Hi everyone,

We've just finished our first WWOOFing experience. That stands for "Willing Workers On Organic Farms" and it is a global organization. We had poured through our little book of farms looking for help, and each of us rated the various opportunities in Southwest Australia. We e-mailed a couple of farms that were relatively close to where we were heading. Yarri Springs said that they could use a couple days of help so after taking in a Surf competition at Prevally Park (where we spotted the famous Hawaiian girl who had her arm bitten off by a shark but is still a leading female surfer), we headed inland to the farming area. We arrived at the farm (10 acres) on Tuesday morning and met Peter our host. After a bit of chit chat we got into our work clothes that we had picked up from the Salvation army a week prior. It seemed ridiculous to be buying clothing from the Sally Anne after we took an entire car load to the Calgary branch before we left, but I'm on a 2 t-shirt budget and couldn't risk wrecking one of them or how would you all continue to recognize me in the pictures.

Now in our work duds we set off collecting chestnuts. These are possibly the most fortified nuts in the world. They grow in a spiny husk up in the tree. When the fall the husk opens up a bit (sometimes) and then you still have to get through the rock hard shell before you can actually get to the meat of the nut. If you watch the video (you'll have to turn your head sideways to get the right perspective) you can see Baebs technique of getting them out of the tree in a storm of spiny nuts. Once they're on the ground we walked around on our haunches peeling back the spiny husk and keeping the nuts. In addition to nut picking we piled up fallen branches to be burned and made jam and tomato sauce from fruit that they grew on the farm.

The deal with WWOOFing is that you get, normally, accommodation and meals in exchange for 4-6 hours of work a day. We ate breakfast and lunch at the house along with whoever was there, but at night we ate together with the whole family (Peter, Wendy and Kai their 19 y/o son).

All in all it was a neat experience. They grow a little of everything. Fruit trees, veggie garden, bamboo, chickens (or chooks as they call them) and are fairly self-sufficient. Our experience was made slightly less enjoyable when we saw our accommodations. It was a 25 y/o camper trailer. Not bad in itself but it was in need of a thorough cleaning. If you know Barbara this last statement was a serious miss-representation. For the second time in our married life Barbara slept in all of her clothes. The only other time was in a Truck-stop in Italy. The bathroom was a short 300 meter walk up to the house where we shared the outdoor bathroom with the family. Not ideal, especially in our advanced years where we're finding it harder to make it through the night without getting up at least once (sorry Kar).

Our other surprise occurred when their son Kai came home and started smoking. By the end of the evening the 3 of them were smoking like chimneys and we were captive in their home chatting away with no place to go and hang out except for our dingy grimy trailer. Luckily they had a family holiday planned and we had to leave 2.5 days later. A neat experience but we're going to do a little more due diligence on the smoking and accommodation situation before we sign up for our next assignment. We will be doing more, however, as on a cost/benefit front we can't accept that we paid $55 for our membership and $25 for used clothes putting us at $40/day outlay after our 2 days of work. We're on a budget people!

We did, however, leave their home with a bit of jam, some chestnuts that Wendy had given us and 6 pockets full of chestnuts that we had picked ourselves but that had split open from the recent rain and would need to be eaten tout-suite. We stopped at a campground the next night, got a fire going and enjoyed our stolen goods. Just like getting them from a vendor in Zurich's old town.