Now that I have had sufficient time away from the soil-face for my old acquaintances Perspective and Clarity to pop by for a rare chat, I thought it might be useful to do some kind of general write-up of the WWOOF thing as I see it so far.
WWOOFing is strange, there's no two ways about it. It without fail involves situations and experiences (both good and bad) that you wouldn't normally encounter, but what exactly are the pros and cons of WWOOFing?
The Pros
From my, albeit fairly limited, sampling I would say the most obvious benefits are those I wrote about wanting to achieve back in August - learning practical skills, improved health and fitness, and the reduction of the role of money in life. Tick, tick and tick! However, the things I have actually appreciated most about WWOOFing have been subtly different to those I anticipated. I think my top three pro's are:
Freedom of Movement: WWOOFing is a loose arrangement. Although ideally you should keep to the dates and time-frames you have committed to with the various hosts - out of common decency apart from anything else - these are usually only brief periods. In general, with a bit of warning and planning, you can go wherever you want, whenever you like, with no real ties or responsibilities. For a fickle and flighty person like myself, this is very liberating!
Holistic living: With this kind of lifestyle there is no unnatural separation or segregation between work (a place where you trot off to for an arbitrary number of hours and do a specific type of task completely unrelated to the rest of your existence, ad nauseum) and home/life (everything else). Plus the work you are doing comprises real tasks that need to be carried out for concrete and tangible reasons, e.g. pulling the ingredients for that night's meal straight from the ground, feeding the chickens so that they don't die/stop laying eggs for you to eat, etc. It feels good spending your time like this, you feel connected to reality and, well, kind of wholesome if that word isn't too sickening.
Meeting people: Before I started WWOOFing I fully expected to either be working on my own a lot, or to hate any other WWOOFers I might end up thrown together with. WRONG! Despite a natural tendency toward misanthropy and my advancing years (ehem) I can't think of one other volunteer I didn't either immediately like, or grow to feel massive affection for. I was expecting to encounter mostly young, silly, gap-year partying types that I would be in a completely different life-phase to, but in fact they were nearly ALL interesting, genuine people, with whom I got on well and had stuff in common, despite big differences in background, age, life experience etc. I can't explain how pleasantly surprised I am by this! I would even go so far as to say it has been the best thing about the whole experience.
The Cons
And so to the cons - as there are sadly also some significant cons to WWOOFing, in my opinion. I have to say as a disclaimer here that a lot of people, especially younger or less fussy people, probably wouldn't feel the burn of the negatives in the same way that I have, but I think it would be remiss of me if I didn't highlight the following:
Lack of Boundaries/Control: Unless you are happy to be very firm and don't mind incurring displeasure, when you are WWOOFing you have little-to-no say about basically anything. For example: what hours you work, what tasks you do, when you take breaks, what you eat, when you eat, how much you help out with cooking/housework, how much time you spend with other people, or basically anything about your 'on-duty' days (days off are of course another matter). Plus, any of these things can be switched around on you at a moment's notice This is perfectly understandable as WWOOFing is, by it's nature, not a defined thing with set boundaries but it really pisses me off. I'm used to the normal working world with it's regulated structures and lines that are not ever crossed, and it's been a difficult adjustment to say the least. I have been pretty lucky, if other people's accounts are anything to go by, and have had fairly reasonable hosts, but it's still annoying having no control over your daily life!
Food Hygiene: I wouldn't say I am a clean freak, far from it, but I have noticed a common theme in my experiences so far has been feeling uncomfortable about poor food hygiene. Without being unnecessarily rude, I would say I have learned that everyone has different ideas of what constitutes 'clean' when it comes to washing-up, kitchen surfaces, pets' access to food preparation areas, how often tea towels and hand towels are washed and where they are kept, how long food remains edible and how clean it should be before it is consumed. I have not been particularly ill during the last few months so ignoring practices which I would normally have recoiled from doesn't seem to have done me any harm, but I can't say it makes me feel comfortable or happy either.
Other Food Issues: There is something about effectively 'paying' people in food that creates conditions for some strange old behaviour in this area. This was not a problem at the community I stayed with, but it was definitely a bit of a thing at the other places and I wonder how common it is with WWOOFing. Giving people food in exchange for labour turns it into some kind of currency, which surely has a lot of potential to be problematic, especially as many hosts take WWOOFers due to lack of funds with which to pay waged employees and they naturally wish to be frugal about their outgoings (aka food purchases). I definitely picked up on some tensions about how much and/or what I ate anyway - being closely watched by hosts, being told I couldn't eat certain things, different people around the table being provided with different portion sizes, being offered seconds a lot more freely once the host had decided they liked me etc. At first I wondered if I was being paranoid, but having discussed it with other volunteers I don't think this was the case. One girl was actually accused of being 'greedy' after having an extra helping of food at lunch one day. In her words: 'That kind of thing is not appropriate! Even as a joke. Is it going to take a fat person crying to make them realise that?'
I guess the important question is: do the positives outweigh the negatives? I think at a good host's, one where you are genuinely learning and being provided with interesting tasks, they do, especially if you hit it off in terms of personalities and human relations. But one thing that I have definitely learned from my first experiments with WWOOFing is that the best way to appreciate the positives and minimize the negatives is to keep the initial stay to around 10 days.
A lot of hosts specify a minimum stay of 2, 3 or 4 weeks, but in my opinion 10 days is enough to properly sample what life in a place is like, explore the area a little bit, get to know the hosts and try your hand at the type of tasks carried out. Any longer than that, if it's not completely the right place for you, starts to feel like an endurance test. On the other hand, if it is the right place for you, then 2, 3 or 4 weeks isn't remotely enough and you would need to arrange longer to really have a chance to settle in, get some stability and benefit from the learning opportunities.
So, on the next leg of my farming mission, I intend to arrange shorter stays with a larger variety of hosts, at least until I find somewhere I would like to stay for a significant amount of time. However, I have also decided that, quite frankly, it's too freakin cold to be working outside at the mercy of some random strangers who may or may not be reasonable for the next few months and I will instead be found hiding in a cosy nest (aka caravan) at my sister's. I will also be writing a PhD proposal, if that sounds a bit more constructive! Keep your fingers crossed for the success of my funding application...
See you back here in March :-)
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