Part One B: Woo Hoo! WWOOFing. Love the Goats.
Upheaval can be a good thing, and upheaval it was when my teenage daughter and I went from Oregon to Washington to work at a goat farm outside of Tacoma. We’d hit a rough patch, had to get rid of the majority of our belongings until a big part of what we had left fit into our back packs. We took a train to Tacoma and someone from the farm came out to pick us up. When we got there it was slaughter day. We walked right into the job too, put our things into our assigned cabin and headed straight out to help slaughter around 100 chickens. Welcome to the Farm, mind the bile ducts. For the most part my daughter and I kept to ourselves. Most of the people there, apart from the self proclaimed “Farm Mom,” were college aged kids. Most were goal oriented and having a funded adventure on their parents dime so they could add it to their college documentation. Two girls were long term and had been there for several months. One had a paid position, she did our schedules and made sure everyone was properly trained to do whatever the job, from milking to processing to taking it all to the Farmers Market in Seattle and oh, so much more. She was the most impressive person there. She was the typical Farm Girl, she had all the right tags on her clothes, was really strong, and she wasn’t afraid of working her ass off, and she did. Her work ethic was impressive for her age, a real inspiration. It so happened that both Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went while we were there. That farmer opened his home to all of us and treated us like family. I know because his family was there and they greeted us with open arms as well. I’m not into Christmas or Thanksgiving, never was. As an orphan, I have always either avoided those familial holidays altogether or been the odd one out at someone else’s family holiday. It was always awkward. This was the first time in my life that there was more than one odd man out at someone else’s family holiday. I'll never forget the farm and I was healthier than I’d been in a long while due to the good exercise and good farm fresh food. It's nice knowing exactly where every scrap of food you're eating comes from. My daughter and I both came away from the farm better people than when we arrived and slaughtered all those chickens. Neither of us will ever forget it and we’ll always be grateful we had that opportunity. We went through a program called WWOOF. They’ve been connecting people who want to learn about farming with farms to learn from via immersion since the early 70's. Back then a person could hand write a letter and send it via snail mail to find a farm. Most stays go from one week to three months, depending on the farm. Due to timing, we were able to stay three months. Before we left I had been reaching out to other farms, I was hoping to find our next job. I added Goat Farm to my profile at the WWOOF website, available to farmers from all over the U.S. All over the world if you can afford to travel. I’m not here to write about the wonders of WWOOF though, but I will say this: Membership is a more than fair forty dollars per year, forty dollars I didn’t have at the time. I emailed them asking if they had a scholarship program and they answered by letting me set up my profile and giving me a free year. Without WWOOF, our adventure wouldn’t have started with goats, it would have started with living in the streets. SHOUT OUT TO WWOOF. My sincerest thanks. NEXT: Part 2; Round Peg, Square Village
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