Our most recent visiting volunteers left just over a week ago and the next one isn’t scheduled to arrive for another two weeks. While it is nice to have a break and enjoy the house to ourselves for a spell, to be honest, it’s a little eerie, all this quiet.

(As I typed that, our three year old sent a stack of blocks cascading onto the floor next to me. Quiet, like so many things, is relative.)

Since our membership as WWOOF hosts started in January of this year we have had something like 25 weeks of help between all our visitors.

We’ve had two people from Korea, two from Japan, two from the US and one from England. Our next guest will be from the US.

For my part, I’m taking some of this down time to reflect on how we’ve done as hosts so far. There is a responsibility to create an enjoyable environment for people who are volunteering on your farm, after all.

How could we improve the accommodations, the work environment?  How well have we managed the energy of our home where the pressures of farming, working full time, parenting and relationships can cause tension?

How well have we balanced getting all the farm work done with showing our visitors what a great part of the country we live in?  Because, that is a big part of why a lot of people join the WWOOF program in the first place.  It is a great way to travel without a lot of expense.

So, with thanks for all the help and company we’ve had; and with appreciation for getting to travel vicariously to the places our guests have been, I am reveling in the quiet and knowing I’ll be happy when it’s back to a crowed mealtime.  And making notes about what worked so I can do more of it.

That’s right, we signed up for the WWOOFing program for the first time this year and are about to pick up our third WWOOFer at the bus stop.  Wondering WWHAT the heck I’m referring to when I say WWOOFer?

WWELL, let me tell you.  (Me thinks, I could keep this up for a long time.    But I won’t.  Just for you.)

WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.  It’s a program that matches up farms with travelers who want to volunteer on farms.  Yes, people travel around working on farms in trade for room and board. Sounds like a fantasy, doesn’t it?  (Anyone who has ever worked with volunteers knows that the fantasy rarely matches the reality, though, don’t we?)

Having said that, we had our first two WWOOFers, as they are known, a couple of weeks ago and, boy, did they set the bar high.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have fantasized a better WWOOFing experience.  When we dropped Rok, super intelligent, personable and driven Korean-Canadian in his mid twenties, off at the bus, John and I lamented that our next visitors would have awfully big shoes to fill.

I hope no potential WWOOFers get scared off by the Legacy of Rok. 

In any case, for our customers, you can look forward to a sea of changing faces here at the farm this year.

For any farmers who could use some help, enjoy visitors and have $45 to spare (that’s the program registration fee) and extra room at the inn, I heartily suggest checking out the WWOOF Canada site.  Or Google WWOOF to see the branches of this organization around the world.

Travelers, check out the abundance of crazy ag-tourism experiences you could have!  Man!

And, please, come here so I can virtually go where you’ve come from.  So far, I’ve been to Korea and I’ve experienced the Korean area of Toronto instead of simply passing through without knowing where to go for delicious Walnut Cakes.  Next, I’m heading to Vermont and Japan.

Yeah, virtual travel and a truly helpful ag-tourism program!

(Picks to follow, though the landscape where I’ve traveled so far all looks suspiciously like our sugar bush. )

Normally, that type of thought might bring more ‘missing luxury’ if you believe The Secret. But I must have thought it in a more positive light. Here’s a pictorial of my reasoning:

This is a beautiful vest that my sister sent me from Vancouver. Thanks Sis!

Here we have my Christmas present from DH and DS. That’s a number 8 jar!! And original, or so we’re told. I await my buckets of milk with baited breath.

Not so much a picture of the actual luxury in question but of the location of said beacon of quasi-modern technology. This was the joy of chores this morning… Wait for it… We, here at J. & C. Nyman Farms, now have… running water IN the BARN!!

And I said I don’t have a luxurious life. Ha…

Here’s hoping that everyone has a little bit of whatever they consider luxury this holiday season.

Cheers!

Well, farming – and starting a farm, in particular (due to the ‘two-full-time-job factor) – is just like anything else in the world. It has it’s ups and downs. There are busy times and quieter times. You get to watch crops flourish where you’ve spread your best compost and you have to shovel the crap out of the chicken house to get that good stuff to spread.

Okay, so we don’t have a chicken house, but we will in the winter and I’m purposely not thinking about spring clean out.

Point being that, just like with anything else, you can revel in the high times and keep your head above water in the dips. Or you can drown. And, when you’re drowning, it’s hard to remember that, whatever problem is big enough to sink you, there is an answer out there.

Here at J. & C. Nyman Farms, we’ve been feeling a little like we’re drowning despite business going so well. Why does that happen? To challenge us? Isn’t farming enough of a challenge??

Anyway, it happens and, like I said, the answers are ‘out there’. I’ve always been pretty good at seeking the ones that someone has written down. (Aren’t books great?) Lately, though, I’ve gotten better at harvesting answers from what I consider the collective consciousness. Sounds a little hokey maybe, but it’s been working for me.

