Ollie Herron (’23) experiences a week with WWOOF

Ollie Herron (’23) embarked on a transformative journey to Lopez Island, where he spent a week immersed in the world of organic farming through the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) program. This organization is dedicated to fostering a global community that values ecological farming and sustainable practices. Ollie enthusiastically shares his experience below, detailing the unique aspects of his adventure that left a lasting impact on him:

The drive up the coast from San Diego up to Lopez Island off the coast of Washington state was really fun, watching it slowly get more wooded and mountainous and the temperature slowly dropping slightly.

The only way to access the island was by about a 45-minute ferry trip. The homestead I stayed at was run by a wonderful horticulturalist named Catherine. She had three larger gardens on her property, all fully handmade raised beds with various fencing crafted from found/gifted/traded materials. One that holds a particular memory is her “bamboo garden” which was named for the bamboo sticks placed around the edges holding up netting to keep the deer out. She had various garlic, chard, onions, radishes, etc as well as a small orchard of blackberry bushes, cherry trees, and a few different pear trees.

I slept in a small trailer in her yard and used an outhouse, getting up about eight in the morning for breakfast and working till around 5 or 6 with a break for lunch. The work included much weed-eating and mowing, weeding garden beds, fertilizing, various pest control, composting, and pruning unwanted buds from the fruit trees. The pests were the main battle as she refused to use any sort of chemical based sprays so we spent our time pruning the trees of tent caterpillar nests whenever we saw them, spending a few hours picking blackberry leaves that were contaminated with fungus spores, and carefully collecting any slugs we saw as we worked for her to later take them to a separate part of the island to be released.

The fertilizers we used were manure tea (basically watered down manure from other farmers on the island) and comfrey tea made from the leaves of the comfrey plants that invaded the borders of her property. She had a large compost operation with several tarped over beds in varying levels of decomposition and drums filled with fresher compost and some worms to eat it. All of the food she cooked was 100% organic and the majority of it was bought or traded from other people on the island.

While I was there we also made a trip to the recycling plant where next door they had a donation center that had everything from clothes, books, toys, appliances, furniture, basically anything you could want and it was all for free! I had to grab a few books from there of course. On the days when it was rainy we spent the time working on some chores inside vacuuming or attempting to fix her sewing machine. The plumbing also did not work well unfortunately so showering was very limited…

I only spent a week there but it was still an experience and lifestyle I will remember forever and I hope to go back there or to another farm to spend a full season, as WWOOF hosts usually prefer.