Woofing sounds fantastically illicit, doesn’t it? The first time I came across it, I was staying at one of my favourite eco-friendly spots, The Omagh Hostel in County Tyrone. The owner, Marella Fyffe, showed me to my room saying, “There are a couple of woofers in the next room, but they are very quiet”. I wondered if this was dubious Tyrone slang but, seeing my confusion, Marella quickly put me right. Woofing, actually spelt, ‘Wwoofing’, stands for World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms. Just to confuse matters, it is also sometimes known as, “Willing Workers On Organic Farms”. Wwoofers are, therefore, the willing workers. Up until that point I had been a Wwoofing virgin, with no idea about all the fun I had been missing.
The Wwoofing system is quite brilliant in its simplicity, and is one of the finest examples of successful, practical and sustainable tourism. People of all ages, who are keen to travel the world, sign up with the international WWoof network, set up in UK in 1971, to see who in the world is looking for volunteers. These may be on an organic farm, vineyard, orchard, or even a restaurant with an organic kitchen garden. In exchange for four or five hours’ work a day, the Wwoofers get free accommodation and meals. For people like Marella, Wwoofers are an invaluable workforce. But good hosts will always give back as good as they get which, in the Fyffe family’s case is great company, superb meals morning, noon and night, and the best local guides you could ask for.
Wwoofing work varies from farm to farm, of course, and during my stay at The Omagh Hostel, Jurgen from Dusseldorf and Mary from Pennsylvania were planting seeds, transferring young beans to the polytunnel, watering the burgeoning young strawberry plants, stocking up the composter, and cutting the lawn in time to install a yurt for the Hostel’s summer party, raising money for a local conservation charity.
As I helped place some organic lettuce seeds delicately into trays, we are all enthralled by Marella’s boundless energy and plans for total sustainability. That evening, Marella taught Jurgen how to knead bread, while I prepared a vat of salad using some of our freshly picked leaves. Did Wwoofers ever abuse the system, I wondered? “I have had Wwoofers for ten years now, and never had a bad experience”, Marella reassured me, saying, “You have to trust your instincts. You can usually tell from the first phone call if this is the sort of person you want to be sharing your time and home with”. She went on to tell me that Wwoofers too can be exploited, being overworked and badly fed. But she insisted that this is extremely rare, and the network is so tight, that such people would be exposed straight away.
Wwoofing is not just for a student gap-year either. It is a great way to travel at any age, especially if you like the idea of travelling alone for a while, and often just a few weeks’ work is much appreciated by hosts, so you don’t have to give up a whole year. You just need to embrace the ethos of Wwoofing which is all about enjoying the old fashioned principles of non-monetary exchange of work for food and a bed for the night. It is also a short-cut route to breaking down cultural barriers, creating friendships, and it teaches the fundamentals of organics and caring for the environment. I hope the world is still Wwoofing when I have the opportunity to take-off in carefree mode, and make up for all that lost time, when Wwoofers were still one of the world’s best kept secrets.
To stay at The Omagh Hostel, see www.omaghhostel.co.uk or Tel: 00-44-28-8224- 1973
To become a Wwoofer, see www.wwoof.org.uk or for similar work exchanges on anything from sailing boats to ranches, see www.helpexchange.net
This article was first published in The Irish Times, 16 May 2009