Category Archives: WWOOF

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Adventures With Barrier Blokes

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I just finished a WWOOF stay on a veggie farm on the Great Barrier Island. What a great experience! Even most Kiwis don’t get the chance to visit the Barrier, so I feel very lucky to have spent four weeks there really experiencing island life and getting to know the local people. Our WWOOF hosts, Caity and Gerald, were wonderful. They’re the only people doing commercial agriculture on the island. Our main tasks involved harvesting and preparing all the produce for weekly veggie box deliveries and markets. It was harvest and tourist season at full bloom, with an abundance of beans, strawberries, tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, and more to pick every day. It was hard but satisfying work.

The Barrier is unlike anywhere else I’ve stayed. The island has a small community of about 600 people (except around Christmas/New Year time when it gets inundated with tourists from Auckland), and everybody knows each other. There are only a handful of restaurants and shops, and prices are high since most things need to be imported from the mainland. The island is also off the grid and has limited cell phone and Internet access. We had to learn quickly how to conserve power and live with limited resources. It’s a simple and quiet life, tucked away among beautiful beaches and mountains. It really is a whole other world!

View coming into the Great Barrier on the Sealink ferry

View coming into the Great Barrier on the Sealink ferry


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Kiwi Introductions

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Kia Ora from New Zealand! This is only the second time I’ve been in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s quite nice to be walking around in shorts and swimming in the ocean in December.

I’ve spent the past 3 weeks WWOOFing on a permaculture farm about an hour north of Auckland. The property is run by a woman named Audrey, and there are many WWOOFers coming through from various parts of the world: France (so many French!), Germany, Netherlands, America. The land itself is beautiful, consisting of 20 acres of forestry, fauna, streams, and walking paths. Our work included planting, mulching, clearing bush, feeding chickens, cleaning, and building a huge community earth oven. I didn’t end up learning much about permaculture or farming, but it was a nice first stop that introduced me to many things about NZ.

Part of my morning run

Part of my morning run


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From Skinny Dipping to Snow

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Some crazy weather up here in the Sierra Nevadas. At the beginning of this week, we were wearing shorts during the day and still skinny dipping in the pool after work. This morning, we woke up to 40 degree weather and snow! We spent the day harvesting the rest of the summer tomatoes and peppers. Winter is here, and the farm is transforming again.

Fruit orchard and part of the winter garden before the snow

Snow!

Working on beds in the green house while snow falls outside

We got more new WWOOFers and a few visitors this week, which makes for a great work crew and a full lunch table. Tuesday night everyone gathered at the main house to watch the election results. Hansel broke out bottles of farm-made wine,  I baked a ton of snickerdoodles, Emma (one of the new WWOOFers) shaved her head, Obama won reelection, and marijuana was legalized in Oregon and Washington. Great night!

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Time Flies

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Alex, another WWOOFer who arrived on the same day I did, reminded me that we’ve been on the farm for exactly one month today. Time is flying! I’ve done a bad job of keeping up blogging, but it’s a testament to how wonderful this place is. There are so many cool things going on and so many great people here that the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer screen.

This 80-acre farm is run by the Kern family, who are incredibly warm and inspiring people. Everything here is owner-built, and they’ve had more than 300 WWOOFers come through so far. There are currently 10 WWOOFers here, and most of us live in a community of trailers and RVs called WWOOFVILLE.

We just started working winter hours (9 am – 1:30 pm). The Kerns are really great about mixing up the work so things never get monotonous. I love having a farm-fresh breakfast every morning and meeting Hansel to talk over the day’s tasks. Just a sprinkling of some of the cool work we’ve been doing:
– transplanting kale, chard, cabbage & onions for the winter garden
– climbing walnut trees and getting stained fingers from peeling walnuts
– moving firewood for the winter
– harvesting everything from tomatoes and peppers to apples and peaches
– working with kids at the local North Fork school garden every Friday
– canning tomatoes and peppers
– making goat cheese
– milking goats!
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Let It Rain!

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I arrived at the Kern Family Farm in North Fork, CA on Oct 2, and there are too many great things to say about this place! I’ll be here up until Thanksgiving so there’s plenty of time for updates. This post is solely dedicated to the fact that… it rained!!

Most places around here haven’t had rain in months, and I haven’t felt a drop since getting to the West Coast in early August. It truly was a noteworthy event. We didn’t get more than a quarter to a half an inch, but I got to finally break in the new rain coat. Along with the rain came the fog, which up here in the mountains completely transforms the farm. It’s really an incredible sight! Even though the sudden temperature drop left us all feeling freezing, it was a really great day. We spent the morning planting hundreds of onions in the rain and fog and the afternoon warming up with delicious Mexican food and homemade wine.

