WWOOF

I´m back! Sorry I´ve been slacking on the updating the blog bit, internet access at the farm was limited. But now I can finally update you all on my wwoofing experience!!

For those of you who don´t know, wwoof stands for world wide oprotunities on organic farms. It´s a program all over the world that gives you contacts of farms that need your help. You volunteer your labor on the farm for however long and in return you get free room and board. The farm that I chose to wwoof at is called Los Portales and it´s located about an hour north of Sevilla, Esapaña. Los Portales is a community farm. There are about 30 people who live there (more or less) who work on the farm for their rooms and for food. Most of them have kids so they homeschool their kids together. The farm has loads of vegetables, horses, goats (for cheese, yogurt and milk), bees for honey, a woodshop, jewlery making studio, panería (for bread and other baked goods), and probably more that I´m forgetting or didn´t even know about because this place is so big! I stayed with these people for over 2 weeks and had an overall wonderful experience.

Their daily schedule is this:
7am - get up
7:30 - breakfast (tea/coffee with bread and goat cheese)
8-10:30 - first work period
10:30 - second breakfast (granola with goat yogurt and apples)
11-1:00 - second work period
1-2:30 - lunch (varies) followed by a short siesta
2:30-5 - third work period, wwoofers stop working at 4 for a total of 6hrs work
5:00 - tea break! followed by more siesta and free time till dinner
8:00 - dinner
on sundays they show a film after dinner

Usually for work I just sorted out seeds or weeded. Both are very easy and what we liked to call ¨zen work¨. I also milked the goats (my favorite task!), cleaned up around the house, help cook dinner, picked vegetables, and made bread (another one of my favorites, though this was a workout!! we made 40 loaves of bread!). During my free time I usually just walked around the farm, slept, read, wrote in my journal, listened to music or a book on tape, talked with the other wwoofers, or contemplated life. There wasn´t really much to do. But the experience of being out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nature was absolutely wonderful for me. I had a lot of time to think about things I´ve put off thinking about and I just think it all was really good for me.
Unfortunately, for over a week I was sick. My nose would NOT stop running. They use natural medicine at the farm, which is good, but I began to really miss the comfort of a nights sleep with some nyquil. Being sick and having a lot of time to think about stuff like my life back home made me really begin to feel homesick. I eventually got over that but I´d just like to say now to everyone that I really do miss you all and hearing any news from anyone is always appreciated!

Right now I´m staying at a hostel in Sevilla, again. Spending over two weeks on a farm and then coming back to civilization is really weird. I went walking around a little bit and my first thought was ¨um... where can I just sit and do nothing and enjoy the scenery?¨ but I think slowly I´ll be able to adapt back to the real world. It was nice at the farm because I literally didn´t have to spend any money the whole time. And first thing I did when I came to Sevilla was buy groceries and I spent over 30€ right away! So I think I´m going to look into more ways of working while traveling because it worked out great for me.