Hi, I’m Callie! A multi-farm WWOOFer with a goal of starting my own farming and hospitality project one day. Growing up in southwest Ohio, agriculture and farming were never far away from my mind or sight. To leave my suburban town, no matter what direction you went, you were driving past fields with neat rows of sweet corn, lima beans, and hay. Combine this with the fact that you can trace my family tree back any line by a few generations, and farming was involved, or having a mother who spent any spare moment outside in her garden, and you would think that agriculture was a plausible outcome for me. But this was not the case. You see, as a toddler, I cried anytime I was near wet grass; worms and bugs were my worst enemy and biggest fear through elementary school, and in high school, you were much more likely to find me painting my nails than planting a tomato.
As someone who was always finding joy in creative pursuits, I studied interior architecture in college and fell in love with designing spaces that fostered gathering and connection. While I loved what I was learning in the classroom, what was happening in the dining hall was another story. Growing up, eating and cooking nourishing meals with lots of homegrown veggies, an industrial cafeteria was a new world entirely. I was really disappointed in the lack of fresh and healthy foods, and this is where my passion for caring about our food systems started to take root.
After graduation, I moved to NYC to pursue my dreams of being a designer in the Big Apple. While there are many things I loved about city living, I was finding that my corporate design job was not as creative as I had hoped, and sitting behind a computer for 8+ hours a day was starting to weigh heavily on my body, mind, and soul.
The part of me that cared for the food systems in college was on full alert in NY. Even with so many amazing farms in upstate New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, a lot of the produce I was buying was coming from California or overseas and tasted of underpin harvest and miles of transportation. This weighed heavily from both a sustainability and health perspective. After two years of living this life in NYC, I decided that I needed a change, so I quit my job, rounded up my savings, and set off on the adventure of a lifetime.
Between looking to make my savings go as far as possible and a passion for learning about organic and sustainable food systems, WWOOF was the obvious route for this time I was taking away from the office. I had heard about WWOOF in college, but with COVID interrupting my years in school, I was never able to take advantage of the amazing opportunities it offered. But now was my time – I set off on a six-month adventure and WWOOFed on farms in upstate NY (herbal medicine), Norway (Icelandic horses), Wales (market garden and community center), Italy (winery), and Switzerland (dairy farm).
My time at these farms would come to change the way that I looked at life. When I started WWOOFing, I thought it would be a break from “normal life” that I would take some time to clear my head until I was ready to get back to the grind. But what I found was that living in community with others—working, cooking, eating, laughing; exploring, and finding delight—brought so much more joy than an office job ever could. That using my hands and brain ignited a passion for work that had been long extinguished by a computer. I was no longer motivated to make money and a name for myself in the architecture industry, but was much more moved by how good food, grown thoughtfully, can lead to a quiet revolution of mind. That the joy of a simple life with people you love is actually the whole point.
After this time WWOOFing, I did return back to NYC, not ready to give up the design dream just yet, but after another year and a half of giving it my best shot, I couldn’t help but daydream of my time WWOOFing while trying to work and knew that it was time to follow my heart and dream the big dream.
This dream? To have a project in nature with a farm, inn, café, artist retreat, and so much more. A place for people to come and find respite from stress and burnout through nourishing mind, body, and spirit. A place for friends, strangers (soon to be friends), and WWOOFers to come experience a taste of what WWOOF has offered me. So I am WWOOFing again this summer and beyond, working on farms in California and France to pick up the wisdom, guidance, and skills needed to bolster my future project while having lots of fun along the way.
I really owe so much of this journey to WWOOF. Without the organization, I am not sure that I would have made the jump to working on farms and finding the passion and purpose I was searching for for years through the wrong lens.
If you are wondering if WWOOFing is for you, take the chance. It might just change your life.
