The Warp And The Wwoof: October 2013

During my stay at his smallholding, Mr Host 3 mentioned, amongst many, many other things, that he has been very offended in the past by a WWOOFer from London blogging pictures of the inside of his house without consulting him. (Kids these days! The iPod generation! Etc.) This raised a thorny and slightly squirmy issue for me, which is - do I request permission from my hosts before I write about them and display photos of their properties on the internet?

I gave this some thought before I began my travels and eventually decided that I would not consult hosts before posting about them, or alert them to the fact I am keeping a blog, because this would affect how honest I could be about my experiences. Instead I would just omit the name of the places I visit and keep the location vague. I mean, if you tell someone you're going to be writing about them it's possible it will a) inhibit / make them feel uncomfortable with you and b) make it fairly likely that they will read it at some point which then c) means you feel you should be polite and possibly not completely truthful about how things went. Host 1 for instance - could I have written honestly about my time there if I'd known he may well read it? No.

However, do I feel slightly guilty about posting photos of Host 1's farm without his knowledge, when what I wrote about him wasn't particularly positive? Yes I do. I'm not sure how to resolve this, except just to carry on as I have been - writing frankly, but not naming my hosts so that it is unlikely to ever be associated with them by anyone who isn't already in the know. And, in the case of my most recent host, not posting pictures of the inside of his house without obtaining his permission, only including a few unidentifiable pictures of smallholding Stuff to add a bit of visual interest to my main post.

Plus it's not like I have an enormous readership so I don't think it's really that big a deal at the end of the day. Right? Right! Good.

Two and a half weeks with Host 2: Tick!

My second WWOOF host has been a community living deep in the Dorset countryside, housed in a big old Victorian rectory and various satellite structures (cabins, yurts, caravans). The place itself is incredibly beautiful and atmospheric – full of unexpected nooks and artwork. It has everything you could wish for from an alternative/rural living space: a farm, dairy, kitchen garden, fruit garden, poly tunnels, fields, streams, wooded areas, compost loos, a rope swing, cob oven, fire pit, a little Pub-cabin, picnic tables etc.

The community proper has only 4 members, which seems shockingly small for the size of the overall operation - it includes a B&B business and a venue for hire - but the set-up is super efficient and there are a number of almost-members (people doing a six-month trial), long-term volunteers and kind of ‘affiliated’ people living here. From my outside perspective, the community seems very open and non-hierarchical – it took me a good few days to even figure out who was a member and who was a volunteer, for example. The population is also ever-changing and shifting as volunteers and visitors come and go, some staying for a day, others for months. This has advantages from the point of view of a short-term volunteer as you feel included and comfortable very quickly, but I can imagine that for the members it comes with a certain element of strain. Having new faces around constantly and being required to be welcoming and conversational all day, every day, ad infinitum? Jeepers!

So, enough of all the technical description already, how was it? Well…I’m still not completely sure, to be honest, but I will endeavour to piece my scattered thoughts together.

I was very apprehensive before I arrived. After my dubious experience with Host 1 (incidentally I have now met two other people who have WWOOFed at that farm and they both hated it and left early. One even said that the host man made her cry. I feel vindicated!), I was not at all sure what to expect and feeling quite negative about my whole volunteering plan. It probably didn’t help that the two hosts were not that far from each other geographically, so, having run away to London for a few days recovery, I had to arrive back at the exact same train station and wait on the same bench to be collected. UGH.

However, from the moment I was greeted by the community member who had been dispatched to pick me up, things were completely different. Throughout my whole time with this host I was spoken to - by everyone without exception - as if I was a human being, worthy of consideration, interest and respect. What’s more, whichever community member I worked for on a given day said thank you at the end of the work period, even when it had been a very relaxed session. It’s such a simple thing but I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it. I was carried through the usual tricky first few days of acclimatisation on a giant wave of relief and joy at the contrast!

