A cheap way to spend some time in a Spanish speaking environment, benefiting a small family business, some exposure to a hot climate and a bit of exercise?...yes please!
Willing Workers On Organic Farms, or wwoofers as they are otherwise known, often make a big difference to small farms or market gardens that are trying to promote a more sustainable* way to produce food and make a living in a rural setting. Formally, food and accommodation is provided in exchange for labour, but there are also added benefits in terms of cultural, language and general lifestyle exchange.
So for some of July and August I packed myself off to a small fruit and veg farm 50 km from Malaga in the South of Spain. Life was simple; a caravan with no electricity, water from a natural mountain stream, cooking veggie food on a camping stove and the comfort of a private toilet in the form of a tepee-covered (not-so-) long-drop.
Work wise, I pulled a lot of weeds. But once you've spent hours weeding a bed and then preparing the soil and can then sow into it seeds you harvested only days before, there is a certain sense of satisfaction.
There were also a few smellier tasks on my list. One day once I'd put in my 7 to 9am slot (it was too hot to work the middle of the day) I was walking back up the hill to my caravan when I was stopped in my track by a pile of white sacks labelled "goat special". Now, apart from that sounding like a rather interesting menu item, I was slightly surprised as there were no goats on the farm to feed this mixture to - perhaps they were to follow soon?
Alas, as I found out later that day, no. These interesting looking bags no longer contained goat food, but goat poo; perfect for fertilizing fruit trees and pepper plants. Thankfully goat poo has only a mildly fragrant pong but it is quite dusty so my skin and lungs also saw some if its benefits. I have come back from Spain with nice soft skin on my arms, maybe this is mainly due to sun and suncream, but I like to think that the goat manure had something to do with it.
* I hesitate to use the word sustainable given its often woolly definition. In this case it indicates the desire to grow food with as small an impact as possible on the local eco-system and environment. There is, of course, a global case to be made that food production this way can never meet the needs of whole populations making it unsustainable as it is not actually able to "sustain".
