Ep 8: We Traded Farm Work for Adventure: The WWOOFing Journey That Changed Our Lives

When we first discovered WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), we had no idea how much those experiences would shape our lives.

In this episode, we're taking you back to our very first WWOOFing journey across the United States. From California and New Mexico to Georgia and North Carolina, we share stories from the farms we stayed on, the unforgettable people we met, and the experiences that have stayed with us for nearly two decades. 

Today, we've come full circle. After years of WWOOFing ourselves, we now welcome WWOOFers to our own homestead. As we reflect on these early adventures, we're reminded of the generosity, hospitality, and unexpected connections that made each experience so meaningful. 

In this episode, we share:

•  Stories from our first WWOOFing experiences across the United States 
•  The unforgettable people and farms that left a lasting impression 
•  What it's been like to experience WWOOF from both sides—as volunteers and now as hosts 
•  How WWOOFing influenced our homesteading journey 
•  Why opening ourselves to new people and experiences has enriched our lives 

If you've ever been curious about WWOOFing, volunteering on organic farms, or hearing the stories that helped shape our path to homesteading, we hope you enjoy this conversation.

Learn more about WWOOFING: https://wwoof.net/

Connect with Lindsay & Scott: 

To learn more about our retreats: www.homesteadandheal.net

Connected with Lindsay: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaycourcelle/

Connect with Scott: https://www.instagram.com/alchemygardens/

Don't forget to subscribe, and leave us a review/ rating! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to Homestead and Heal. I'm Scott.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

And I'm Lindsay, and we live with our three children on a farm in Vermont. Our lives revolve around growing food and medicine, working with the body, and trying every day to live in deeper relationship with the earth. And now we're welcoming guests to our farm for intimate retreats where they can slow down and feel deeply into this earth-body connection.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

This podcast is about remembering something many of us have forgotten: that we're not separate from the natural world. Our bodies are part of it. Our healing comes through it. And when we reconnect to both, our purpose often begins to reveal itself.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Through conversations with herbalists, farmers, body workers, and people walking unconventional paths, we explore what it looks like to step outside the modern paradigm and build lives rooted in connection, healing, and reciprocity with the earth. Okay, welcome to Homestead and Heal. It is 10:30 p.m., the night of our deadline for having this episode to be sent to our editor. And we are on vacation in Ocean Park, Maine, really nearby to both where Scott and I met and also where Scott grew up coming for vacation. And it's been a lovely vacation.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Yeah, it's a very special place to me for sure. This whole uh Saco Bay, Lindsay and I met teaching ecology to elementary students about a mile or two south of here, down the beach. So, right? And I spent my whole life going on vacation here. Um, and actually my dad grew up going on vacation here, and I'm pretty sure my grandfather, my dad's dad, also grew up going on vacation here. So it's like an ancestral experience, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

We're kind of at a sleepy, sleepier little section just south of Old Orchick Beach, which is has a pier and a carnival and uh we call it a carnival.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

The kids call it a carnival. It's uh amusement park. Amusement park on the beach, and tons of tourists from Quebec come down here.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So lots of French speakers. Um we had some ice cream for our daughter Serena's birthday a few nights ago, and I had to ask a woman if we could borrow her lighter to light the candle that we brought to put in her ice cream, and she didn't speak any English. But luckily, one of the people she was with translated for her, and we were able to sing happy birthday to Serena.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Yeah, that's funny. This particular spot where we've been staying. This is the third time we've stayed in this cabin. Is it right in Ocean Park? And it's um, so we're not very far from the beach. We're a couple blocks away. Um, but there's also this like beautiful wooded park that has trails through it. That I think the first year we came here, we discovered all of this rishi growing on some hemlock that was in there. And it's mostly pine in there, but there is a bunch of hemlock. And we found all this rishi that I had collected. It was like so prime and perfect, and collected a bunch and had to like scramble to go find a food dehydrator to get it put away. And so I checked again last year, but there was none fruiting. And then I went out this year and it's just everywhere. The forest is full of uh these fruiting um raishi trees, hemlock trees that are full of raishi. So we've been drawing batches of it, which is pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, and it was growing on a tree that was had fallen over and was, you know, creating basically like a bridge across a little waterway that Remy wanted to crawl across the first time we went. And it was just really cool to see all these tiny little raishi, and then and then when I think when you saw that you looked up and you were basically like, Well, these this has to be coming from somewhere. And you looked up and there was this monster in the tree, monster raishi.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Giant and super prime. And they'd already like dropped their spores, they get this brown sort of uh dusting once they've already done their reproductive part. So always looking to like when I'm foraging mushrooms, the rule that I learned is never take more than a third of what you find for sustainability. But with the Rishi also, like if they've if they've already released a lot of spores, that's another good sign. They can still be super prime. There was something else I was gonna say about that. Oh, and then that year, I didn't know. I was like, I was sort of polishing them. They're called hemlock uh varnish shelf. They're these like really beautiful, they look like varnished. It's like this crimson sort of color that they develop to. But I was dusting the spores off before drying them because I didn't really know because that was good medicine.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Are you saying that Rachia is called the hemlock varnish shelf?

