Adventures in Serfdom: Soft landing in Lusatia
June 19, 2016
Done with Dolgowitz: Last Night In Loebau
June 29, 2016
When we started telling people about our plan to take our two- and five-year-old children on a year-long working tour of organic farms in Europe, a lot of people thought the idea was a little far-fetched, even for us. Some said it was impossible. Some just wrinkled their foreheads and scratched their chins quietly. But most of our friends actually thought it was a pretty brilliant idea, just not something they would ever in a hundred years consider doing themselves.
Now it’s the first week of summer, in the year 2016, and we are in the thick of it. In the last few months we have had more than enough opportunities to consider the opinions all those who called our plan unthinkable or impossible. Since the decision, back in January, to put our house up for sale, hardly a day has gone by that we haven’t been stricken with self doubt and second thoughts. What seemed two years ago like a picture-perfect vision, slowly and steadily proved itself to be an enormous process requiring arduous preparation and filled with unforeseen obstacles.
It’s not hard to understand why most of our friends would never even try to take their kids on a trip like this, even those who actually supported the idea in the first place. The number of things that could go wrong, the things that kept us awake at night with stomach churning anxiety, I couldn’t begin to list them all. But in the final analysis, there were very few deal breakers, complications that would have forced us to abandon our plan entirely.
Of course we worried that our children might be abducted by human traffickers at Frankfurt International Airport, or that they might get crushed by a tractor on an organic farm some 200 miles from the nearest hospital. And we occasionally still wake up in a trembling sweat wondering when and where and what we are going to do for a living once our savings runs out. But the closer we got to our departure, the more concerned we became with the practical matter of finding a dozen farms between Germany and Portugal where we would be able to find work for ourselves in exchange for room and board for the entire family.
I have long known that one of the best ways to travel the world, meet people and immerse yourself in foreign culture is by WWOOFing (see WWOOF.net, “willing workers on organic farms). When I was a strapping young lad of just 26, I spent an unforgettable summer WWOOFing on a farm in south central France. The WWOOF website basically helps connect host farms with volunteer individuals and helps adventuresome travelers find places where they can do some rudimental farm work in exchange for room and board.
A few years ago it occurred to me that we could find WWOOF farms willing and able to host a family of four with two small children. With this realization, our plan was born. Or, at least the egg of our plan was fertilized. But the closer we got to landing in Europe, the more concerned we grew that it might be incredibly difficult to get any serious amount of work done with our two kids frolicking around the way they always do.
My wife grew particularly concerned about this, since she’s always the one the kids run to first whenever they get hurt, hungry, bored, or anything else. So our top priority was to find host families who had children of their own. Our children could play with theirs while we worked, and where childcare and supervision were required, that would be one more form of help we could offer. This turns out to be a somewhat realistic expectation, but the fact is, it sometimes takes a few days or weeks for kids to get along with new kids, and even longer for them to get used to being supervised by new adults.
After a week or so of working with our host family here in Saxony, we sat down together to review our progress and seemed to be in agreement on a number of things. As it turns out, childcare distractions have made it rather difficult for mom to put in her expected 4-5 hours of work per day. On the other hand, our hosts really like the idea of having a whole family here to stay with them and play with their kids. Moreover, they have found that despite our young distractions, we are actually a very helpful and hardworking couple whom they can comfortably rely on for all sorts of tasks throughout their home and garden.
We suggested that I could work a little longer than the expected hours to make up for the shortfall in my wife’s hours, and that seemed reasonable enough. And furthermore, although volunteer-guests are generally expected to work five days a week, we have yet to take an entire day off. There’s simply an over-abundance of work to do, and we’re the kind of people who have a hard time sitting around all day doing nothing, especially when surrounded by obvious things that need to be done.
In the end, our hosts have been very pleased with both the quantity and quality of our work, and we’re feeling very encouraged about how the rest of the year will work out, as our family descends on the hospitality of strangers from here to Iberia. And lastly, it’s a fairly well-know fact that a lot of travelers who work the WWOOF angle actually have amazingly little knowledge or experience with organic farming and often end up doing a lot of free-loading. Any WWOOF host you meet is guaranteed to have a horror story or two about the college student who didn’t know a carrot from a carabiner or the reclusive invalid who spent the whole summer locked in her room drinking cough syrup and chamomile tea.
As for the Hornaday-Team, we have two more days in Saxony, and then our unit is migrating down to Bavaria, where we expect to be regaled with more delicious varieties of bread, beer and potatoes, as well as an assortment of indestructible toys, in exchange for a month of garden maintenance and castle restoration. Stay tuned. . .
2019 UPDATE
This year we began to document our quest for quality education in great detail. Check out this fascinating series of articles.
- Part I: A year without a principal
- Part II: Out of the classroom and into the wild
- Part III: Paradise Found
2018 UPDATE
This article continues to be our most popular travelog post of all time. If you found it helpful and/or informative, you can read more about our travels and work-exchange experiences throughout the blog. You might find the following links especially interesting:
- Post-WorkAway Q&A with the family
- 8 Tips for Traveling with Kids
- Helpful Tips for WorkAway Tour
- Free Schooling, an alternative education
- Road Schooling
- Children Without Borders
Also, feel to free to SHARE our stories with your friends and on social media. Happy travels, and never stop learning!
