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WWOOF: Willing Workers On Organic Farms. "Volunteering to work for your food and accommodation, between 4 - 6 hours per day."
In order to WWOOF you must buy a WWOOFing handbook which has details of hundreds and hundreds of organic farms across Australia you can choose to work on. This would have normally taken a long time to pick and then it is luck whether you get a fun, enjoyable farm or not. Luckily for us the travel agent (Kenny) we spoke to about WWOOFing had just finished 3 months on a farm near Cairns and recommended it to us. This farm was Stannery Hill Farm. After enchanging a couple of emails they invited us to stay and work with them. The farm specialised in mainly organic limes and sweet potato's, along with a few chillies as well.
After a two and a bit hour journey, involving two buses and one pick up truck we arrived at 'Stannery Hill Farm' in Mutchilba, our home for the next two weeks. This made Belle, Joe and myself WWOOFers. The farm itself was a couple of hours in land from Cairns and in the middle of the Australian countryside, this meant no phone signal or internet.
After arriving and meeting Graham and Jan (the farmer and his wife) we met our fellow WWOOFers:
Hiro, Eriko, Saeko - Japanese
Jemma - English
Rayane - Canadian
As we had just arrived Graham gave us the afternoon off so we could have a look round the farm and also settle into our rooms.
The farm had two areas of living and accommodation, the main farm house (Graham and Jans), the WWOOFers accommodation and living space (a seperate bungalow with veranda), two barns, an old school bus, a dam (which was pretty much a lake but they called it a dam) and field after field of lime trees and "sweet sweet potato's" as Graham liked to call them. There were also cattle, sheep, horses, chickens, pigs, cats and a jack russel called Jackie. It was very much a farmers farm.
The boys and girls stayed in seperate accommodation, Belle was in a bedroom with Jemma and Eriko just off the WWOOFers kitchen and living area, whilst myself and Joe were assigned beds in the old school bus with Hiro. Belle had luxury with a proper bed and door on her room, while mine and Joe's had a very basic bed and was lacking a door. Not that we minded though, the bus was brilliant, infact we wanted to stay on the bus. Graham even offered me and Belle the caravan to stay in but I turned it down to stay on the bus!
After making our beds and having a quick look round we headed back to the veranda where we were joined by Mark, who was a friend of Grahams. Mark has 5% vision (after a brain tumor) and after hopping off a motorbike, he welcomed us all with an ice cold beer. We got chatting about the farm and the beer soon went, it was at this point Mark informed us he was quite the keen home brewer, rum and vodka being the two main brews. Within 30 seconds of finding this out we were sipping on homemade lime vodka (the nicest vodka the three of us had ever tasted) on the rocks with a dash of water and slice of organic lime. This was easily the best work induction we had ever had, life on the farm was great.
Dinner was quite a big thing on the farm, two people would cook for the rest of the WWOOFers on a rota basis. Sufficiently settled in (with the aid of home brew) we tucked into a tasty dinner and got to know our colleagues better before heading for an early night, ensuring we were nice and fresh for our first days work.
Our working day panned out as follows:
06:30 : Wake up
07:00 - 09:00 : Work
09:00 - 10:00 : 'Smoko' (breakfast)
10:00 - 12:00 : Work
12:00 - 16:00 : Lunch Break
16:00 - 18:00 : Work
18:00 : End of Working Day
This was the outline for a days WWOOFing on Stannery Hill Farm, however in reality we only worked about 4.5 hours a day, 5 at a push. This was due to Graham being super chilled out about it all. As well as reduced hours there was also a lot to keep us occupied during the long breaks and spare time. Swimming in the dam (which was complete with a rope swing), wake boarding, table tennis, pool, PS2, TV, DVD's or just relaxing in the sun.
As WWOOFers we worked 7 days a week (not that we needed a weekend) and under took a number of different jobs whislt on the farm. They ranged from weeding sweet potato's, digging sweet potato's (on a machine pulled along by a tractor), 'pulling runners' (collecting sweet potato plants to replant else where), packing sweet potato's, picking limes, packing limes, and weeding lime trees. Although for a couple of days Belle and Saeko had a rather intersting job, they had to fertilise all the lime trees. They stood on the back of the yute throwing handfuls of pellets at each tree. We were weeding under one of the trees and they executed the perfect drive-by fertilistaion, with Joe taking the majority of pellets. The girls and Graham found this highly amusing!
