What is a wwoofing experience like?

 

Wwoofing, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, is a unique way for you to travel the world on a budget whilst learning about living environmentally friendly. Depending on where you want to go, you can learn about organic growing, animal keeping, building and much more! My boyfriend and I decided to travel through the United Kingdom. Here you can read about our first wwoofing experience.

We started working after the day we arrived on the property of the Wwoof host. Even though we're not breakfast people, we forced ourselves, to prepare for the work ahead. Our first task was to trim a hedge. Our host told us to picture everything in our heads so we could see, what a difference we would have made. Good thing we had a phone with us and I could capture it for you.

It took us two days to finish our task, using normal hedge scissors only. But my boyfriend and I agreed that this was our favourite task to do, because you could always see the progress of your work.

The next big task was completely different. We were supposed to clear an area of topsoil that was absolutely overgrown by grass and weeds. With the help of an electric strimmer, we cleared the very top. Then we had to take the grass and the roots out to fill it into holes on a meadow. Before we could take the remaining topsoil in a wheelbarrow, we also had to remove huge stones and branches from the ground. The property had five vegetable beds, of which last one had to be cleared and stones had to be removed as well. Then we could dump the topsoil in there. It took us at least five days and lots of motivation to get this finished. I have to admit that we haven't had much experience in gardening and physical work, so we had to learn how to use a strimmer or other gardening tools properly.

We arrived at the host on a Tuesday, Saturday was our off day. I want to be honest with you, we spent the day in bed because we were really exhausted. I was used to writing exams and go to school before, so it was a bit difficult for us to get into working for several hours per day. But everyone has to start somewhere, and it was my choice to do something different before going to university.

Sunday was the only day we were actually working with the hosts. We started to clear out an overgrown garden. Unfortunately, I don't have a before picture. The garden also had a stone wall that was not visible anymore. We've spent the whole day weeding out, digging and cutting branches down. It got warmer and warmer outside and the work was quite exhausting. My favourite task was to rescue all the little lizards that were running around!

Our next task was it to trim and weed out a stream. A pro tip for (future) Wwoofers: Buy waterproof gloves (or gloves in general). We basically never took them off. It took us another day to clear the stream out. There were midges on the whole property that were quite annoying. Fortunately, we bought a midge spray from Boots before we went on our trip.

 

When the weather was nice we had to mow the garden and the meadows. This was a lot of fun because we got to use a ride-on mower. Using it the first time was a bit scary though.

On our last day, the hosts took us up to the coast to have a picnic. We've really had a stunning view and could even look beyond Scottish borders up to England. The whole family had been so nice to us and we enjoyed our first wwoofing experience. We're looking forward to the next place!

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