I really liked pretty much everyone I met, members, volunteers and all; strangely, those who I didn’t warm to straight away, became some of my favourites as time went on. Communal living is a great way to properly get to know people in a short amount of time as you are both working and socialising together. You can get into some serious conversations that you wouldn’t have in other settings, and also have some fun, with people of very different backgrounds, nationalities and ages (while I was there the population ranged from 6 months to 63 years!).

That middle compost heap there? I helped make that. It's a damn fine compost heap!

My main reason for going there, apart from a certain curiosity about how it would be to live in a community, was that the growing is done biodynamically and luckily for me the gardener was very enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge. I requested to volunteer predominantly in the garden and so spent a fair amount of time working for this guy, who, as an energetic, curly-haired Garden Sprite with a West Country accent was pretty much everything you could require from a biodynamic, alternative community gardener! He was also really kind to me and we got on well.

Because of the nature of the operation, I couldn’t just spend my whole working week in the gardens, but actually doing the odd day on House (cleaning and making up rooms) or Kitchen (food prep and washing up) was nice for a break when my back was starting to feel like it would snap from digging or weeding.

The absolute best thing about Host 2 for me, though, was the FOOD, oh yeah! Vegetarian/vegan only, amazing cooking, healthy and flavoursome, plentiful, snacks available, raw milk, home-made butter, yogurt and cheese, dessert provided nearly every day – I was like a pig in clover. (A literal pig; probably not that great for my waistline but I’m hoping the more active lifestyle has counteracted the gluttony? With no access to weighing scales I’m going to choose to believe that it has). Since Host 1 was a ‘No meat, no meal’ type of man, I had eaten more red meat in the preceding two weeks than in the whole of the rest of the decade and thought I might have some trouble adjusting, but it wasn’t a problem at all.

Fake grapevine pruning for the camera. Smile!

Does all this unrelenting positivity make it sound like there might be a ‘But’ coming? Well of course there is, there’s always a ‘But’! And here my reservations mostly sprang from my introvert’s need to BE ALONE. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy spending time with people. A couple of hours in the pub, say, a working day, perhaps the odd road trip. Just not all the time! And there’s the rub for me; community living entails living in a community. There are people everywhere, all day long. You can just not talk to them if you like, but it feels rude and surly if you don’t. Twenty people at dinner is not a particularly comfortable experience for me, despite having grown up in a large family. I still haven’t really figured out why, but I found mealtimes tough; I felt awkward and self-conscious and like I wanted to take my plate and run off into the field. I guess it’s because in my life I’ve mostly only eaten in small groups, or in front of the TV with housemates (for shame!), or with very familiar family? Who knows why I have a problem with it, I’m probably just a freak, but it tended to put a downer on my day.

At various points in my 2.5 weeks I was seriously considering the possibility of applying to return to this place long-term – and I’ve still not made up my mind – but this too-much-people-time thing is a real obstacle. I figured I would adjust to it eventually but it’s been a month already and I’m still feeling unhappy about it so I’m no longer so sure! I just like reading and thinking and daydreaming and stuff, and, well, peace and quiet. Am I old before my time?

My other reservation about living here is that people are moody -of course they are, including (especially?) me. But I’ve seen a few hints of barely contained ‘paddies’ just in this short sampling of community life and I’m sure that the more time you spend with people, the more aware of the currents and eddies of their happiness and unhappiness you become, plus the more it affects you. I’m not sure I would like to be in a situation where there is no escape from that.

The final thing stopping me from just joyfully crying ‘Hurrah I have found my niche!’ and asking to stay for longer is that, although this is a ‘community’, there doesn’t seem to be a common belief or principle that the community is based on. The ‘Why’, or the ‘glue’ of the community seems to just be a loose wish to live an eco-friendly/sustainable lifestyle with some other people around; the members appear to be almost just doing jobs which entail that they also live there. Not that that is a major problem necessarily, and it certainly allows for a more inclusive place, but for me personally to feel inspired to live communally I think I would probably need a common… ‘spirituality’ for want of a better word, with the other members.

Maybe.

But it is really beautiful. And the food is like, sooooo good! And the biodynamics! And the people are so nice!

I’m confused, I tell you, confused.