Probably the best job was digging for sweet potato's. Five people on a trailer being pulled along by a tractor, which had a conveyor belt in the middle which dug down into the soil and unearthed all the sweet potato's, ready for us to place in a giant box. It was the most physical job on the farm but to be honest it was far from really hard work. Although I'm not sure Belle would agree, she was next to Joe on the conveyor belt and would occasionally take a bunch of weeds to the head when he got a bit over excited. The worse job had to be 'pulling runners'. Up and down row after row of sweet potato plants, bent over, picking those which had grown enough to be replanted. This job became a bit tedious after all of ten minutes. The majority of the time our last shift of the day would be weeding 'up the hill'. This was another patch of land Graham was renting with more sweet potato's in. It was (as the name suggested) up a hill which was surrounded by hills and mountains, over looking a valley. You could stop weeding for a moment, look around and watch the sun go down, setting behind the moutains, turning the blue sky into a mix of pink and orange, it was a really nice place to be and a lovely way to end the day.
Potentially the best part of the day was 'smoko'. It is basically breakfast, but is called 'smoko' as the old farmers used to have a mid morning break to predictably, have a smoke. The 'smoko' we experienced should have been called 'all you can eat buffet, break' (flows off the tongue). A selection of rice crackers, square crackers, vegimite (Marmites Australian sister, just not as good looking), tuna, cheese, salami, jam, peanut butter, pasta and fruit. A whole hour of stuffing our faces. With this, lunch, dinner and a variety of food on tap, we ate very, very well for 16 days.
Despite the some what commical hours of work, we worked hard and this along with early mornings made for sleepy WWOOFers. Most evenings consisted of dinner then watching Australian TV (Masterchef Oz was a favourite) and having an early night, you were 'living it up' if you were up anythime after 10:30.
As mentioned earlier in this blog we would occasionaly go wakeboarding during the lunch break. After my poor attempt in Vietnam I was determined to have another crack, this time what I achieved could be classed as some kind of wakeboarding! I stood up on a few occasions and only slipped back into old habits (i.e Faceskimming) a couple of times. Belle opted to stay out of the water this time round but after the Barrier Reef I think she earned the right to sit this one out. Plus the water was pretty murky, not the most inviting.
Instead Belle became Mrs Kipling on the farm, baking up some 'excedingly good' treats. We had some Cornflake and jam cookies and rich chocolate ones too. It's fair to say they were a big hit.
Our fellow WWOOFers had tols us about a python that lived on the farm, which Graham left to it's own devices in order to reduce the farms rodent population. One night Jan was in one of the barns, when we heard Jackie barking like crazy. When Jan emerged with Jackie tightly lodged under her arm, she announced that the python had made an appearance and was in the barn. Me and Joe had to investigate, with torches and a camera we headed for the barn. After having a search we were just about to give up hope when Joe struck gold and found it. After a couple of photos with it and being typical boys (giving it a little poke and prod) we let it go about it's business. Tucked up in bed that night, the buses open door policy crossed my mind.
Whenever a WWOOFer left the farm, Graham and Jan would get everyone together and cook up a big meal. In our time we had a sushi night and 2 other fish based evenings. Belle loved the fish nights, enjoying the various types of sushi, prawns and tuna which were on offer. I'm not so big on fish, so wasn't as keen. Although we did have some lovely oven baked fish, with some lime. Even I like this.
Our last night on the farm was no different, (but luckily for me) we had a home made pizza night. Belle turned chef again, spending the day in the main house with Jan and the kids making 20 pizza bases from scratch. But as I later found out it wasn't all hard work as she sat down with the 2 girls for a manicure and pedicure! As Graham served her citrus vodkas, how the other half live! These were then cooked outside in a pizza oven Graham had made, accompanied with yet more home brew. After about 50 slices (maybe a slight exaggeration but it felt like that many) we tucked into some of Mrs Kipling's treats. I was so full I felt like it was Christmas.
We managed to about midnight on our last evening and after a final night on the bus and in the bungalow it was time to leave. Showers were had and clean clothes were donned (which was a lovely feeling), we said our goodbyes and we made our way back to civilisation and Cairns.
We spent a further 4 nights in Cairns before moving on, which entailed exactly the same as our previous visit.
Our time as WWOOFers had come to an end and after not really knowing to expect it was a really fun experience and nice to sample some of rural Australia.
- comments
lethal A brilliant read and what an experience! Loved it. XXXXXX