For example, I called this post ‘Attitude is Everything’ because that’s what John and I have both been struggling with. The ‘Why does this have to be so hard/This shouldn’t be this way’ attitude. We might as well have been wearing cement shoes. So, I absolutely went to my list of favourite quotes, my bookshelf and my trusted friends in search of solutions.

More importantly, I listened for answers that came to me unbidden. Like my neighbour, a gentleman past retirement age, lets say, who said: “Boy, I hope your son knows how lucky he is to have this life, Colleen.”

Some might have taken offense to this and I don’t necessarily think that our 2.5 year old needs to feel ‘lucky to have this life’. But, I realized that John and I had been looking upon our life too negatively for sometime.

From a two year old’s perspective, the fact that the lawn was knee high might even be a plus, not a reason to think ‘this shouldn’t be this hard’. To a growing mind and spirit, the fact that sleep is traded for the opportunity to green chop feed, haul it to the barn yard and hand bomb off the hay wagon to our sheep, probably sounds like a super deal. (I know it does, in fact. That’s why bedtime has been going so poorly lately). When the fencing catches up to the season and the sheep are on pasture all the time, I’m sure he will feel like something is lost, not gained.

And, what would be wrong with looking at things this way? Currently reality can’t be changed so why not enjoy it for what it is. Or at least know that, despite how hard it is, it is still fun, rewarding and, dare I say it? A wonderful life. (He! He! clichés make me laugh!)

Hmm… as I reread what I have written, I realize it’s all no brainer stuff – when I’m not actively drowning.  So, I guess I can just count myself one of the many who have written down the answer to a challenge so they won’t forget it. If anyone hears me sounding like I’m drowning in bad attitude, please refer me back here. And feel free to refer yourself if you ever need it. 

More specifically farm related stuff to come in the next post…

(I’ve combined the wonderful idea of a One Sentence Journal, where you commit to writing just one sentence about each day, and a Gratitude journal, where you make a short – or long – list of things that you’re grateful for each day.)

It seems, though, that in my busy-ness, I have been stressing moderately about getting everything done. But, thinking about the Gratitude portion of my journal has made me realize that I have not been grateful for what we have gotten done! (Seems to me I’ve been hard on my husband about being hard on himself for not getting enough done, too. Double anti-gratitude whammy.)

In my experience, the less gratitude I show about getting things done, the less I accomplish.

So, in the name of being prepared to deliver food to all those we’ve committed to, here is an expanded and public entry to my Gratitude Journal:

• All the oats and barley are planted. Shea and Daddy had a great time planting together.
• I actually got to run the tractor for a few hours for the first time since our son was born! (From this I realized why John arrives from his hours of solitary tractor work in such a good mood. Once or twice, as I pulled the cultivator from the ground to start another row, I wondered how much fun John was having trying to run the seed cleaning set up while entertaining our 2 1/2 year old. Mostly, I enjoyed the relative silence of the diesel tractor, though. )
• Our laying hens are up to speed, laying almost 40 eggs per day.
• Our broiler chicks have survived in less than perfect housing to start loosing feathers and start looking far less cute than when they arrived.
• Our sheep are so happy with their new barn that they stay in it even when they could go out!! (This is partly because the pasture fencing is about a day away from being ready. The grass was ready last week but the containment devices will be ‘a go’ this weekend.)
• Our vegetable garden, which somehow grew from ‘Enough salad greens and beets to take for dinner each night’ into ‘Please don’t let all of this be ripe at the same time!’, is 75% planted and looks pretty darn good. We may even be able to afford a wheel hoe before too long to make the maintenance of a large garden easier.
• The pole peas that the kids planted are coming up and Shea, who is 2 1/2, started jumping up and down, yelling: “Mom! Come see! Come see!” When he noticed them poking their light green heads out of the dirt.
• I finally might have found a Canadian source of Fertrell products so we can get our poor chickens on to some decent food that we can actually afford to give to them. (Around here, you’d have to charge about $7 per dozen eggs if organic feed costs were to be recouped.)
• I have relaxed my sense of what is important enough that the foot high lawn in front of the house is not bothering me.
• Yeah for being hicks! My sense of what is ‘too hick’ has also been relaxed. Not only do we have a truck cap sitting in the yard, but our 7 week old Barred Rock laying hens live in it surrounded by a temporary fence! (Photo potentially to come, though actually adding this task to my to-do list seems just a tad counter productive, no?)

And, last but not least, I am grateful that I forced myself to take the time to write here. Because, whether or not people read it; whether or not this blog brings any of our customers more insight into how their food is raised and by whom; whether or not people agree with all I write, the writing of it is worth the effort. Putting my thoughts into written – okay, typed – words is soothing like nothing else that I do. And so, thanks to me, for taking the time to do something that, though it might be solely for my own good, is absolutely worth it.

Happy Eating!