SPEAKER_02 5:13

The one that is most commonly here. Yes, that's what it was called. And I dusted them off like with some paper towel, and then decided to just go back and stuff paper towel that like the paper towel that was full of spores into like any dead or dying hemlock that I could find in that forest. That was three or four years ago. And then when we showed up this time, the conditions seemed like they had been right. And I got out there and they'd been thinning a bunch of trees, so I was nervous that maybe they had taken out all the dead and dying ones, but we just found it all over the place, which was really cool. And perhaps, you know, maybe they just got around because the forest is wise and spreads them. But perhaps, like I know some of the trees. There were some other trees across the little brook or creek or whatever you want to call it, that I had stuffed a bunch of these spores into that were just full of ratio this year. So that was pretty exciting and rewarding.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Super cool. So tonight we were, because we're on vacation, and um we have a woofer, a farm volunteer who's at our house, dog sitting and kind of holding down the fort, fishing strawberries.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

She's really wonderful. She was a great match, and she's up from Georgia, and um, we were just talking today. We'll probably get her on here at some point.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yeah, we probably will. She's way, way wise for her years. Thank you, Emma, for coming to visit with us. And um, so we we wanted to tell a little bit about our experiences as WOOF volunteers. So this is WWOF. It stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. And it's an organization that you can join for the United States or for different countries around the world, and you get a directory of all these farms that want volunteers and usually, you know, essentially give you room and board in exchange for maybe like a half day of work every day or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Five days a week, typically.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah. So Scott and I had now we're hosts, so we have woofers come and stay with us, and we've had some really, really beautiful people come, including Jen, who our last interview was with. Yeah. Um, we met her through this organization as a woof volunteer on our farm. Um, and then we've reflected back on it's kind of late for us to be doing this. We've reflected back on our journey, which was that basically after only knowing each other a handful of months, Scott flew out to Seattle where I was from and where my car was and met me there. And we we took a two two-month-long road trip over the course of like February and or late January into middle of March or something. And we drove my car, my little Honda Civic, from Seattle down the coast of the United States, down the west coast, across the south, and then up the east coast until we got back to Maine to work at our ecology school job. And so we wanted to tell you about the farms we stayed on during that experience, and then I guess we'll see if we have time to also share about our woofing experience in France and Italy. In France and Italy, and we could share about our own woofers as well. But maybe that would be a part two.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yeah. Uh, one thing I was gonna mention just logistically for folks that if your interest is piqued by this, you can sort of look through the woof directories for any country that has them without paying for a membership. You just won't be able to get the contact information. But if you're like, oh wow, this sounds cool, you can start go to like WOF Italy or whatever your interest is. Whoof USA is really cool too. There's so many cool places. And for me, one of the things, well, I guess we'll kind of get into this, but I just felt like it was so refreshing to go to these little particular places across the country and just see that there's really great communities and wonderful things happening in the United States. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, it's a really cool way to travel because you are immediately immersed in someone else's community and lifestyle. And so we stayed on four farms in the US, one in California, one in New Mexico, one in Georgia, and one in North Carolina on this trip. And we'll just tell you a little bit about those places that we stayed. And we sadly did not keep in touch with any of our WOF hosts, but we think very fondly of them and haven't yet.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

We may be in touch with them. That's right. This might encourage us.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So the first farm where we stayed, we showed up in Sebastopol, California, so like Northern California. And there was a couple named Deborah and Jabiah, and they had a new baby, like a three-month-old baby.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

They had a farm name too, but it's been escaping us.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I almost think it's like Dancing Bee, or no. Did I make that up?

