WWOOFing

[Ish]

WWOOFing is something I'm really quite interested in at the moment.

Anyone here done it before?

Experiences and advice much appreciated, especially if you did it in the UK.

[Birch]

Sounds like it would be great to do outside, like in a park?

[Ish]

http://www.wwoof.org/

 

For those who haven't heard of it.

Couple of minutes on it will explain better than I can

[Seth Ananda]

i hate Wwofing.

I think it should be called wsoofing [willing slaves on organic farms]

 

but to be fair, some places are great and don't just feed you a bowl of lentil slop for dinner to sleep in a spider infested caravan with holes in its roof, so you can work 3 hours a day for them...

 

Its great for travellers, helps them get around... I myself would just rather get paid, especially for the kind of work you end up doing in some places..

[Ish]

i hate Wwofing.

I think it should be called wsoofing [willing slaves on organic farms]

 

but to be fair, some places are great and don't just feed you a bowl of lentil slop for dinner to sleep in a spider infested caravan with holes in its roof, so you can work 3 hours a day for them...

 

Its great for travellers, helps them get around... I myself would just rather get paid, especially for the kind of work you end up doing in some places..

 

Sounds like you had a nasty experience. Can't hate the whole system because of it though? Unless this was a repeated matter.

The place you worked with should be reported, that's basically unacceptable.

[Walker]

I did about three or four months of it while hitchhiking down in New Zealand a few years ago. Overall a fun experience. Met a lot of interesting people, got a lot of sun and exercise, generally ate pretty damn well, and yes, got exploited a just a little bit. I like working and at the time prized mobility and free time more than money, so it worked for me.

 

My only gripe may only apply to the NZ organization, and if their website has changed since 2008, may no longer stand. Anyway, here it is: I think there needed to be a well-organized way for WWOOFers to get online and make public, easy-to-find comments next to the profiles of hosts. I say this because one host I worked for was out of his mind, and not pleasantly so. He waved chainsaws around carelessly and expected us to perform all sorts of nearly-acrobatic work while working with blunt (read: very dangerous) chainsaws; he tried to short us on food and were my traveling buddy and myself not rather forceful types, may have weaseled his way out of paying up; he drove like a madman in a car loaded with 20 years worth of junk but no seatbelts, and could not be convinced to pay attention to safety (actually, the very word "safety" irked this man); he would quite possibly have been dangerous for a female WWOOFing alone to be around; and he generally wouldn't shut up with his preposterous anti-Islamic paranoid 2012 ranting as well as other sundry racism, homophobia, etc. A true megalomaniac convinced of his glorious enlightenment, he coaxed WWOOFers in with a tale of him having spent years in the Himalayas meditating with top Tibetan lamas blah blah blah blah. After all was said and done, now that I think of it, I should have reported the man and was irresponsible not to have done so. On the other hand, the organization is so anonymous (buy the host directory book in a healthfood store... you are now a member) and faceless that I didn't know who the heck to talk to.

 

If the country you WWOOF in doesn't have a website where you can check in and see what has been said about various potential hosts, then be careful, as I doubt I ran into the only wacko who's a listed host. That said, everybody else I met both when WWOOFing and Couch Surfing ranged from wonderful to normal, which is good enough for me.