Words by Joep Vossebeld.
To get closer to the origins of our food, I travelled for six months as a WWOOF’er (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) through the United Kingdom and Ireland. Here I learned about small- and large-scale organic farming. On these farms, I worked with the loveliest animals and got acquainted with the wonderful world of community-supported agriculture (CSA). In this article, I will reflect on a handful of my experiences, and share my ideas for a more inclusive, healthy and sustainable food system.
Over the last half year, I realised how strongly our daily food choices influence our environment, our health and our community. I was feeling slightly frustrated by how, in the Netherlands and beyond, our consumer decisions are closely linked to the exploitation of people and nature, and how this is considered the normal way of things. Along the way, I found myself on small- and large-scale farms and market gardens, and I learned about agroecological and regenerative farming, livestock management, permaculture, self-sufficiency, partnership between farmer and citizen, also community-supported agriculture, and so much more. In this article, I share some of my insights and experiences, and call for people to reconsider their food choices. I believe in the importance of the community for farms, market gardens, and other local initiatives, social cohesion, and mental well-being. Now I am back in the Netherlands, and I find that I have been able to transform the frustration I felt into replenished energy, hope and ideas for a healthier and more inclusive food system. With this enthusiasm, I am looking for a project or job in sustainable food systems, so do get in touch with me if you or anyone you know plays a role in this sector!
What, wwoof? A brief introduction
Last May, hungry for a new adventure, I boarded the Eurostar train to the United Kingdom. I had wanted to take a trip for some time, but I also doubted whether this was the right time to leave. As a recent graduate, I was at the start of my career and felt I needed to build my CV and start working. I also felt the pressure of a limited budget. On the other hand, my criteria were clear: I did not want to travel somewhere to consume as a tourist and leave it behind again. I wanted to contribute and to learn something. I decided to invest my time in myself, in others and in something sustainable. This is how I discovered WWOOF and decided to dive deeper into it. Looking back on that now, it was the perfect fit. What I learned about organic agriculture, alternative ways of living and farming, and about myself, I’ll take with me for the rest of my life!
To WWOOF means dedicating your time and energy to working on organic farms, in exchange for what you’ll learn, your food, and accommodation. This means it is a relatively economical way of travelling. Accommodation ranged from a tent and an ice-cold shower to a fully equipped vintage caravan, or a cosy bedroom in the farm’s house. In terms of food, it works pretty much the same. Sometimes, I had to make do with a little 1x1m caravan kitchen. Other times, I had an A-grade hospitality barn kitchen at my disposal. In most cases, I shared the space, but on some farms I was on my own. Often, I could harvest all my food needs straight from the land, with attention and respect for the farm’s goals and needs. While elsewhere I got a weekly allowance based on the number of hours I worked, supplemented by harvest surplus or rejections, and the basics like lentils, rice and pasta. The workweek was approximately 25 hours, bearing in mind that there are always extra tasks that weren’t accounted for. To WWOOF can be hard work, but with this maximum of working hours, there is plenty of time to relax or to explore the local area.
Dirty hands make light work
Although I have a great affinity for food and cooking, and a bachelor’s degree in Food & Business, working on the land and getting properly dirty felt new and challenging. A lot of new things happened at once. Working along with and learning from experienced growers was inspirational. I found myself in a welcoming environment where I felt that it was okay to learn and that making mistakes was part of this process. I learnt a great deal and quickly gained more confidence in my own abilities. Already by the end of the second week, I felt a difference in my mind and body. Spending all my days outside and working with my hands tired me in a different way than working at home or at an office did. I had sore muscles in places I did not even know I had, and slowly, I started to adjust to living with the early summer daylight. This meant going to bed when the sun began to set, and waking up with the sunlight in the morning. This felt very natural; however, by the end of September, as the days grew shorter, I needed to find ways to keep myself awake at night. I was also surprised by my own learning curve. Arriving at Trehale Farm and tree nursery in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, the fourth farm I worked at, I felt confident enough to plan out my own working days, make a harvesting schedule for the last summer vegetables, and take the initiative in preparing the winter beds. I am grateful to Adam, the busy farmer, for allowing me this space to work freely on his farm.
