Why Would Ovens Operate Forward?

For those of you who are not familiar with it, WWOOF stands for ‘Which Way Opens Our Frontdoor’… no hang on, actually it’s ‘What Women Only Offer Fella…’ no wait now I’ve got it. It’s Willing Workers On Organic Farms. If you have ever heard of people “WWOOF”ing, that is what they are doing. In exchange for four hours of work each morning (gardening, building, sheep tackling, etc.), you are provided with three meals a day and accommodation. Pretty good deal if you ask me. Now of course not all places are the same. Some focus on sustainable building projects, others on raising organic vegetables or livestock, and some specialize in quackery – for example, one of the possible places to WWOOF was a dropped fruitarian. Now I have a couple of questions for these people. Question the first: how do they eat vegetables? Do they wait for them to throw themselves out of the ground in a beached whale fashion? Question the second: Did it hurt when you were dropped on your head? Oh that’s not nice… but neither are murdered apricots I suppose.

Hana and I have fortunately scored on the (somewhat) lower end of the kookfest scale. It is an eco-wellness centre in the town of Kerikeri called the OraOra resort. It is run by a German couple named Inge and Rolf, who are working as hard as they can to make the buildings on their property energy neutral, and provide Inge’s delicious kitchen with as much as possible from their permaculture garden. There are no guests at the moment as they are just starting to get everything prepared for the season which is where the WWOOFers come in. Hana and I are working alongside three German kids who are 20 yrs old and are spending the year travelling around as well. I spend my time removing large scary weeds from the garden (and the occasional edible plant… which I try to plant back in and prop up against something so they won’t notice… until I’m gone) and then they burn it. Good system. Apparently, the ash from the weeds mixed with water makes a good fertilizer for the rest of the garden. If I was lettuce I would find this really creepy, but they don’t have much say even though I’m sure they think it to be a ROOT cause of some of their problems (boooooo). Either way, I wonder how compatible producing large amounts of bonfire smoke is with their eco wellness principles. Oh well, they compensate by using paramagnetism to increase the fertility of their soil, oh and of course utilize the amazingly effective, 100% scientifically proven homeopathy. Hey I said it was at the lower end of the scale! Not totally void of kook….