Old MacDonald had a farm, and on that farm he had … a college student? It may not be a traditional pairing, but increasingly, young adults are traveling by working on farms in exchange for food and lodging.
Several organizations and websites match farms with interested laborers. One of the most well known is Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), which spans the globe and has several subsidiary organizations. Started in 1971 in the United Kingdom, WWOOF has expanded to over 40 countries. There are several similar organizations, such as Help Exchange and the more regionally-focused North East Workers on Organic Farms (NEWOOF), based in Belchertown, Mass.
"It's primarily a matching service between folks looking for apprentices for the summer season and young folks looking for an opportunity to work on a farm, get their hands dirty and get an idea of what's involved in farming," Director of NEWOOF Warren Hubley told the Daily. "We basically maintain a database, and we publish a NEWOOF farm list with updates as the season goes along."
Once matched, "apprentices" are normally expected to work daily on the farm in exchange for meals and housing. The amount and type of labor depends on the host. Many students interested in farming said they had found out about the opportunity through word of mouth.
"My friend came up to me one day and said he was planning a trip to Chile and asked if anybody wanted to come," said sophomore Gabe Lewenstein, who worked on a farm in Chile last summer with several other Tufts students. "He did the organizational stuff from there and we bought the [WWOOF] membership together."
Although the group had made preliminary arrangements, Lewenstein stressed the importance of being flexible.
"One thing that was really good was there were a lot of farms around," he said. "We were supposed to work on a flower farm outside Santiago, but about two days before, we got an e-mail saying, ‘Sorry, we can't take you.' We were like, ‘We came to the Southern Hemisphere for you,' but he didn't really have anything to say."
Luckily, the owner of the hostel where Lewenstein was staying had heard of a nearby farm and helped the group make arrangements there.
"We ended up on a goat cheese farm in the middle of nowhere," he said.
Despite the initial hiccup, once settled, Lewenstein enjoyed the more rural lifestyle.
"It was cool to see a side of life which I definitely was not participating in before. As a professor's son, I'd never been on a farm in my life," he said.
Hubley explained that much of the appeal of farming apprentice programs lies in the "taste" that students get for the farm life.
"It's basically hands-on experience. There's nothing that can take the place of doing what the farmer has to do. We encourage farmers to make it as good a learning experience as possible," he said. "There's inevitably a little tension between [a farmer] wanting them to perform physical tasks and having to spend time teaching people. A lot of the farm activity takes skill and expertise. When a farmer gets a new apprentice it takes time for them to get trained."
Senior Kailah Hayden-Karp didn't feel much tension during her WWOOF experience. At the end of her semester studying abroad in New Zealand, she wanted to travel and decided that farming would be a great, and affordable, option.
"I joined WWOOF New Zealand, and I got a book and an online access password. I looked through all of it for farms that seemed cool and in places I wanted to travel," Hayden-Karp said. "The match I found worked out super well. The wife was [from New Zealand], the dad was Australian, and they had three kids. I'd get up and have breakfast with them and work on their farm from eight to two. I'd feed their animals and work in the garden, and then I'd do whatever I wanted [in the evening]. I would take a walk or play with the kids and they'd make an amazing dinner at night."
Hayden-Karp liked feeling connected to both the people and the country of New Zealand.
"It was a really cheap way to travel, and you get to know a family," she said. "In hostels you don't meet people in the country. You meet other Europeans or Americans backpacking but [through WWOOF] you meet a family, and I did become a part of their family.
"You just get to know a place on such a different level when you're working with the land," she continued. "It was the highlight of my trip abroad."
"It was a cool cultural experience. I was out in the pastures talking about goat herding. It was really, really fun," Lewenstein said of his time in Chile.
Students are rapidly catching on to the benefits of farm apprenticeship, and the number of young people participating seems to be growing. According to Hubley, student interest in NEWOOF's services rises annually.
"I can tell because we get their e-mails and they are usually .edu addresses. We've seen a big surge, especially this year. The job market probably has something to do with it," Hubley said.
The fact that working on a farm is a low-cost option is one of its appeals.
"The concept of living for free is really nice for a lot people. Even though working on a farm is still sort of a vacation, it's hard work but it's worth it for the experience and the immersion," Lewenstein said.
"If you don't like doing physical labor it isn't just like a vacation, although it is a really good opportunity to travel places you might not have," Hayden-Karp said. "It's not good for someone who doesn't like being involved in family life. Most of [the farms] are in more rural areas. But you can't have those experiences — you can't meet families or locals and be adopted in someone's life, or be connected to the land — without that."
