WWOOFing was always meant to be a large part of our journey. From the perspective of a long term traveller, it makes a lot of sense. It helps you keep your costs down (which is especially important in high-cost areas like the UK) and it allows you to see a place like a local would. From the perspective of people who are also interested in one day running a farm of our own, it's useful experience and a way of learning from people who have learned how to farm in entirely different contexts.
Over the course of a week, from May 28th to June 5th, Alexa and I had the opportunity to spend time WWOOFing on two farms in the UK. They were both wonderful, yet also very different from one another, and neither one exactly the farm experience we expected. We only spent a few days in each place, so it wouldn't really be fair to say that I was able to get a complete assessment of what they're all about, so take the following with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, I think our experiences will be interesting to read about.
A Wedding in Lincoln
To get to our first farm, we first caught a train from London to Lincoln, stopped a much-needed dose of caffeine, then hopped on a bus to the suburbs. I don't know about you, but when I think about a farm, I tend to imagine a plot of land that is somewhere far out there, on the edge of those places where people dare not live. Or I think about small farms tucked into the corners of cities, quietly going about bringing a taste of nature to a place which has forgotten that nature even is.
What I don't think about are fields of staple crops, dirt roads, and large barns next to a cul-de-sac of family houses with manicured lawns. Yet, that is what we wandered past. These homes, except for their slate roofs, could have been in suburban Michigan. The lawns were uniformly green, the streets clean, and the trees familiar. Families drove by in their SUVs and waved at the strange couple tromping about in their dirty boots and backpacks. We said hello as a man helped his elderly mother climb into a car and his neighbors across the street chatted about some pleasantry, each of us mutually agreeing it was best to pretend that nothing odd was afoot. Certainly, there were no strange, overburdened Americans slinking through the neighborhood.
Before long we found ourselves heading down a dirt road beside a large field planted with some crop. It was too early to tell what it might be, but there were rows upon rows of it and we could see another one ahead. This was much larger than we had expected. But then, we hadn't really been sure what to expect. The description of the farm on the WWOOFing website had focused on the farm's use as an event space and descriptions of tasks ranging from feeding a biomass boiler named "Susie" and helping take care of piglets. From our standpoint, we could be walking into anything. We turned the corner and were greeted by the loud baying of three or four sheep and again as many young lambs, penned up in the small interstitial area between the road and the field. Just beyond, a mix of brick buildings and storage lockers and industrial barns filled with equipment like tractors and JCBs awaited us.
It was hard to get a read on the place. Was this an operational farm? A hotel? A small sign indicating one could visit piglets for the small fee of 5 pounds gave it the feel of a petting zoo. The listing on the WWOOF website had indicated that it was a popular agrotourism destination and event space, so that was yet another layer. Our host had asked us to help with a wedding during our stay, so events were clearly important to what they did. As we would later learn, the farm was indeed involved in all of the above. It was an event space, a hotel, and an operational farm, though years ago our host had passed off the farming aspects to the younger generation and it seemed they were now renting out the space to others who were growing potatoes and sugar beets.
During our stay, a wedding very much dominated our time. A couple had decided that they wanted to have a Game of Thrones themed wedding and we were to help make it happen. Well, in truth, all the touches to make it Game-of-Thrones-y had been put together long before, so there was little for us to do to bring Westeros to life. We helped in other ways though - setting up bales of hay and chairs for outdoor seating, arranging sound equipment, and various other odds jobs. I think my favorite task was playing chauffeur to the guests. Alexa and I were each given a jaunty red cap and a golf cart and instructed to make sure that the guests arrived in style. Unfortunately for me, my cart got a flat tire on the first trip, but it was glorious for the 30 or 40 seconds that it lasted.
There were long periods of downtime during the wedding and we got to chatting with the other WWOOFers. At Olivier's farm in Greece, we had been the only WWOOFers, so having others around was a nice change. We talked about all sorts of things, from critiques of systems of power to vegetarianism to dream interpretation and more. We were somewhat of a motley group, not the sort that might otherwise find themselves socializing together. There was a family of three - a mother, father, and ten-year-old son - originally from Texas, though they'd lived in Cambridge for the last 13 years. There was an older man who had been WWOOFing on the farm for a year and a half, but owned and rented out a house nearby. And there was a local guy who had given up on the traditional 9-5 and was trying to find a better, freer way to live. Like I said, we were all quite different. But I think it says a lot about how well we got along that I would feel comfortable reaching out in the future to almost any of them if I happened to find myself nearby.
