WWOOFing On the Misplaced Coast

With the photo voltaic setting over the Pacific merely previous the mighty outcroppings of rock and groves of fir and redwood, we welcomed the adrenaline rush launched on by navigating the wild switchbacks on the freeway descending into Petrolia, California.
Petrolia (pop. 400) is residence to a fundamental retailer and a church. It is positioned throughout the Mattole River Valley in a vast and isolated wilderness house known as the Misplaced Coast, adjoining to the King Differ Mountains alongside the largest undeveloped stretch of shoreline throughout the continental United States.

The native climate is Mediterranean.

It is a paradise.

Liza, Derek, Kim and I, and Derek’s reliable husky Kaya, lit out from Oakland that morning by automotive and took the scenic route. We arrived at our trip spot with enough delicate to glimpse the gardens and cattle on the pure farm owned and operated by Josie and John Brown. Liza, Kim and I, all in our 20s, acquired right here to work and reside on the farm, and possibly further importantly, to have an journey.

We acquired right here to WWOOF.

I was higher than ready for an experience. My older brother Dylan had merely died on the age of 30, following a six-month wrestle with thoughts most cancers. I had these days dropped out of faculty— disillusioned, uninspired, and depressed. Liza –an outdoorsy blonde magnificence who labored on the fundamental retailer merely down the street from my residence throughout the small central Massachusetts metropolis of Harvard—and I, had these days develop to be buddies. Liza and I labored on a farm near Santa Cruz for each week in what we deemed a “WWOOFiing” misadventure, other than the reality that we met Kim and fellow WWOOFer— a bohemian southern Californian girl with piercing blue eyes —we collectively decided we’ve been all in need of an experience. Kim had a lead on a farm in Petrolia.

We’ve got been greeted with a smile from Josie, and correct behind her, carrying flannel shirt and jeans, John, his kind face framed by a white beard and hair and a cowboy hat. Josie and John escorted us to our quarters— an home above a hay barn the place we’d restore our meals and sleep at night time time all through our wwoofing tenure. We met our roommate-to-be, Arrow. Sporting prolonged blond hair and a tie-dye shirt, Arrow was a neighborhood son of Petrolia who labored on the Misplaced Coast Camp, moreover owned and operated by the Browns.

After introductions, we crashed, our concepts spinning into targets with the possibilities of tomorrow.

Throughout the morning, after a breakfast of yogurt, granola and mugs of “cowboy espresso” –finely ground espresso beans mixed in boiling water and left to settle merely prolonged enough to drink –we met up with John. Considerably than put us to work instantly, he drove us in his outdated blue pick-up to a neighbor who specializes in repairing bicycles. After equipping us with mountain bikes, John urged us to find town and head out to the ocean. From this preliminary act, we gathered our first notion of what would present to be the philosophy of Josie and John.

They didn’t put us to work at first delicate and drive to get their money’s value. With 5 children of their very personal and one grandchild, and a pure perspective that impressed journey, they wished to guarantee that we did higher than merely work. They wished us to experience one factor rather more.

And that we did.

We pedaled earlier farms and fields in shiny sunshine to the shore, the place we ignored rock and sand with the wind howling off the ocean. We established a model new yard and planted potatoes, squash, pumpkins and corn, then uncoiled and laid the black irrigation hoses to nurture the freshly seeded ground. We liberated a small overgrown orchard. And plunged twice-a-day throughout the cool Mattole River to wash away the filth and sweat.

On one occasion, Josie despatched us to help put collectively breakfast on the native Farmer’s Market. On one different occasion, she despatched us ahead to a cocktail social gathering after we had prepared some meals to take alongside. We knew nobody at these gatherings, and I believe it was her technique of pushing us to forge our private means into the native fellowship.

On nonetheless one different occasion, the Browns organized for Liza, Kim and I to backpack for 3 days alongside the “Misplaced Coast” with a gaggle of AmeriCorps volunteers. Working throughout the forests and fields overlooking the ocean by day, and communing with our new acquaintances tenting beneath the celebrities at night time time was previous our wildest imaginings. On Sunday evenings on the farm, we waited for the Brown family to make their weekly pilgrimage to their home-built sauna— a turning into emblem of their unity. After their retreat from the steamy meditation chamber, we adopted of their footsteps blissful to partake throughout the historic therapeutic observe.

With the New England winter upon us as quickly as as soon as extra, I ponder it my luck to have WWOOFed in a selected nook of the planet with good buddies and a distinctive host couple.

Some months later, I found that the Browns had these days expert the shortage of their daughter—the 29-year-old poet, Cordelia Brown—earlier to our preserve at their farm. I questioned what stars aligned to steer me from the comforts of a small New England metropolis on the East Coast, to a village throughout the wilds of the West Coast, to a family whose loss positioned us nearer in non secular kinship than I might need ever imagined.

I contemplate these stars shine amid the 1000’s and 1000’s throughout the night time time sky, and provide an space by which to gaze, replicate and heal after a tricky day’s work with the earth and seeds and water.

WHAT IS WWOOF-ING?

“Working Weekends on Pure Farms”
WWOOF began in 1971 in England when Sue Coppard, a secretary residing in London, acknowledged the need for people like herself—who did not have the means or the possibility—to entry the countryside and assist the pure movement.
Her thought started with a trial working weekend for 4 people at a bio-dynamic farm at Emerson College in Sussex, England. The weekend was an essential success and momentum gathered quickly. Shortly many further pure farmers and smallholders have been eager to host people to work on their farms in return for meals and lodging, so-called WWOOFers. Now, the letters stand for “World Intensive Options on Pure Farms.” WWOOF-ing initiatives might be discovered at farms and gardens all through the globe and particulars and preparations is likely to be made by their website.

Story By Hilah Connelly with Patrick Connelly

IMAGES: Dave (By the use of Flickr CC By NC-ND 2.0  and ANTHONY DOLCE (VIA FLICKR – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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