WWOOF
World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) is part of a world-wide effort to link volunteers with organic farmers, promote an educational exchange, and build a global community conscious of ecological farming practices.
WWOOF organizations publish listings of organic farms and gardens that host volunteers – providing food, housing, and in-field education in exchange for help from the volunteers. WWOOF has now become an international movement across six continents and more than fifty countries with programs ranging from weekends to seasonal and year-long stays.
Sue Croppard, founder of WWOOF, intends that through WWOOF people can get first hand experience of organic farming, give assistance to organic farmers, get into the countryside, strengthen the organic movement, form links between city and rural dwellers, and “facilitate inter-cultural understanding between people of different nationalities”.
WWOOF is used by many to live sustainable lifestyles; living on a self-sufficient farm allows someone to live without driving and paying for food that was shipped from hundreds if not thousands of miles a way.
Wwoofing is also a method for low-cost traveling – since it is a volunteer arrangement, a person does not need a visa to work in a foreign country. Staying at hotels and hostels can be very expensive especially for long periods of time.
There are over seven hundred farms affiliated with WWOOF in the USA alone and hundreds more in the world. The WWOOF listing contains wide diversity in location and farm type. If one wants to make sure they get the food they want, it is good to work at the farm that grows it.
Some farms in the tropical regions such as Hawaii and Costa Rica offer housing and organic food in exchange for as little as sixteen hours per week of work. Wwoofers are not paid for their time, but the cost might be profitable to some to eat a purely organic diet and live on a fifty acre ranch a stone`s throw from the Pacific Ocean.
Educational opportunities vary from farm to farm and depend on season and length of stay. If one comes to a farm during harvest time the work might be limited to picking fruit or preparing vegetables to take to market. However there are many different activities that go on at any given farm.
Food preserving, planting, marketing, community living, green construction, alternative energy, animal husbandry, and permaculture are just some of the skills wwoofers can learn. For some, wwoofing creates space for meditation and work on personal growth. For others it allows space for self-discovery, independence, and travel opportunites. Whatever your reason, WWOOF would be a great resource to help jump start your organic lifestyle planning process.