Together or alone, everybody is on the same page
On this trip, I had the opportunity to meet many wonderful, inspiring, hard-working and progressive farmers. The interesting thing is that progressive actually means looking back. Looking back at the origins of our food system and applying this to a strategy for a sustainable future, while not caving to the pressure from the capitalist power of large commercial chains, the powerful agricultural lobby that opposes green progress, and the rigid stance of liberal politics.
To explain the structures of the farms that I have visited, I have divided them into three categories: namely, small and larger CSAs, self-sufficiency farms, and novelty ecological projects.
CSAs: stronger together
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture: “direct (short chain) and long-term connections between farmers/producers and citizens, with a fair and stable income for farmers/producers and a sustainable, healthy and responsible product for affiliated citizens” (CSAnetwerk.nl). The community invests in the farm, for instance, by becoming a harvest partner and paying for a weekly harvest box. These funds can be reinvested in the land. On the Hill and Teign Greens share a gorgeous hill in the Teign valley in Devon, just below Exeter, where I spent my first month. This was my first encounter with community-supported agriculture.
On this lush hill, year-round, they ran a weekly veg box scheme for around a hundred local households. Alongside agriculture, the farm is also used for school camps and other events such as workshops and parties, with the central aim of being outdoors and connecting to nature. These social and agroecological objectives blend seamlessly. This place represents many more agroecological spaces where people aim to create harmony in working together with each other, as well as with the land and their local ecosystems. At On the Hill and Teign Greens, if it wasn’t raining, they started their week by doing an 8 o’clock check-in round at a small campfire; just a little update on how everyone was feeling, what keeps them busy, and what they have experienced by being on the farm in the last week. People would draw others’ attention by explaining the changes they have witnessed in the changing season, birdlife, or insects. For me, this was a very accessible way to start feeling more connected to the farm’s ecosystem and, simultaneously, to how I was feeling and closer to others.
The weekly veg-box brings people closer to the seasons and can change eating habits – maybe it is not normal to eat strawberries in November, or that the supermarket basil is coming from Kenya. Visiting a local market garden, for instance, through volunteer days, is endlessly educational! Although the work can be demanding and the amount of new information is quite a lot, I saw both children and adults leave such days more relaxed than when they arrived! Aside from connecting to the land, these events fulfil social functions, such as bringing people together and emphasising the farm’s objectives. CSAs like these can now be found anywhere and are sprouting everywhere in the Netherlands, too, for instance, Gelukkige Groentes and Boerderij Eetmeerbosch in the area around my home city of Nijmegen.
Besides these market gardens that sell the fruit and veg they produce directly, I also worked at farming cooperatives that take the market garden a step further and operate as local food distribution hubs. Growing With Grace, located in Clapham in the Yorkshire Dales, did this by importing or centralising a wide range of organic and other sustainable products, and, along with their own fresh produce, delivers them to people’s homes or hospitality companies. In this way, the farming cooperative offers people in its area the opportunity to do all their sustainable groceries, from toilet paper to tea and coffee, with them.
Food hubs like these are a great alternative to traditional supermarket chains that, with their lowest-price promises, put pressure on local production systems, forcing many producers to sell their products below cost price. This leads to rapid, mass production in monoculture systems, where chemicals and pesticides harm the soil, the final product and the local environment. The regional market is being destroyed by this competition when markets are opened to goods from low-cost production countries, often produced under questionable conditions and shipped across the world. Another example is Tyddyn Teg, at the foot of the Eryri mountains in north Wales, which even has its own on-site bakery. Thanks to CSAs like these, people can eat healthier while contributing to a better food system.
