Ben*s Blog

So, last entry was full of reminiscing about the wonders of Cornwall -  what a truly magical place. Then there’s a gap of a few months and now we are back in Australia tackling our own blank canvas of a garden and attempting to reassimilate into ‘normal’ society, but we are not up to that yet…

Japan.

View of the farm looking towards Nagano

In between our time on Plan-It Earth in Cornwall and arriving home, we spent a month in Obuse, a little town situated in the Nagano Prefecture of Japan – thankfully nowhere near all the recent devastation. I don’t want to write about the tragedy there, other than to say our hearts go out to those who are suffering.

If you have been to Japan, you know how different it is to the rest of the world. If you have not been there let me put it like this, there are countries classified as ‘third world’ then ‘developing world’ and ‘developed world’, and then there is Japan.

The country has a wonderful spirituality and there are temples and shrines at every turn, many of them ancient. There were also people frequenting them and these places of worship, meditation and prayer had a lively energy. You could feel that they were not just monuments, they were a functioning part of everyday life in Japan.

As a place to visit and live in for a short while, it is completely wonderful. Friendly, beautiful, safe, graceful and welcoming. We adored it and spent our time working on a farm perched on a mountain overlooking a long valley surrounded by snow capped peaks.

Winter was getting a grip - Tom found this ice crystal on a pond out the front of the house.

Our hosts were Joe and Sarah Staples, a lovely American couple who met in Japan have been based in there for almost two decades. Joe teaches English at a local school and Sarah is a human dynamo. Cultural event organiser, first woman and first foreigner employed by a long standing Obuse brewing company. She is an advocate for traditional trades, which has seen nearly forgotten skills and techniques given fresh life.

We hooked in to a range of jobs – harvesting apples, fixing farm buildings, preparing old salvaged timbers for reuse, peeling and drying persimmon and general maintenance.

Spare time was spent wandering around the town and exploring local temples, shrines, parks and twisting narrow streets. It was early winter and nights would plummet well below zero. The house was not well insulated and Shoji screens (made of paper with timber struts) and Tatami mats (straw) do little to keep out the cold. Still it was wonderful to live in such a traditional style. We discovered the delights of the ‘kotatsu’ – a low table with a heating element and a built in doona ‘skirt’ to keep your legs and feet toasty.

Recycling Day - The Japanese seem to take their domestic recycling very seriously.

Sarah and Joe were flat out finalising their year and readying themselves for a trip back to the States over Christmas, so we saw very little of them. This was a shame and a contrast to most of our other WWOOFing experiences where we were usually in close quarters with the hosts. I have to say that it was not ideal either, one of the best things about WWOOFing is getting to know your hosts and how they live their lives.

So now we’re back home and putting in to practice the lessons we have learnt. I have to say that thus far, the results have been astounding and we are soooooo grateful for what we have been blessed with… but more on that soon.

Sunrise at Saverdun

Having a bit of land to look after is not really a part time hobby. Acreage needs lots of time, lots of energy and a fair bit of know-how. Many people get inspired by the romantic notion of living life on a farm and dabbling in a few crops and a bit of livestock, whilst still keeping their paid employment…

What they soon find is that they now have two full time jobs.

Saverdun is a small town near Toulouse in the South of France, and we were staying a couple of kilometers out of town on an organic farm with several hectares of eucalyptus plantation, a few hectares of apple orchard and a few more hectares of wild forest.

Start of the apple harvest

The homestead was a lovely old rambling house and barn which had been renovated to become one huge dwelling with creaking floorboards and room to spare. The countryside was lovely, the soil fertile and the weather sunny and mild.

Our hosts, Lynda and Alain, were both busy with their own careers and their farm needed some love. The apple orchard was neck deep in blackberries and the apples needed harvesting, piles of fallen timber needed chopping into firewood for winter and a host of other jobs needed attending to.

Needless to say their was work aplenty for us to do. As usual in the WWOOFing world, it was interspersed with amazing fresh fruit from the property – figs, grapes, aubergines, tomatoes different types of juicy apples, plums and a fantastic kind of peach with ruby red flesh. Lynda is a wonderful cook and she teamed up with Sarah to make wonderful meals as well as preserves, jellies, dried fruits and juices – yum yum.

What the orchard looked like before...

We left with a new appreciation of how much work a property requires, and how quickly that work can pile up and swamp you.

Farming is not for the faint hearted or the time poor.

...and after

Time to reflect

One of the most challenging things about a life of WWOOFing is the mystery of every day. Quite often you arrive at breakfast with complete ignorance of what your mind and muscles will have done by lunch. This leap into the unknown is even greater when travelling between hosts – accommodation, food, work requirements, attitudes and lifestyles are as different as the farms themselves.