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Well, they had a farm name, but they basically just had like a beautiful little homestead and just a few acres, I think, in Sebastopol.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

And they were mostly he was part of the this um rare fruit growers association. So he had this nursery, he had planted a bunch of fruit trees, and they had a bunch of permaculture y sort of stuff going on. And then just like a bunch of stuff in nursery pots, like a whole bunch of fruits that we'd never heard of. Like Sapuro, is that I'm not sure. So not the right name. Like, yeah, all of these different things that we didn't know about and apparently again don't know much about.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

But uh granted, this was 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

We're aged.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Um, we learned about some grafting techniques. He had a cool little grafting machine that made like perfect cuts that you could match stuff up. That was pretty neat.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

And we just watched the chickens and helped with whatever projects they put us on. And the interesting thing for me to reflect back on is the fact that they did have this three-month-old baby and were hosting us in our house in their house. And, you know, at that time I really had no concept of the rite of passage of becoming a mother, and it was our first baby, and just I could have supported them the mother so much more than I did, you know, just really didn't know and didn't know how to kind of step into that role of support. But it was a beautiful experience to be with them and yeah, they're really kind and really fun.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

They were he was pretty involved with the Bioneers conference that happens in like somewhere in the Bay Area. I went to it once in San Rafael, and yeah, they were just doing a bunch of cool stuff. They actually, I'm just remembering, they showed us the global gardener videos.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Which was like Bill Mollison and Permaculture. Holgren, I can never remember the whole guy's name.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

It's yeah, it's cool to think back to just, you know, little places that we were introduced to concepts. And I'm just thinking about this woofer that we recently had at our farm, and you know, he'd like never heard of he said he'd never heard of GMOs, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:12

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

So, you know, just like for us to think back to yeah, being introduced. I mean, we knew we knew a little bit about permaculture. Yeah. Just barely.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

But we'd like heard the term. But these global gardener videos were so cool because they were an episode would be like temperate forest or urban agriculture or something. And then they would just sort of showcase people doing really cool stuff in those types of microclimates, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah. I remember they were, you know, one night, okay, like if you guys want to go out for dinner, that would be great, basically. And I'm just thinking back to like my own, you know, three months postpartum and how ill-equipped I'd be to host a random.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

You know, in in like their small house.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

It wasn't a big house. But they were they were encouraged us to go out to eat, and we were like, fine, you know, no problem. And um, we went to an open mic at a little cafe with that Kimberly song.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah, there was some funny originals.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

For sure. But it was it was very beautiful there. The area was very cool.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

It was very beautiful. Is there anything else about that stay?

SPEAKER_02 14:23

No.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

It was just lovely, and the sun was really nice. We have some photos of just sitting in the sun, like with the chickens and their cats, and we had a close-ish encounter with a black widow.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

So we were like cleaning up all these nursery pots that had been sort of like overgrown with weeds and just sort of organizing them and cleaning them up and weeding them. And I reached into a pot and saw that there was this big black widow in there, and was kind of freaked out by it. When we find wasps in our house or spiders and things, like we never kill them. We relocate them outside just because. But we were kind of thinking, like, they've got this newborn baby, we don't know how dangerous these are, like, maybe he wants us to kill it, or we're not really sure what to do. So I remember going up and knocking on the door and asking him about it. He's like, Oh. He was like, hello, beautiful. And I almost think he practically picked up the spider. And I was like, I didn't know which one of us do. He's like, they really won't bite you unless you really mess with them. And I was kind of thinking, well, I am sticking my hand into the pot that she's living in, so that seems like it qualifies. But he's like, Oh, I've worked in attic spaces that are just full of them and I've never been bitten. But he was like, very much did not want us to kill her. That was it. His story. They had Harry Potter named animals, Winky and Dobby, a cat and a dog, or two cats.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

And you must not have read Harry Potter at that point.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

No, I had it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

That's interesting. Yeah, and then it became his favorite book series of all time.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Uh I don't know if that's true.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Okay, but it is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

But it's so good.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Okay, I can't think of anything else I want to share about that place. That was a great first place to see.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

It was a good introduction for sure. And then we were visiting friends along the way, too, in family. So then we had some friends in Tahoe, and Lindsay's brother was in the Bay Area in San Jose. So we were visiting them, and then we were supposed to go to another California farm a little bit further down the coast. But the weather was sort of bad, and he canceled on us like last minute. He missed out.