Our newly transplanted rows of broccoli in the morning fog

Beautiful little green onions ready to be transplanted

Planting onions

Warming our freezing hands over the stove

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It’s a Monk’s Life

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Settling into a rhythm here. Mondays through Thursdays we usually start around 7:30 or 8 am. Every morning begins with watering all the potted plants and seeds, feeding the chickens, and cleaning the chicken coop. (Like having eggs? Gotta clean chicken poop.) Roughly 4-5 hours of work in the morning, a lunch break between 12:30 – 3:30 pm, then another 2-3 hours of work in the afternoon. At 6 pm we feed the dogs, which involves chaining four of them lest they fight and bite each other’s necks off. I’m usually tuckered out by 8 or 9 pm!

Fridays and Saturdays are a bit different and start earlier around 6:30 or 7 am. Friday is spent harvesting in the early morning before it gets too hot, then cleaning, sorting, weighing, and packing all the vegetables for next day’s farmers’ market. Saturday we pack everything into the van at 7 am, sell at the market from 9 am – 12 pm, do grocery shopping for the week while in town, and then finish with resorting all the unsold veggies.

Sunday we rest, like god.
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Going North!

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Spent the past week ironing out upcoming travel plans in between farm work. I’m leaving the peach farm on Wednesday. My time here has been short but fruitful. The next legs of the trip are completely different from my original thinking, but I’m excited.

Rough itinerary:
8/29 – 9/13: WWOOFing at Bobcat Ridge avocado farm in Watsonville, CA
9/14-17: Boise, ID
9/18-26: Seattle, WA
9/26 – 10/1: Portland, OR
10/2: WWOOFing at Kern Family Farm in North Fork, CA

Unfortunately, I only packed with the intention of visiting warmer climates. Time for some thrifting!

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First Days at the Peach Farm

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“It’s nice today, only 90 degrees.” Welcome to farming in the California desert!

I arrived at the Ananda Marga Organic Peach Farm on Tuesday. Although it’s called a peach farm there aren’t any peaches in season right now, so we’ve been working with many vegetables. It’s been very enjoyable so far. Dada runs the farm and has been teaching us so many interesting things, from how to help seeds germinate to making delicious Indian corn bread. There are two other volunteers here from Taiwan, so there’s also a lot of Chinese-speaking going on. Randomly pleasant surprise.

The living quarters are rustic, and the work is hard. Even with several breaks throughout the day, I’m still ready for bed by about 9 pm. We spent most of the last two days building raised beds. I’m now steps closer to becoming an expert wood worker.

Cutting wood with Ann and Richard

Assembling the beds

Collecting chicken wire for the raised beds — rough work!

There are six dogs on the farm. They help guard the land and also provide great entertainment.

Meet Will. He follows us around everywhere. Most of the time it’s endearing, unless he’s panting in your face while you’re using the power saw.

Today is our big harvest day. We were up at 6:30 am collecting tomatoes, kale, arugula, beans, basil, and chard. Tomorrow we head to the farmers’ market!

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A Peachy Plan

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It’s been tricky trying to answer people who ask where I’m planning to go after leaving New Haven. It’s not their fault. It’s a completely logical followup question when someone tells you they’re taking off to travel. The problem is my plan — or lack thereof. I really don’t know exactly where I’ll go, or how long I’ll stay, or what I’ll do. The plan, in short, is to travel unplanned. And hopefully learn and discover a ton along the way.

I do have an initial destination set, officially confirmed this week. I’ll be WWOOFing at the Ananda Marga Organic Peach Farm in Lake Hughes, CA at the end of the summer. This farm was recommended by a friend and seems to offer a great balance of everything I’m craving. The Dada sent a schedule for a typical day there:

5:30 -7:30am meditation/yoga
7:30 – 8:30 Breakfast+clean-up
8:30-12pm field work
12-2:30 Lunch break+clean-up
2:30-5:30 field work
5:30 – 6:30 free time
6:30- 8:30 meditation/yoga
8:30- 10:30 dinner+free time
10:30 lights off

I feel more relaxed already!

I’m also looking forward to the opportunity to mature my yoga practice. After years of being a wayward dabbler, I’ve recently started toeing the line into more advanced poses. It’s terrifyingly humbling (I fall over a lot) but also exhilarating to work toward. Speaking of which, this video of Briohny Smyth is BADASS. Must work harder, harder, harder…