Tag Archives: WWOOF

1506, 2018

WWOOFing in Norway: Odds and Ends

debs/ June 15, 2018

It’s been almost a year since I went to the conference in Munich that started all this and I’m getting self-conscious and kind of ashamed that I am still writing about a 2 month experience over a > 6 month time span … almost 12 months later ….

To put this post in perspective, this (probably the last) part of a series of posts about WWOOFing in Norway so far:

This post will be a compilation of micro-stories that fell through the cracks.

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2805, 2018

debbie dumpster dive!

debs/ May 28, 2018

A memory I have that will always bring me a smile was the moment we met our Tønsberg WWOOF host.

We were still reminiscing our time at the Gjøvik farm, when we stepped off the train from Oslo to Tønsberg into an epic downpour.  In our entire time in Norway, we would never seen it rain as hard as it did this day. Without phones to call (both our phones were broken by now) or WiFi to use my laptop, we were left at the train station waiting, trusting that our host would pick us up.  Obviously, we didn’t know what the host would look like, but we were hoping our Asian-ness will be enough of an eyesore to catch his attention.

Several minutes later, we see a tall (even for Norwegian standards!) man roll up on a bike in front of us …

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1404, 2018

Gjøvik’s Baobab Catastrophe

debs/ April 14, 2018

In Norway (at least the part we were in), if you are registered as a farm, you are audited from time to time for compliance to their rules (which mainly have conventional monoculture farms in mind) otherwise you lose your “farm” status and its associated privileges. One of the requirements is to keep a mowed field of a certain size. Besides, it’ll make future earthwork projects much easier to follow through with.

In theory, goats are great at eating these small fast-growing trees on fields. However, there are prerequisites to goats. This includes (a) fencing the field and (b) cleaning/making room in the barn for the goats (which, if you remember how much garbage was in the shed, is not a simple feat).

In the meantime, WWOOFers make ideal surrogate goats. That is, we needed to (c) manually keep the trees from growing too big while we are waiting on (a) and (b) to happen. Spoiler Alert: We never made it to (a), maybe a day an a half was dedicated to (b), but the majority of our labour was spent on (c).  In fact, this entire post is about (c).

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2403, 2018

The Scandinavian Berry Quartet

debs/ March 24, 2018

If you thought being in Norway would give me the space to have deep thoughts etc., you would have overestimated me.  If you caught me zoning out, 9 times out of 10, I would be thinking about berries. The 10th time, I’d be thinking about ice cream.

So I’m not sure why the bears in Canada didn’t get the memo, but there are tons of wild berries in Scandinavia. Basically, free food everywhere. Yet foraging is a special kind of free food.  For one, its free food without mark-ups for being package-free, local, AND fair-trade. It’s free food without anyone trying to sell my anything (ie. samples at Costco).  It’s free food without someone trying to bribe me to do something (ie. to be social at a lunch hosted by church). And, not to mention, it would actually go to waste if it weren’t in my belly. This is free food I don’t have to feel guilty about. In fact, I can make a moral case for eating berries.

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0203, 2018

Food Forestry in Gjøvik

debs/ March 2, 2018

Our first expansion project in Gjøvik was to help expand the Food Forest.

The idea of the Food Forest (or Forest Garden) is to look to a naturally occurring forest as inspiration for how vegetation should be organized in a garden. Notice all the diversity and connections that exist in a forest:  multiple levels of shrubbery, thick hummus that keeps water in the soil, animal life, perennials that grow deep roots in a forest.

Our permaculture peeps see the connections and positive feedback loops between all the aforementioned components and are inspired to replicate this system using edible plants. By intentionally planting layers of mutually beneficial, edible and non-invasive perennials, they hope to improve soil quality and create a resilient food system that requires less manual inputs over time. “Harvesting” would be more akin to “foraging” in a forest of food like this!

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2402, 2018

WWOOFing in Norway (from a non-random sample of 2)

debs/ February 24, 2018

Before I do a deep dive into specific incidents, stories, and my thoughts thereof… I convinced myself that I should do a general overview to give more context to the stuff that is (in my honest opinion) more fun to write later.

There are three core elements to WWOOFing:

  1. World-Wide: being in a particular place in the world.
  2. Opportunities for cultural exchange.
  3. Organic Farms: participating in manual labour on a farm!

I will say a couple words about each of these.

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2910, 2017

Europe 2017 (Teaser)

debs/ October 29, 2017

Long story short, the culmination of my master’s, besides the thesis defense, was a 10 minute talk I gave at a 4 day conference in Munich this summer. My professor, admirably adventurous and opportunistic himself, encouraged me to take advantage of the lab-paid flight to travel before and after the conference (and, honestly, he fully supported traveling during the conference too). I ended up maximizing this opportunity by extending the 10 minute talk within a 4 day conference to a 70 day adventure that included: two layovers in Iceland (on the way there and back), the conference in Munich (of course), hiking in the Alps, traveling in Scandinavia, and realizing a dream of mine to go WWOOFing (in Norway-“the-happiest-place-on-earth”, no less)!

I am super grateful to my professor for suggesting and encouraging me to extend my trip. Otherwise, I would have flown home right after the conference for the following stupid reasons (and why those reasons were stupid):

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