At the end of the day, it was a very memorable experience and I am glad of the time we spent there. I'll never forget the chorus of tiny piglets oinking their way across the pen, no doubt excited by the prospect of food. But nonetheless we were glad to move on. Certain aspects of the experience had been a little disappointing, like the host's willingness to use glyphosate or the burning of plastic bags as a convenient way to dispose of trash, which just didn't feel entirely in line with the WWOOFing ethos.
The Great House of Wales
The next farm was a different situation altogether. We cut across the country, heading for the town of Abergavenny in southeastern Wales. As the train flung itself along, the land quickly gave way to rolling green hills and open pastures. This was the sort of landscape I had imagined when thinking about WWOOFing in the UK. And our host, Michael, did not disappoint either. A self-described aging hippie, he was an older man with long red hair, now largely grey, and a bald patch in the middle of his head. He was dressed in loose clothing patterned with muted purples and orange and it didn't take long for him to tell us about his days playing with a folk band in the 1960s.
(Apparently, a producer in the US recently found their old EP and has decided to re-release it. They also then got back together after 43 years and recorded a whole new record which will also be released. I didn't get an opportunity to listen to their music while staying at the Great House, but I fully intend to do so soon!)
He drove us down winding streets and into the deep countryside. A single-track road with high hedges on either side led up an incline and eventually gave way to a gate and a view of an impressive old stone house. Michael would eventually tell us all about how the house was an old Manor House, dating back to the early 1500s, which had been owned and lived in by the lord of the region ever since. Did this mean Michael was the lord of the region? Well, no. Times have changed. Though he did have records of the owners of the manor dating back centuries and his own family's history could be traced back to the region, I doubt anyone today would bend the knee to Lord Michael.
An interesting historical tidbit: because the King of Britain was the true owner of the land, the lord of the manor was required to pay him a fee for the right to the land. What fee? Why, a quarter of a knight's fee, of course. That is, the lord was required to provide a dozen archers to the King's service to fight in the King's wars.
Michael and his wife Rotee (a lovely woman from the island of Kiribati) had another WWOOFer staying with them during this time as well, a young german girl on her summer break. Between the five of us (plus their elderly dog and two cats), it felt like we were one big multi-generational family living and working together. We quickly fell into a daily routine. Each morning at about 8:30 we would come downstairs to the large table in the kitchen and have breakfast. Then Michael and we WWOOFers would go out into the field to spend a few hours weeding. Then there was lunch, more weeding (or mulching), a short break, and dinner.
The rhythm was nice. In a time like this, when we're moving locations every few days, sleeping odd hours and constantly in a state of change and motion, a breath of consistency feels wonderful. To have interactions with the natural world be a part of that routine is even better.
The land itself is about 5 acres, split into 4 main areas: There is the main house, a terrace with 8 vegetable gardens that Rotee manages, a swath of largely unmanaged woodland, and an open field filled with various exotic trees and plants from around the world. Threaded throughout is a network of stone walls built using dry stone building, which essentially means that no mortar or other binding material is used to keep the stones in place. Apparently the original walls had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it took Michael the better part of 20 years to restore them all. There are also several broken down buildings on the property, currently being used for miscellaneous storage. We spent most of our time in the open field with Michael's trees, weeding a patch of South American plants. It had become overgrown with buttercups, nettle, grass, and dock, crowding and strangling the South Americans.
There were other such patches, like the ancient "dinosaur" plants, so named because their grandson had hoped that planting trees from the time of the dinosaurs might encourage dinosaurs to come and live there. We did not encounter any velociraptors during our time at the Great House, but it was very cool to see example of the very earliest plants to exist.
It was lovely to spend some time here, helping Michael and Rotee with tasks that were clearly becoming a bit too difficult for them in their older age. We didn't learn much about how to grow and manage a farm, but then, it just wasn't that sort of place. We could have asked more about the intricacies of Rotee's vegetable garden and (now defunct) herb garden. She used an interesting 4-crop rotation, relying on some crops to fix nitrogen in order to better adjust the soil for the next crop, and she was experimenting with no-till agriculture. It is perhaps a lesson for next time - ask more questions, let our curiosity free.