearly 100 adults living at Camphill Village with developmental disabilities. Each is responsible for helping out with various tasks that support the broader community.

“When they are here they’re making a difference and I like to think I’m making a difference when I’m here as well,” Lu said.

What makes Camphill so rare is that just about everyone else living and working at the Columbia County property is a volunteer. Lu learned about the opportunity at a recruitment talk given by two other volunteers visiting her native Argentina.

“I thought I will just go for a year and now I am about to start my fourth year here, so it’s going pretty well actually,” she said.

Volunteers, whose housing and other basic needs are covered by the community, live with the people they serve in different homes spread around the village. Kai Migliaccio moved here with her partner from Rhode Island just a few months ago.

“It’s really just super helpful that we have so many people living together and working toward one goal,” Kai said as she set the table ahead of dinner with her housemates.

Like all of the volunteers here, Kai and her partner have committed to staying at Camphill for at least a year. A few months in she says she has no regrets.

“It’s been amazing,” she said. “You do a lot of beautiful work and there are just these moments that are so special in the day that make it so worth it.”

Elvira Neal has been at Camphill for more than 20 years and is the coordinator for new volunteers. She says they’re in need of new people because the pandemic has resulted in many volunteers having to return to their own counties.

“We are always looking for help,” Neal said during a tour through the village’s coffee and gift shop, which have been closed off to the public during the pandemic. “We have people from all over the world that are contacting us and looking to join us and we are always happy to invite people.”

As the work with her team continues, Lu admits it sometimes feels like she’s getting more out of the experience than the men and women she’s come here to serve.

“We help each other through our best days and our worst days,” she said. “We count on each other and when someone needs you there’s always someone there.”

The application process for becoming a Camphill Village volunteer begins on the organization’s website.