Are You Cut Out to WWOOF

WWOOFing is a vacation, of sorts. If your idea of vacationing is kicking back all day with your feet up on the balcony rail, sipping margaritas, eating flaming desserts, watching the latest video and falling into bed after finishing three or four cocktails, WWOOFing isn't for you.

WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. We've been thinking about the possibility of doing more than just thinking about the possibilities for four or five years, maybe longer. This year we decided that we needed to get serious. Celinda searched for WWOOF on the Internet and we signed up. Signing up amounts to paying a registration fee, receiving a book with names and descriptions of WWOOF opportunities, and you take it from there. Hosts have the farms, which can be a backyard or thousands of acres. Volunteers are those who do exactly that...volunteer.

WWOOF was started in the UK during the 1970s and has spread over the globe. You choose the country you want to visit and purchase the WWOOF book for that country. The hosts describe their farms and what they expect in return for room and board. You need to do your homework, because room and board can mean anything from a tent and some food, to your own house and all the food you can eat. Hours are another place you need to look at closely. Some want three or four hours a day, four to five days a week, others think that slave labor is legal. We spent evenings going over the book with a fine toothed comb, then Celinda drafted a letter and sent it to twenty or thirty that fit our passions. We got six or seven good replies and a couple that wanted to know "What's in it for me?"

Being newbies at WWOOFing, we wanted to get our feet wet reasonably close to home, in case we decided it wasn't what we thought it would be. We contacted some in New Mexico and decided that Ruidoso was our best bet. With the thermometer reaching new undiscovered territory a couple of times in the desert where we live, going to the mountains had a lot of appeal.