The first time I heard about WWOOF (Weekend Working On Organic Farm) was in 1983 from someone who worked in the same building, Mary, who was a member. (Update 280112: It's now Worldwide Working On Organic Farm.)
When you registered, they would send you a form to fill in, where you stated your preferences (region, time windows, size and type of farm). They would then match you with the right people. A wwoofer could bring a guest. You paid for your own transport and worked for the farm free; they fed you (and of course, housed you) for the duration. What you get out of it, I guess, apart from the outdoor work, is you get to travel to different places and meet different people. I heard in 2007 that they’d gone international, i.e., you could go wwoofing outside the UK—the person who told me about this cited the case of a friend going wwoofing in Portugal.
On this trip to the French farm in early September, I ran into Toria at Toulouse airport, so I got a lift to the farm as Toria’s boyfriend has bought a chateau (which they’re doing up) not far away. I mentioned wwoofing as I think of myself as a lone wwoofer solely covering the French farm. I also cited one of Mary’s stories about one wwoofing hostess being an old lady with an allotment some distance from the house, so they had to get a bus there and back, carrying with them all the gardening gear—rake, spade, garden fork, which must’ve been quite a sight. Toria was very amused by this, and said, “It’s barking*, this wwoofing business!” I pounced on her, “You are a natural punner! You’ve just used the word barking to describe wwoofing!”
(France, September 2011)
* For those unfamiliar with this abbreviation, the full version is “barking mad”.
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