unknown 16:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

It was supposed to be like a really gorgeous spot, so we were kind of bummed. We had another friend to see in Southern California. We went and camped in Joshua Tree, which was cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

We camped in, yeah, that was very cool. And then from there we went to the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon. Yeah, we were snowing. Oh, um, snowed.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Canyon Deshay. Was that before? What?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, no, I'm just I wasn't thinking about telling every little place we went on trip, but it's fine. Canyon Deshay was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Kids context.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Like that. Okay. Good storytelling. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

We stayed with Scott's very best friend from childhood, Steven, while he was teaching.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Cherry Valley. What was the name of that place?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

I don't remember, but he was teaching. Camp Island or something. Yeah, Camp Island, basically like an environmental school there, which was cool.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

And yeah, and then we we signed up with another woof farm in New Mexico.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

We were kind of scrambling because the guy in California. So we changed our plans a little bit. Sky canceled on us, and then we didn't really have a place to be for like a couple or a few weeks, sort of thing. So we found this place. We we were in touch with a couple a few people and found this person in central New Mexico, Kenny.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Why don't you just set the scene of arriving to Kenny's place? Well, first of all, let's just set the scene of it's 2006 or 2007 at this point.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Early 2007. There's no navigation on your phone. Or maybe some people were doing that, but we weren't. We weren't with the time.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

We have map quest, printed maps, and a gazetteer, which for those youngsters listening is like a joke. A gigantic book of maps that you keep in your car and you actually have to follow the roads.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

They're amazing though.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Like a road atlas.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

I mean, they still make them and they are really cool to look at. They have a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

We had a I guess we had just like a U.S. road atlas.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Yeah. I love those. They're cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Driving across the country. Yeah, it was very cool.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

So we went to this farm. I have no idea what his description might have said. I think we probably like reached out to a few places and didn't hear back and then heard back from Kenny. And we were having trouble finding the place. Did had we left the Grand Canyon that morning?

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I'm not sure. I don't really remember that. Does it matter?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah, no, it doesn't matter. I'm sorry. But it's gonna be a long episode. If I get to leave. No, I apologize. So yeah, we were having trouble finding the place. We saw some sandhill cranes, which is a special bird to Lindsay's experience growing up. No?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

My dad. Yeah, my dad likes the birds.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

And we really couldn't find this place. We were near Socuro, New Mexico, which is like pretty beautiful. And we're having a lot of trouble finding the place. And finally, I think what it took us a couple of hours of driving around, lost. And then we finally figured that we had found the place. And when we pulled in, there was like two giant piles of trash flanking the driveway, like on either side of the driveway, like 30 feet long, six feet high, just like these mounds. And that was a little bit alarming slightly. It just we weren't used to that sort of thing, perhaps. And then as we like came around the corner, there was like a couple of trailers kind of facing each other with a few dudes kicking coals around a fire, poking out a fire.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

A couple of peacocks.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Some peacocks, some ducks, some chickens. And I was a little bit scared.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I was definitely scared.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

I remember saying to Lindsay, like, if this doesn't feel good, like we're not obligated to stay here. Let's just go talk with these folks and see what's what and go from there. And Kenny ended up spoiler, it ended up being a really wonderful experience. Kenny was really amazing. And the couple guys that were hanging out with him sort of left right when we got there. And Kenny was kind of showing us around. There wasn't much going on. He had some, he had like an orchard next to the house, which consisted of not that many fruit trees, but there was just a bunch of like stuff, shit around, like just kind of a little bit of a mess. And um we were talking with him for a few minutes, and I remember he like walked us over next to like one of the trailers that wasn't being lived in at the time. And there was like a bunch of old like stems from pot plants, cannabis plants. And he was kind of like looking over his shoulders, like, well, there's not much going on in the farm, but I did have some. Some friends just like did a big grow here. Wanted to make sure that we weren't offended by that or something. We're like, Huh, whatever, that's cool. And um, but then Like a very short while, Kenny was basically like, Well, I was thinking of doing some going and doing some hot springing for the next few days. If you guys just kind of want to hold down the fort and like anything you do is great. Just work on, you know, whatever feels good to you is good for me. And if you just wanted to hang out and like watch the place, that's also great. So we kind of really quickly just settled into hanging out with Kenny.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, he was super friendly and it was an old deadhead.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