15 Comments
Very well written and gave me insight into what you 4 are doing. Keep up the writing.
Jan
Are there any opportunities to WWOF with children in Australia? Where can I get some contacts?
Hi Jessica!
We actually ended up going with Workaway instead of WWOOF. For WWOOF you have to buy a membership for almost every different country. Of course, if you’re really only looking in Australia, that’s fine, but we were traveling across Europe and didn’t want to buy new membership every time we crossed a border. Workaway is worldwide on one site. And they have a great filter to find hosts that match what you’re looking for. You can search for hosts that can host more than two, or four people (important as a family), hosts that have kids too, non-smokers, proper internet connection (important if you work online, like I do), vegetarians… We really liked it.
So, either way, you can checkout Workaway (especially if you might consider going to a different country at some point), or WWOOF Australia, there’s also a third option some of our hosts told us about. It’s called HelpX, but I don’t know anything about it. I’m sure you’ll find awesome hosts on any of those three sites!
Good luck!
Hi Jessica
I just found your blog as just planning an autumn wwoofing trip to Portugal with our 3 and 5 year old,
I wonder if you could maybe give us some names of the farms in Portugal (or eventually Spain ) that might be a good fit with kids/ have worked out well for you?
We travel in our camper where we can live and also with a dog, so the latter makes the search even more refined,
and I’d really appreciate your suggestions:)
All the best to your brave family:)
Hi Maria! Sorry I totally missed your comment! We actually haven’t made it to Portugal yet, so I can’t give you any names there. We stayed with some great hosts in France and Spain, though. It’s probably best to connect with them via Workaway.info. Send me an email at pachita.de@gmail.com and I’ll forward you their profiles, if you’re interested.
Since we settled down in the Spanish Pyrenees, we became Workaway hosts ourselves and are currently hosting our first workawayer. We’re about 30 min from the French border in Spain. So if that’s on your travel route, come visit us! We would love to meet other traveling families!
Hi there. We are just exploring the idea of a WOOFIng with children endeavour for this summer before our eldest (5) starts school – in may/june/july time. – I found this article helpful and it resonated in that I considered already that one adult would be more productive each day than the other who would need to be on hand with the kids – I will check out Workaway.info. – But also – are you still hosting and should I send an email directly as above to find out more?? thanks!
Hi Emily! Sorry for the late response, I didn’t see your comment until now. We are not hosting at the moment.There’s too much going on in our lives right now, and at the moment we’re traveling ourselves. Good luck with your search! I’m sure you’ll find some great hosts on Workaway like we did.
This is amazing. I am thinking of doing a year in the US and Canada with my two kids (I’m a single mom though) but am currently in the planning stage. I’m a freelancer with decent income regardless of where I am, mostly worried of how much I will be able to get done with two kids (mine are already a bit older) and our dog but this read is very encouraging!
Hi Sylvie! Yes, it depends on how flexible the hosts are with their hours and how well your children can entertain themselves. When we started our tour, our kids played alongside us while we worked (lot of garden work) or my husband and I took turns taking care of them. You’re expected to work 5 hours a day for 5 days a week to cover your own room and board. You’d have to talk to your hosts about how to cover your kids’ shares. Our hosts were all very flexible as long as the required work got done, they didn’t care much about who did it and when. On a couple occasions we were asked to cook for ourselves and were only provided with a room. Then we only worked 2-3 hours a day. We also always looked for hosts that had children ours could play with, and in the end they were able to let us work for quite some time because they had playmates. It’s doable! Just be upfront with what you need and what you can do. Good luck! 🙂
Hai Pacha nice article,i am planning to go this kind of job with my wife and two years old daughter,my concern is beside the obligatory job we have to do in the farm,how can we earn more money for our living expense,do you have any idea
Sincerely
Endrew
Hi Endrew!
Somehow I missed your comment… I’m sorry for the late reply! We recently wrote a blog about how to make money while traveling. You can check it out here: https://purelypacha.com/digital-nomadism-how-to-earn-money-while-traveling/
Our living costs were pretty low though. We stayed with each host for about a month and “rent” and food was taken care off. So all additional cost were gas, and excursions we did and little extras like going to museums or swimming pools, etc.
There are a few digital nomad and worldschooling groups on Facebook that regularly share ideas on making money as a nomad.
Good luck!
My sister join Wwoof in Portugal I am worried that their maybe all they do is work with no pay so sounds like to me human tracking and no cell phones I am wondering is this place a good place and can you leave anytime?
Hi Cassie! I don’t know about the situation and the farm your sister is at, but generally that is how WWOOF works. You work in exchange for room and board, meaning you work usually 5 hours a day, 5 days a week and your host gives you a place to sleep and feeds you. Many rural places have bad cellphone reception, so that could be the reason you can’t reach her. I hope you get in touch with her soon to easy your worries!
Hi! I just stumbled across your site and I’m Wondering if you’re still traveling? I’d love to ask you some questions ab your experiences. Thanks!
We’re somewhat settled in Spain right now with our kids going to school here. They loved it and didn’t want to leave. For us worldschooling was always always a family decision. I wanted to travel more but after a year of making new friends every month and then saying goodbye, the kids were ready to stay in one place for longer. We’re still traveling, but now have more of a home base.