Fun on the Farm

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As every good traveller knows, the best thing to do if you're looking to have a different travelling experience, to stay in one place for a while, meet some friendly locals and, well, save some money, is to go and work on a farm. Actually, this was news to me but it turns out lots of people have been doing exactly that for years. So, with the help of an organisation called WWOOF ("Willing Workers On Organic Farms") Rich and I found a farm/country inn to call home and workplace for three weeks and in return we were to receive room, board and the unique experience of being referred to as "wwoofers."

Being new to wwoofing we were slightly worried about the possibility of spending three weeks shovelling manure until the early hours, living off bread and water and sleeping in the barn with the sheep. Maybe at some places we would have, but at Pretty River Country Inn we felt like we'd found a second home. Together with Manu (our "chimping" French fellow wwoofer), Libby (resident ray of sunshine and hopeless romantic), Chris (source of all Inn-related wisdom and a huge NASCAR fan), Paulie (yoga guru and future reindeer wrestling champion) we soon got into the twice daily routine of feeding the horses, pigs, reindeer and chickens. Who knew that reindeer like beetroot so much? Once the early morning feed was distributed, we sat down to a hearty country breakfast cooked up by masterchef and main man at the Inn, Paul. This was usually whatever the guests at the Inn were having that day, which included smoked salmon, asparagus and scrambled eggs or Paul's legendary French toast.

For the rest of the working day we were given such a fun variety of jobs to do it often felt like we were at some kind of country style holiday camp. We picked apples from the orchard, made lavender and apple jelly, cut cedar boughs and festooned them with bows, bells and glitter to make festive decorations for the Inn, re-planted shrubs, constructed a vineyard, put up a fence for the horses, pressed apples into cider and helped get the farm ready for the winter. That's not to say it wasn't hard work though - after a few days I was aching in places I didn't know could ache. Then there was the day we had to send the pigs off to the Happy Sausage Holiday Camp. Getting 3 large and uncooperative swine from a quagmire of mud into the back of a trailer was certainly no mean feat and all we did was line the space between mud and trailer while Paul, Chris and Paulie did the chasing, wrestling and occasional falling over.

At the end of the day Paul and his wife Linda (joint Commander-In-Chief, mother to the Pretty River family and general superwoman) served up a proper home-cooked feast which we all sat down to eat together. In the evenings we had our own wwoofers' chill out area with access to more DVDs than we could watch, and once a week we were treated to a film of our choice at the local cinema. We even became honorary locals at the Admiral's Post pub in Collingwood, where we found fame at the pub quiz by coming from last place to first by virtue of Rich knowing the full names of all 4 Ghostbusters. After a couple of days the Inn felt like home, and pretty soon we didn't want to leave...