And I feel like I should tell his story a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah, you should tell his story.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Because it's very cool. So he ended up being there. He would he had been on Dead Tour in a like a big old um tour bus for many years. And when the summer tour would get over, he would land in this spot in New Mexico. I don't know what his initial sort of connection to the place was. I don't imagine the dead finished their tours out there, but perhaps, who knows? I don't know. But so he would end up in this spot in his tour bus. And he got to know this old couple that was the place that we were staying, had lived on. And they were like old herbalists, midwives, this couple delivered, I think the account was like, they had like all these diaries, like hundreds of babies there. And this was starting back like in the maybe like in the 30s. And basically the way he told it was these folks knew a lot of sort of traditional medicine and midwifery herbal medicine. And the locals really didn't trust modern medicine. This was like going quite a ways back. And so by the time Kenny showed up there, they were getting up in years, but they were these really cool folks. And when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, he ended up like not knowing what he was like, what direction or what he was going to do. And he landed there again because that was the place that he would go. And they were getting elderly, and they had a son who they figured would just sell the place. He had no connection to it. But Kenny had sort of gotten really close with them and would take care of them, I guess, or later on was kind of like helping caretake the place, taking care of them, was deeply connected with the place, and they ended up leaving it to him. And so that's where he landed, which was this beautiful. It was um, it was like I'm trying, I feel like I'm gonna mess up my geography, but it's like on the Rio Grande. Yeah, and white plains white sands, white sands, national monument reserve or something. He was like right in that zone. And you could like walk out and find all these like old pieces of pottery. There was like deep native, indigenous sort of history there. And he was showing us these little mounds that were like old dwellings that had been sort of like taken back by nature, like Dan was talking about, but yeah, even further along, and it was just this really gorgeous place, like a landscape that I'm not very familiar with, but it was really beautiful. And yeah, we just ended up there was cats everywhere. Cats, peacocks, love cats. There was a uh a male peacock that was so impressed with himself, and he would stand in front of the the storm door and just like look at himself from different angles and squawk, and he would jump up on the hoods of cars and look at his reflection. And those are a couple of things I remembered.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

I don't remember a whole lot, but I think that's because I was like taking bong hits or something.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

I don't know if we were gonna say that. Yeah, that was the So five minutes after Kenny telling us what had been going on at the place, he's like, Do you guys want to take a bong hit? Like, okay, we feel at home here.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Yeah, I mean, I don't I just feel like there was a a little stretch there where I was particularly um out of it. And I do what I remember is the wood fired hot tub.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

And just being out under the stars in this, like it's like a like a trough.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Like a huge animal, like a metal trough with uh like one of those turkey fryer burners underneath the propane burners. Lindsay almost cooked herself out there when I remember literally came out and your heart was racing and you're like out of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

And that was not good.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

No, that wasn't good, but it was really beautiful to sit under the stars. I remember Kenny saying that he would sit out there until like something special happened, like heard the train in the distance or a shooting star or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah. And you you really cleared the little orchard space.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

I worked hard. I know using a wheelbarrow, and I really cleaned up his orchard. We took some before and after pictures, actually. And yeah, his whole thing was I remember Lindsay was pulling burrs out of one of the dogs for maybe that first night, and his whole thing was that everything is like forward progress, like anything we did with good intention was the right thing to do. And he didn't want to dictate anything that he wanted us to do. He didn't want us just to figure out what worked well for us and just go for it.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

I mean, I feel like I remember reading a lot there.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

I don't know that I was oh, yeah, there were some cool books on like psychedelics and interesting history and stuff like that. And he had, I can't tell his tales because we don't have time for them, but some of the wildest and like coolest, most vivid stories. I remember a couple of them really well. Like inadvertently, accidentally being convinced to like smuggle drugs from Mexico and not on a motorcycle, on a motorcycle, not realizing that's what this adventure was that this guy recruited him for.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

But yeah, he was a really nice guy. So that was our second farm. And again, like not much of a farm, but just a great experience to meet someone. And I mean, you know, this was 20 years ago, and like this guy had a really big impact on our life. So even if we didn't keep in touch with him, it's it's been interesting to kind of reflect back on this.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Kenny, if you're listening, we do want to reconnect.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

I do. I want to find it. I don't know how. We can try.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Maybe he's still on roll. That would be funny. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

So yeah, from there we traveled. Let's see, we went through Austin.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

We went to Austin and there was major traffic backup because an up-and-coming politician had a rally there that day.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Obama?