Self-sufficiency: aiming for synergy
The second category is farms and smallholdings, where people choose to step away from larger society to minimise their ecological footprint. These people attempt to be(come) self-sufficient, sometimes supplemented with a small business plan to cover their final costs. Dyfed Permaculture Trust farm and scything business in Llandysul, Wales, the second farm where I stayed, is an example of this. Here lives a family that aims to live self-reliantly or sufficiently by applying permaculture methods. They maintain the land by living on it and can do so with the support of volunteers and the financial support of the trust fund. Permaculture, simply put, focuses on the long-term survival of humans by living in harmonious cooperation and caring for nature, by applying sustainable, ecological farming and living methods. Farms like these use cattle and sheep to graze the land, provide milk, meat, and wool or leather for private use and for sale. On the side, at Dyfed, they run a business hosting workshops on scything and wildflower meadow management, and selling scythes and their attributes. I mostly spend my weeks improving my scything skills, learning about meadow management, and helping out with making hay. This hay is being stored and used to feed their livestock throughout the winter. During the haymaking season in early summer, farmer Phil scythed around most wildflowers like yellow rattle: important for insect life and quality of the soil. I found this usage of hand tools, as opposed to modern and fossil fuel-powered tools, inspiring. I was also surprised by the amount of work this method requires, but also by the importance of planning and timing in the season and how these people read their land for what it needed: there was true synergy. This synergy I also experienced on my last host farm in Ireland.
Glendree Organic Farm is another self-sufficient smallholding in the heart of Co. Clare in Ireland. Here they keep a variety of animals to manage their land and produce animal-derived products, such as cow- or goat milk, cheeses, fruits and vegetables for their own consumption and to sell in their farmshop. When an animal goes to slaughter, even their skins are used to make leather for clothing.
All of these farmers have a deep understanding of their land and their animals, and are forced to adapt this knowledge every year since no season is the same. An example of this comes from farmer Mona, who explains that in her early farming days, she considered organic as holy; however, some thirty years later, she admits that, especially when keeping livestock, using chemicals like dewormer agents for goats is necessary to keep them healthy. The farmers know how to work their land for maximum yield without stressing it, and how to use their animals most respectfully.
When an animal goes to slaughter, not a single bit is wasted, and respect is paid to the offer made. I found these very inspiring ways of farming and living. There is also not a single task that stands alone; every aspect of farming is connected to another and together forms a nearly closed chain. I enjoyed seeing how these people adapt their lives to their environment, such as protecting the diversity of meadows or preserving and processing the summer harvest for less abundant seasons like winter. City life and the pampering function of the supermarket make it easy to live outside of the seasons, or to take the workings of nature for granted. I myself would like to be a little closer to these workings of nature in the city.
The groundwork for something bigger
In the last category of novelty (agro)ecological projects, I visited sites which are still very much at the beginning of their journey towards becoming meaningful spaces in a wider community sense. On Y Sinc, I was welcomed into the lives of a young family who dreamt of creating a farming retreat in a beautiful temperate rainforest between Barmouth and Dolgellau, in North Wales. Here, they want to offer people a little hideaway from busy life. I spent time planning, constructing, and building on what will one day be a thriving garden and sanctuary! My time off, I spent cooking or with the families that hosted me, or I went hiking and camping at sea or in the beautiful mountains in Ireland and Wales.
The little seed for the food system of tomorrow
l now know that there was no need to feel burdened about putting my career on hold. My experiences have strengthened my sense of the importance of community and shared living, as well as my belief in a better and more inclusive food system that benefits everyone. Now that I’m back in the Netherlands, I want to implement and collaborate on my replenished energy, new experiences, and capacities, to work on an ever more sustainable way of food production and to bridge the gap between farmers and citizens. I dream of a food system where maximum diversity, engagement with resources and the land is the new normal. This should be a system in which producers get a fair price for their work, and in which every household can put a healthy, diverse, and affordable meal on their table. I do realise this is a challenge; however, with enough people, it’s possible!
In this way, we create sustainable systems for people, animals, and nature. I know that it can be done!
If you fancy having an experience like Joep, why don’t you sign up!