The one thing that they all have in common is that they are WWOOF hosts and I think it takes a certain attitude to open you house (and your fridge) to complete strangers. Sure, they are getting cheap labour, but it is not as simple as that. You are basically strangers who have to live together, often for weeks or months. This can present a certain joy as you meet and bond with new people and you share your stories and ideas. It can also bring stress if you do not ‘click’ or if the host treats you merely as cheap labour…

It is a joy getting your water straight from the stream

There are so many things to learn. The more you know, the more you know there is to know – if you know what I mean? By stepping outside one’s lifestyle and social sphere, you become exposed to so many new things that it can sometimes make you feel highly ignorant – ‘no, sorry I don’t know how to weld – yet’, ‘apologies, but how exactly do I drive that sort of tractor?’, ‘yes, I know using a chain-saw is easy, I just haven’t used one and, if possible, I would like some tips on keeping most of my limbs attached’.

When much of your life has been spent in cities, there just ain’t that many opportunities to deconstruct a wheat thrasher.

When a rare fire rainbow appeared as we met one of our hosts, we knew we were in for a treat

It’s wonderful though, how things just seem to work out. Hosts spend a bit of time up-skilling you, or you find work that is aligned with your strengths of knowledge and experience. Basically if you are willing to have a go you will probably do OK. Then comes the satisfaction of a job well done and a good days work achieved.

Perhaps the best bonus of all is when you feel like you have been really useful.

Most of the farms we have visited have too much to do, so the hosts are just doing what they can. When you are able to tackle that job which has always been on the back-burner, or that pile of unsorted mess that they just have not had time to get to, but walk past several times a day. It is a lovely feeling. You feel that you have made their lives a little bit better. You feel like you have contributed towards something positive. You feel good.

Changing of the guard

Life as a WWOOFer is filled with challenges, but it is also filled with new friendships, laughter, fabulous food, hectic times and time to chill. We have been on the road for eight months now and even though the homesickness is starting to niggle, every day is a wild ride and we are savouring the journey.

Plenty of time to play in the wild

Baltak

It seems that when you WWOOF at a place for a good length of time, the line between host and friend dissolves. This is a lovely thing, because you end up feeling like you are helping out a mate, and it makes the work you do become even less of a chore.

The 'wagon' with our neighbours in the foreground.

Such was the case with Fabian and Antonie on their lovely little property in Baltak, Sweden.

We were the first WWOOFers hosted by this young couple,who have recently emigrated from Dresden in Germany. Our accommodation was a timber ‘wagon’ they had built when they themselves were WWOOFers (at Bossgarden funnily enough- see our last post), perched on the edge of the forest in a field with three sheep. The wagon was beautifully crafted and fitted out with an eye for detail and a flair for style.

Fabian and Antonie (Toni for short) have a beautiful baby boy called Janosch and live on two hectares on the outskirts of town. They grow lots of their own vegetables, are renovating their lovely but run-down house and have a few sheep wandering around their back paddock. The house is bordered by forests full of mushrooms, blueberries and raspberries which they like to collect and make use of in their cosy kitchen. We spent a few afternoons wandering thought the forests ‘shopping’ for the tastiest offerings. The property is also bordered by the village church, whose bell rang for about two minutes at 6.30am and two minutes at 6pm… we never really figured out why.

Toni, Zoe and Janosch hunting mushrooms.

I asked Fabian why he had moved to Sweden and he said that even though his life was pretty sorted in Dresden – nice flat, good job, friends, family, social life – he and Toni felt that something was lacking, it felt ‘hollow’. Their life now is much more challenging and with that, they feel it is also richer. Funny how difficulty can also bring happiness.

My main task at Baltak was to help build a fence for the front of their property and it quickly became clear that we were not just whacking up a fence, we were building a structure that was to last as long as the materials would allow. I once read a great saying in a hardware store, which said something along the lines of; “If you didn’t have time to do it right in the first place, how come you have time to do it again now?” and this seems to be one of Fabian’s mantras.

Fabian has started a timber mill in a nearby town with his good friend Marcus (also from Germany). They repair old furniture and timber buildings, mill timber and take on other odd jobs when time allows. The picket-style fence was to be built from off-cuts from their mill and a bunch old posts they had lying around.

Debarking hundreds of these with chisel and 'pull knife' was like meditation due to the simple skills of the task.

I will spare you the details, but to make this fence (which was about 70 meters long) the timber had to be pulled from the off-cut pile, loaded and carted to the house, cut to length, debarked, treated with an old recipe for ‘weathering’ timber, sorted, stacked and then put together. The poles had to be cut to a point and painted with concentrated pine sap to protect them from insects and rot.

The job took a long time, but the result is a fence that is sympathetic to its surrounds, made of local timber and built to last two or three times longer than timber sourced from the local hardware store.
In the end we did not want to leave and they did not want us to go, but plane tickets were booked and our next destination awaited, so we  bid a tearful farewell to our newfound friends and headed down to the South of France.

Hosts and friends - from left; Vanessa, Marcus, Fabian, Toni and Janosch. If you look closely you can see some of the finished fence in the background too.