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Yeah, I guess I remember that.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

And we went and saw the Ultra Medicine show. I think that's who we saw. It was really fun.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah. And then we visited my cousin and we went to New Orleans after that. Yeah. Saw some friends.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Which was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

So fun. Crawbread. The cra cra crawdad bread.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Yeah, cheesy crab bread.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Oh, yum. It's etched in my brain forever.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

That was really good.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Um, and then we went from there to Debbie's, right? In Georgia.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Yeah. And we actually waited a day because there was some really bad weather. There was like a bunch of tornadoes. And so we ended up in New Orleans in New Orleans an extra day. And then landed at Salamander Springs was the name of that place, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yep, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Debbie was this amazing woman who we stayed in, she called it her hundred dollar cabin. It was like bamboo posts that they had stretched old carpet over and like stucco or something, like made this cool and like recycled windows. She was uh like a professional dumpster diver.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

And an English teacher.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

She was an English teacher at um a school in like a high school in Macon, Georgia. We were near to Macon. Oh, we were like an hour away. I forget the name of the town that was away.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Yeah, I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

There was like a couple that were woofing. Yeah. And then another couple of women that were just like friends that were also woofing there.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

She had this big outdoor kitchen and amazing gardens and chickens and like an amazing library in her house. And she was just like such a kind, awesome person. She had these stories I remember about her siblings being unkind to her because she wasn't a racist. And how they'd been like really shitty to her because she cared about people. She worked in like a sound like a pretty rough, like I think uh the school she worked in was like, you know, she was working with privileged sort of folks for sure. And just was like such a sweet and wonderful person.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

I'm trying to remember the like I remember working in like a stream bed.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yeah, doing some like maybe some trail sort of like but they had all these structures around that people could stay in. They were just doing a bunch of cool stuff. I remember helping to repair a fence around the main garden and um being encouraged to pee on the anthills because the red ants or the fire ants or whatever are super pain in the ass there. Which is funny because Emma, who was woofing with us right now, was like, I don't know, she was like, Oh, you've got some ants crawling on you. And I was like, seemed unbothered by it. And she's like, Oh, did they not really bite here? And I was like, No, most of them don't. She's like, Oh, that's amazing. They're such a problem. She'd been working on a farm in Georgia for like the last four or five years. And so, yeah, she was just talking about I remember the ants as a thing.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

I remember like cooking all together in a big group and then having a fire and like almost having like a little variety show, you know, singing and no, you don't remember that?

SPEAKER_02 32:35

I mean, I remember cooking around a fire and like a lot of stories and Alexis and Dalton. Yeah. Alexis came and worked with us here at the ecology school. Fair beach ecology school.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Someone that we met there has another woofer came and worked with us at the ecology school here in Maine where we worked for a few seasons. I I feel like I remember Dalton doing like a Bob Dylan song or something. One of those where it's a lot of words. And you were impressed.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

I know.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Maybe it was like I'm almost thinking maybe it was like Rocky Raccoon. No, I wasn't impressed. It was just anyway.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

She didn't mean she wasn't impressed. Dalton is we have a lot of listeners. Apparently.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

So that was really fun, and Debbie was amazing. And again, like I just kind of wish we had kept in touch because she's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

We're gonna get in touch with her. Yeah, she was doing a lot of she was doing a lot of cool stuff. I looked her up within the last five years, and the farm still existed, and she was still doing cool stuff. And we had like a shower that week or a week plus that we were there. It was like, you know, it was like camp, camping sort of life.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah, that was like rougher conditions. I mean, it was great.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Well, I guess typically when we're telling these stories about Wolfing, one thing that I point out is that each experience we've had is like so unique and different than the next.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

And so this is was that way too. Like in the house of this couple in California with their new baby and doing a particular thing. And then Kenny's thing was like alone in a trailer. Yeah. Um, such a unique sort of experience and so different than the previous. And then again at Debbie's place, it was very different. And so then that I guess I'm saying that to lead into we went directly from there.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

To um that firm had a name too.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

