WWOOF

No, this is not some poor excuse for me to use an onomatopoeia (which I wouldn't put past me, next to palindromes there's really nothing better in the English language, or any language for that fact, sincerely you shouldn´t need to know the language to understand, which makes it of even more particular interest to me considering my current living situation, but enough of this tangent...) no, WWOOf actually is an acroynm, an organization even, which stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms(1). It's quaint, especially for something inclusive of the entire world. It's also derived from a good ethos, one of not only health, but general long-term sustainability. And best of all, and most importantly if they really want to get their word out, it comes with the sentiment of sharing: food, housing, work and experience. Which is to say that it is now on my list of "One of the cutest goddam things I've ever seen."

The general idea, for those of you who haven't been versed in the organization's ways, is this: a farm--organic--pays a small due, gets their name in hippie-farm-craigslist, which can be purchased by prospective volunteers (read: free day laborers whom the farm unfortunately has to house and feed, and who are generally much more voceforous than their normal group of farm animals), who then email/call/write-letters-using-homemade-paper-and-reusable-ink requesting the ability to work on the farm, for free. The farm responds, and the "farmer" then makes his/her own way to said farm to work for some predetermined period of time. As far as I know that prearranged time frame is not binding, but I wouldn't want to tell a pitch-fork wielding, organic carrot eating farmer I was leaving earlybecause hefer blood made me queasy or computer hands are too sensitivefor apple picking. No sirreeee.

Beth and I, being both jobless and transient at this time, decided that this sounded like an interesting experience. Neither one of us are from particularly agricultural backgrounds and both of us tend to view food--its origins and its inevitable impact on us as humans, people as a whole and the earth, not to mention the pure and beautiful act of gluttoning--as an incredibly vital part of our day-in and day-out lives. So we (Beth) wrote out an email in Spanish, had our billingual hostel rep correct the grammatical errors (believe it or not, only slightly worse than what you're finding here) and sent it out to all the farms on the WWOOF list. We jumped at our 2nd opportunity, working on an apple farm near Mendoza, Argentina (2).

(1) I have a brilliant plan to popularize WWOOF in North America by changing the name to MEXICO, mostly because irony is an effective recruitment tool for jobless transients in search of an interesting and unique experience (Mission: Engaging Xgringos In Crops of Organics--it took me five minutes and that's the best I could do, maybe it won't be as effective as I imagine. My original acroynm--Mangy Elitist Xperiencing Idealistic Crops of Organics--seemed a more cynical, thus much less effective choice.)

(2) the first opportunity was to help make wind chimes at some guy´s farm out in the middle of nowhere, which sounded more like experiencing a sweat shop in the woods, except at least those people got paid.

. . .

Farmville: Part 1

When I think of life on a farm I usually conjur up a couple images of "The Grapes of Wrath", dry, dusty and poor dominating the landscape (not to mention two solemn, old, wrinkly, and severely depressed farmers, the man wielding an ominous looking pitch fork). Eventually my mind adjusts historically and a horse or oxe or some other beast of burden materializes with Michael Landon prancing in the background planting seeds with happiness and gratification. Finally, the modern farm, dinosaur-like machines with tires as tall as Shaq and as wide as a train of midgets, emerges. These images were dancing in my head (especially the train) as our bus driver ushered us off the local bus very near the middle of absolutely nowhere.

As we approached the farm our nerves creeped to the surface. The family speaks no English, we speak little Spanish. They are farmers, we've both killed more plants than we've managed to nurture. They work with their hands, we don't have jobs. Completely different spectrums colliding and during the most important time of the year for an apple farm, harvesting and juicing time. What in the devil are we doing this for again? And more importantly, why do they want a couple of inexperienced and essentially deaf mutes to help them out (yes, sometimes I feel like im a south American Lifetime story waiting to happen--"How the deaf/mute gringo lived without Words--a heartwarming tale of idiocy.")? Soon enough we were to find out, but not before we met the family and were introduced to our sleeping and bathroom arrangements.
I'm a dirty person. I'm unorganized. I even enjoy a bit of cluter, it's kind of homey. And I'm terribly unapologetic about it. Beth hates these things, but is more tolerant than is probably fair. My first instinct, after a slight dizzying sensation after entering the"bathroom," was to renege on my email-clad agreement and catch the next bus out of town. I think Beth actually vomitted a bit in her mouth. John Steinbeck could not have done this place justice. It's not so much filthy as it is chaotic. Brooms, soap, seperation between animals and people (bugs included) and hot, clean water are all thrown out the window under the simple precept that "as long as everything is organic, it can't hurt you," or the more widely used "god made dirt and dirt don't hurt". And thus it was that dirt was everywhere.

It wasn't just dirt, however, there were more evil, more bile, substances pervading throughtout the farm. The aforementioned bathroom was in fact my favorite introduction. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I should mention that the farm itself is in fact quite cute, as long as you are not locating yourself in the living areas. Many of the structures look incredibly surreal, like they picked up "Alice in Wonderland", read it, and never realized it wasn't some architectural manual. Everything is smooth edges, mushroom tops, reds and yellows, even the occassional old wine bottle set in the wall to allow for more natural light. It's stunning really, even more so when juxtaposed with the internal upkeep. Which is why it was so mentally wrenching when I first saw the inside of the Cheshire Kitty litterbox, aka our bathroom.

It's beautiful, until you realize that inside evil occurs. There is a bucket, above a seat, with two holes. One is small and goes very deep into the ground and is a receptical for urine. The other is larger, resides 6 feet above the bucket and is for death, specifically all that has been completely destroyed in your stomach. Problem 1) Why is there a bucket and not another extremely deep hole? Problem 2) Why is their a bucket of dirt next to the toilet? Problem 3) How does that bucket get unfilled? Problem 4) Why did I eat that clearly tainted hamburger hours before arriving on a farm with a compostable toilet? Problem 5) When they say compostable, where and what does that compost do? All these were answered in due time, most thoroughly unsatisfactorily, even heinously, but nonetheless answered. For you, I'll say it goes something like this: poop, wipe, clean with a dash of water, dump two scoops of dirt on top (for smell and compost). Repeat until filled. Get cheap (read: free) labor to take bucket out, empty in field, but in a specific spot every time. Clean bucket, replace in center of hole. In two months return to field, take excrement, spread on crops. When ripe, harvest crops, rinse in river (more details to follow about said river), don't wash hands or dishes with soap, serve food to family and/or laborers. And that's the WWOOF organic litter box, not to mention almost the end, before it began.

But it did begin, and it was good...

(A point of clarification: We are incredibly behind on posting. It's been about two weeks since we've been on the farm and right now we are actually in Chile. However, we are planning on finishing our three part farm series in the next few days as well as posting about Mendoza and Santiago. But first, the farm, then the rest.)