As part of our journey to explore different styles of living and meeting people who have realised their dreams, we wanted to do WWOOFing.
stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms and it is a loose network of national organisations that facilitate home stays on organic farms. The concept is that willing workers work with the host for an agreed amount of time each week in exchange for free food and stay. There are WWOOF hosts in 99 countries around the world.
as we had plans to travel around Spain for a few weeks and we combined this experience with our travels. We first registered on their
to stay with them for two weeks.
Kathi had previously WWOOFed on a farm in Serbia on weekends but for Sam it was the first time. Even though we both worked with an organic farmer in Tirol in the past, this was our first experience staying with the hosts and working for them. The agreement we had was that -- in exchange for working for 5 hours a day for 5 days a week we could get free stay and food.
We arrived by bus from Malaga to this small town of Orgiva in the evening. The host, Jordi came to pick us up and we settled for the evening in our small caravan, which was our home for the next two weeks.
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| Our home for two weeks in Orgiva |
It was the first time for us staying in a Caravan. The Caravan had a kitchen, a small dining area, and a bed. There was a solar shower outside the caravan and a dry toilet (
composting toilet) which the hosts use to make compost. During our stay we got all the vegetables we needed from the vegetable garden. And the hosts gave us grains (couscous, rice, wheat, pasta, etc.,), diary (milk, butter, eggs), and freshly baked bread.
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| Kathi getting ready for work with Nora on her back |
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| We spent some time at the pool during the warmest parts of the day |
Our hosts, a Swiss-Spanish couple, had a beautiful farm house where they lived for long over a decade. They built a paradise of their own and lived there with their two children, two dogs, and lots of cats. They grew their own zucchini, aubergine, tomatoes, squash, paprika, onions, leeks, mangold, string beans, basil, thyme, mint, salads, grapes, and different fruit trees. They had their own bakery called
La Espelta and they brought us freshly baked bread every few days.
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| Organic vegetable garden |
During our stay our work was to help them out with their vegetable garden, harvesting and pruning of the trees. Our work during these two weeks was to weed and prune the vegetable garden, harvest almonds, weed the land and prune the trees (olive, lemon and carob).
Three times a week we also had lunch with the hosts and enjoyed deep conversations about life, spirituality and their experiences with building a life of their own. Nora also enjoyed spending time with the family, in the pool, interacting with the dogs, cats, a passing by donkey, a mule, and the goats that passed by the caravan frequently. We loved our time here and we have fond memories of this experience. We would love to go back to Orgiva and meet our hosts some day again.
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| Kathi and Nora interacting with a donkey |
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