Some people WWOOF for a few weeks and carry the experience quietly into the rest of their lives. Others find that it changes their direction completely. For Valentina and Tristan, WWOOFing became the beginning of a much larger journey.
What started as a one-month stay in Norway became a self-led apprenticeship across farms, countries and growing systems. Now, several years later, they run Oakcroft Organics, a 2-acre organic market garden in Cheshire, and are preparing to welcome WWOOFers onto their own land.
We asked Valentina to tell us more about the path from WWOOFer to host:
Our names are Valentina and Tristan, and we run Oakcroft Organics, a 2-acre biodiverse and biointensive organic market garden in Cheshire.
We grow almost every vegetable possible in our climate, from peppers and tomatoes in our greenhouses, to carrots, salads and herbs in our field. We are going into our second growing season this year, and we supply vegetables to our local community through veg boxes, farmers markets, farm shops and restaurants, while regenerating our soils and improving local biodiversity.
However, our farming journey did not start here.
It started all the way back in 2020, when, exhausted from our city jobs and craving a change, we quit our jobs, put our lives into storage, and embarked on a WWOOFing adventure to Norway. We had never planted a seed, nor did we have grand plans to change careers into horticulture at the time. We only had a desire to be outside, active, and learning something new.
But it became clear to us very quickly that, after years of struggling with our previous professions and our mental health, this was what our minds and bodies needed.
Our first WWOOFing farm holds a special place in our hearts. Our hosts were kind and welcoming, and eager to teach us every skill we needed. Our one-month stay became two months, then ten months.
As our stay came to a close, it was clear that we could not return to our previous life. An idea, and a dream, had started to form.
Farming is not easy. The weather is variable. The work is hard. Crops fail. Markets fluctuate. At the time, we had no idea how we could make this our profession, as we lacked the decades of experience that most farmers have.
There were no university qualifications for market gardening that we knew of, and no obvious courses to follow. So we decided to treat WWOOFing like a self-led apprenticeship.
We returned to the UK and WWOOFed on another seven farms over the course of the next year, picking and choosing farms where we thought we could gain the experience we lacked.
Many of these experiences stuck with us. We learned not just about growing food, but about farm design and running a business.
One of our hosts was kind enough to welcome us into their home and show us their crop planning, their business plan, and how they approached customers for sales. It is an experience we will always be grateful for, as it fleshed out our dream and turned it into something tangible.
And all the while, we never stopped asking questions.
But we did not stop there. Our WWOOFing experiences gave us the skills to find employment. We worked, we learned, and four years, fifteen farms, three countries, and hundreds of valuable interactions later, we knew it was time to start our own farm.
Oakcroft was everything we could have hoped for in a small-scale farm. When we found it, we knew it was meant to be. It had all the qualities needed to hit the ground running in our first year: indoor growing spaces, packing facilities, electricity and water.
So we whizzed into our first season of running our own business, producing scores of organic vegetables for our local community.
Starting a business has its own challenges. We might be confident growers, but the many things one needs to do only become apparent when you become a business owner.
It is a completely different learning curve. We not only crop plan, sow seeds, plant and harvest. We also do our own marketing, customer communications, sales, deliveries, invoicing and much more, all as a two-person team.
There were more than a few sleepless nights and long evenings outside.
Yet, entering our second year, we feel like it has all been worth it.
There has been such a positive response from our local community. People have been craving local organic produce but have been unable to find it. Customers have come back again and again, filled with excitement about something they bought from us the week before.
A growing community of people have been reminded of what fresh vegetables are meant to taste like. That makes it all worth it for us.
With things stabilising, we can think to the future and remember our own days as WWOOFers. The first lettuce we planted. The first carrot we harvested. The first tomato we ate straight from the vine, and the wonder it brought us.
We are eager to provide the opportunities that were presented to us back to the community. We want to welcome people onto our farm and teach them what it is like to grow food, and the nuances involved. Not everyone we welcome to the farm will go on to become farmers themselves. But maybe they will go on to grow their own vegetables at home, or support a local farm to do it for them.
We believe that through education, we are able to build a more resilient food system. There should be no barriers to feeding people, and the more people are exposed to this type of life, the more the local economy benefits.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone looking to set up their own farm or commercial smallholding, it would be to learn from as many experts as you can.
There are thousands of people around the world with decades of experience to draw from, most of whom are eager to pass on their craft to the willing. Find a person you admire, or someone whose farm you would like to learn from, and work with them for a time. Do not feel like you need to start your business immediately. Enjoy the process of learning and gaining experience.
Like most good things, this does not happen overnight. The more experience you gain, the fewer mistakes you make when setting up your farm.
We thought we were ready to start at the end of our third year, but we are grateful that we spent an additional year learning from successful market gardeners around Melbourne, Australia. That extra year opened our eyes to what was possible and became the foundation of our business the following year.
Most of all, we have a lot of gratitude for every person who helped us along the way.
Small-scale farming is full of amazing, like-minded people who are deeply passionate about what they do. We need more such people in the world, and WWOOFing is an amazing platform to expand that community further.
If you enjoyed this story, you can read more from across the WWOOF UK community on our Latest News page. From host stories and seasonal growing tips to good news from the land, there is always something new to dig into.