In Boone. Boone, North Carolina, with a view of Mount Mitchell and one of those, or Burnsville.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Burnsville, maybe, yeah. Or Boone. I don't know. We either like went and visited the other town or whatever. But it was a gorgeous rhododendrons in the forest and um somewhere around Asheville. Beautiful mountains and really cool, assuming sort of community going on. And when we were supposed to be showing up there, we were gonna be like staying in the staff housing or something. There was a couple, there was like a young-ish couple that was working there full time, and they were both musicians, I think. Yeah, they were, but they had like they had the flu as we were, or they were like really sick as we were about to arrive. And so the host's name.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

I can't think of it, but they put us up in the blueberry cottage.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Yeah, so like the day we were supposed to be in there, she's like, you'll be these folks are sick, so you're gonna be staying in the blueberry cottage.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

So it was like their like guest house rental, you know, agro-tourism sort of place we got to stay in.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

We showed up, uh, I think it was getting dark. It was like in the evening, and maybe it was raining a bunch, and we showed up at their house, and um she was like, Hello, show you over to the blueberry cottage, which was like across the road or something. And so we followed her. We went over, and it was this beautiful rental house. It was like really cool little house, and she was like, and there's like all this food in the fridge. Yeah, the food the fridge was stocked with, I don't know, fancy like bake yourself pizza and just like I mean salad, greens, and like, and I got you six pack of beer because it's a dry county or something, and that'll be hard for you to get. And there's like the grill out back that feel free to use that, and there's this and that. I think there was like some nice cheeses in the fridge, and like it was in the place was really nice.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

We had just been doing this, like I think some of their goat cheese.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Yeah, so there they were goat goat farm. Yeah, I think her husband was a doctor, maybe, and she was a nurse like full time. So they worked, and then they had this farm project, which was they had they milked goats and they weren't selling any cheese because maybe the laws were weird or something there. They couldn't do like raw goat dairy or yeah, something, but instead they were making a bunch of goat milk soaps. And because they were doing that, they also had a pretty big lavender production piece of their operation, which we worked on a little bit. I can't remember the other things we worked on.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

I feel like that was the main thing we worked on with um wheelbarrows full of those white rocks that we were putting out in the lavender garden.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah, apparently. I've never like really checked back into this, but the lavender, like the extra light, like perhaps cool soils. You'd think hot maybe, but they were using this white gravel, just like maybe it's too warm there. Yeah, I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah, anyway, yeah, so that was we loved the goats there. They had a goat there at the time that had a hysterical pregnancy, so like they thought the goat was pregnant.

SPEAKER_02 38:12

They thought the goat was like the day we showed up, they're like, probably tonight or tomorrow morning. And then we ended up we were there for like a week or a little more, and then like the goat kept not having its babies, and like the day we left or the day after, she was like, Oh, it was a hysterical pregnancy, which we'd never heard of. Yeah, I'd never heard of.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

I'd never heard of either. And it's basically just like the goat pregnant, acted pregnant, but wasn't pregnant.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Pretty strange. I don't know anything about it though.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

We got to hang out with the goats, we got to work in this beautiful spot. We went to some sort of art opening or art walk or something.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

It's fuzzy for me, but I was definitely not doing bong hits at this farm.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

They uh we probably had some with us. I mean, we weren't taking bonds.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

We were taking bong hits.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

No, I know, but okay. Either way, um they had a labyrinth. Do you remember a lot?

SPEAKER_00 39:13

No.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Yeah, in the view in view of the mountain.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

And don't remember the labyrinth.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

They it was a really it was a really beautiful spot. Um I we didn't we didn't interact with them all that much because they were like working full-time.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Yeah, and the couple was like six tech. Remember, I remember going to the post office and getting a bunch of chicks.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Oh. Yeah. I don't really rem oh yeah, I do remember that. I don't remember actually going to the post office. I remember being instructed to like try to get them. I think they were like ducks.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Ducks? Okay. Well, some sort of small birds.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were ducks, and our instructions were to go pick them up and try to get them to drink water.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Because that was critical for their survival, and they didn't all survive.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

No. We were with uh farm up employee though. Some yeah. And yeah, maybe played some music with them, that couple.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

He played banjo, I think, or something.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Or maybe she didn't. Yeah, I can't remember even their names.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Yeah. Well, they gave us, and when we left, they like gave us a nice care package, like a bunch of nice soaps and some other stuff, and like a hundred bucks.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah, I remember that now.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

We're like, oh, like we didn't even have a chance to like refuse. It was just like she left it and was like off to work, and we're like, okay, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Yes, we were quite poor at that time.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

She must have known.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

She was stringing our way across the US. Yeah. So I feel like we should tell maybe our Europe woofing another time.

