Oak Meadow Farm: Becoming a wwoof host farm

Harold from Switzerland

"What is "WWOOF"?" People ask... now the acronym stands for "world wide opportunities on organic farms", originally it stood for "willing workers on organic farms". The movement was started in Great Briton, by a small group of people wanting to support and promote organic farming, they started making connections between organic farmers and want-to-be organic farmers. It has grown from humble beginnings into an international force of wwoof host farms and wwoofer helpers to be reckoned with. A god send for people participating in it. To learn more about Wwoof go to: wwoofusa.org

We learned about wwoofing, quite by accident. My brother (who now hosts wwoofers in Fla. at his farm/nursery, Simonton Farms), met a wwoofer through one of his buddies who was a wwoof host. This wwoofer fellow, "Marc", was a remarkable young lad hailing from Quebec Canada. He had ridden his bike all the way from Quebec, to Florida, "on adventure", to his destination wwoof host farm in Florida. Marc ended up helping out at my brother's farm. In the course of a few days he told my brother about the wwoof program. My brother was impressed and excitedly told me about the program also.

One thing led to another, the young man, Marc, wanted to continue his bike adventure, and planned to ride across the USA to the west coast, then peddle up the west coast back into Canada, where he planned to take a bus back East to Quebec. When he found out my brother had a sister with a farm in California, he wanted to hook up. My brother called me and told me the story, could Marc stay with us and "wwoof" if he made it out to California. Little thinking he could make it, I said "yes", I figured anybody who could bike across the country deserved my notice. Too my surprise, two months latter I received a phone call from Marc, in his thick French Canadian accent, he conveyed to me that he had made it to San Francisco, three days latter he was knocking at the door. Wow, what a top quality person Marc turned out to be!

Marc from Quebec

Marc didn't speak much English, being French Canadian, but he was eager to learn more. He was in college, a biology major studying forest fungi. He was keen to learn about organic farming and threw himself, with gusto, into farm living.

Marc's bike at our front door.

Marc became like the son we never had. For six weeks we worked and played together. He helped so much, and brought the joy of farming back into our life with his gung-ho attitude and intelligent enthusiasm. It was great. We were hooked on WWOOF & registered as an official usa-wwoof host farm, its been rewarding!

Marc wheel barreled loads of compost and double dug our hill garden, what a feat!

Since then we have had many wwoofers helping us out, we have got so much done with their help, and more importantly, we have made some truly lasting friendships and learned so much from them. Below are some of the wwoofers we have had the pleasure of working with.

Matt from Sacramento

Vanessa from France

Christin and Albin saved the day,
helping out with everything,when Chris was in the hospital

Wwoofers bring a refreshing energy to life on the farm...

Matt has been on the farm helping out for quite a while. Here he is feeding "Fridge" with his little nephew. He has been instrumental in getting many of our projects off the ground, so to speak, and has been helping with the milking in a big way. Sweet Vanessa from France stayed with us for 6 weeks in the summer of 2013, she taught us some yummy French cooking. David, Naomi, Daniel and Marissa helped ever so much with milking, canning baking and packaging stuff for the market. Kevin & Sara were great team players, helped feeding calves, making cheeses, drying fruits, and canning, and with constructing our new meat locker, among other things.
Anastasia pruned and thinned apples, planted seeds, harvested veggies, canned fruits and more. Jeff, Nick and Harold all worked on our gardens, installed fences and more. Wwoofers have helped work with our bees, brewed beer, built sheds, canned fruits and veggies, dried herbs and fruit, made candy, planted gardens, turned compost, worked on raised beds, harvested apples, harvested black berries, put in strawberries, pruned fruit trees, thinned apples, made all kinds of cheese, helped with our farm stand, milked, cleaned stalls, trained horses, fed our critters...and the list goes on! All in all, wwoofers are great. A REALLY BIG THANKS guys& gals!