BY Rachel Belle  on September 9, 2014 @ 5:34 pm
(Updated: 6:56 pm – 9/9/14 )

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Scott Durkee walks me through his massive garden on Maury Island, where bright yellow tomatoes decorate the vines like Christmas tree ornaments and zucchini have grown to the size of infants. But Scott wouldn’t be able to maintain a garden this big if it wasn’t for WWOOF.

“It’s W-O-O-F…or it might be two W’s. World Wide Organic? What I say is Willing Workers On Organic Farms.”

WWOOF’s official acronym is World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Farms of all types and sizes, located all over the world, belong to the network and offer travelers free room and board in exchange for farm work.

“Every farm is different and my deal is you work five hours a day, seven days a week,” says Scott. “In exchange you get a really nice cabin and three really good meals a day. Other farms might say you have to work seven hours a day, five days a week.”

Scott lives off his land, only eating meat and fish he hunts and catches, and his car runs on vegetable oil. Which is an especially curious and appealing lifestyle to WWOOFers coming from cities.

Childhood friends, Clara Wassalowski and Rebecca Seeberg are visiting the United States from Bavaria. I found the 19 year olds barefoot, on the porch of their little cabin in Scott’s backyard.

“Right now my two WWOOFers are on the front deck slicing tomatoes,” says Scott. “I have a ton of tomatoes right now and I want to slice the tomatoes and experiment with sun drying them.”

Scott will also have the WWOOFers do weeding, composting, wood chopping and anything else he needs done, which includes sharing them with his 88 year old neighbor, Bob Norton, a retired horticulture professor who manages five acres of fruit trees on his own. Bob is bright eyed, super spry and extremely knowledgeable. He gave us a quick lesson in fruit tree grafting before putting the women to work.

And if you’re wonder why someone would choose to do farm work as a vacation…

“I like to meet people,” Rebecca says. “You get much closer to the surroundings here. We got invited to a neighborhood party already, tonight we’ll go to the football game. Of course, the other thing is that you just learn so much while you’re WWOOFing.”

“How you can say you’ve seen America when you’ve climbed the Statue of Liberty?” Clara wonders. “You’ve seen a part of America when you’ve been with a host family or with people who are welcoming you and you stay with them and you hear their stories. It’s really the only way for me to travel. You get to have the real American experience.”

Scott says it’s not just about having help, it’s about meeting each other and sharing an experience. Clara, Rebecca and Scott discovered they all like playing music together and Scott often takes his guests on little excursions.

“Anytime the wind blows, I’ll tell the WWOOFers, ‘Drop your tools, we’re going sailing! It’s really nice out there.’ We dig clams. Most of the WWOOFers have never dug clams before. So we dig the clams and the next day we have them in our spaghetti sauce,” he says.

The program is so popular that Scott is booked solid from February to November, taking a week off for himself between every two week WWOOF stay. His guests have come from all over the world, and are usually college age.

If this sounds like fun to you, or if you’d like to become a host, check out WWOOF for yourself.

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