SPEAKER_03 41:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

As a separate episode. But I think we and maybe we could also talk about some of our woofers in a second episode.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

And I think we can just say that yeah, each experience, like you said, was so very different. And you know, for us, our experience of the woofers we've had has been each person has been so different. But it's again just such a great way to travel and go to a different place, but like not just be totally on your own to explore with a guidebook or you know, Google searching or whatever else, because you're just kind of immediately immersed in a community or you know, with a family that can give you recommendations and also just teach you about new things. And I mean, I really feel like that experience woofing was, I don't know if we talked about it much in our first episode, but that was like definitely putting us even more on the path that we're on now of just, you know, wanting to homestead, wanting to grow our own food.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yeah, for sure. We were inspired by all of the folks we woofed with and our European trip too, like in a big way. I don't know, and the whole wolfing thing. Oh, I remember like Debbie, the woman in Georgia, talking about how her her like teacher colleagues were like, Are you crazy? Do you have strangers showing up to your farm? What if they're like axe murderers or something? And Debbie was like, What are you talking about? These are like people that are like coming and like working on the farm with me. Like, what are you talking about? And I don't know. And I remember this, I guess, of Deborah and Jabiah too, that there was this whole maybe they had done some woofing.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

But it was just this, like, you know, it's this old ethic of like welcoming in the traveler sort of thing, or like opening your doors to people that are yeah, out there. I don't know, and want to learn and it's like this like um older idea of hospitality, sort of just like helping people out that are traveling through or whatever. But I think what really kind of like turned me on just that idea of like I don't know, being open to not knowing what the adventure is gonna be like or not knowing what the people are gonna be like, and hoping that it works and. Uh and getting to know some I don't know, in opening yourself up in that way, having the opportunity to like have some really amazing, unexpected experiences, adventures, and new friends. Like Yeah, there's something that's kind of special about it, I think.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

It's super special. And we woofed on those four farms in the US and three in Europe, and every single experience was great. And we've only just recently had our first experience with a woofer that just wasn't a great fit for us, and that we pretty quickly realized was just not a good fit. But really, we've had great experience too with having people come to stay on our farm as well.

SPEAKER_02 44:46

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

And even that person who was not such a great fit was still a lovely human, just not the right one for us to be working with at this time.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Like a really great person. I just really wasn't a good fit for the particular situation. I hope she's having good travels beyond.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

I think she will be.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

She was, yeah, understanding. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

So yeah, I think uh we should maybe call it good. We could spend five minutes looking for, we're doing a very intense um Norse gods puzzle with our 10-year-old daughter.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

And we should probably put like a picture of it in the show notes or something. It's very beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 45:32

Okay, we'll see if we can find a picture to put in the show notes. Take a picture. Yeah, I just I don't think you even know what show notes are. So it's just I don't know how you put a picture in the show notes, but maybe I'm wrong. It's gotta be alright. Maybe I don't know what the show notes are.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

I think that's the case.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Okay, thank you for being here listening. We have got a lot more really amazing interviews coming up, and maybe a couple of these episodes with just us. We've also talked with Scott's mom about interviewing her.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

I mean, I think we've been talking about trying to interview all of our parents.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

Interviewing all of our parents and also we talked with Ella and yes, our kids.

SPEAKER_02 46:18

I think all of the kids.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Yeah. Serena, I don't know. Maybe that'll the dog.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

He doesn't have the whole she's.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Serena's only two. She's very talkative. I don't know if she'd quite understand our questions, but you could hear her.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

She'd be cute.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

That's true. That would be fun. So uh more coming from us, and thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. And this podcast will go back to its um more of the interview format with guests in a couple episodes, and yeah, we'll have a lot more to share about that soon.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

Thanks. Good night. Thank you for listening to this episode of Homestead and Heal. If you loved it, please help us spread the word by subscribing to this podcast and leaving us a review. For more information about our work, visit homesteadandheal.net.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

We're wishing you the life of your dreams, one that feels deeply rooted, fully alive, and connected to the earth beneath your feet.