#2 A DAY IN THE LIFE of a WWOOFer

Enjoying nature on a morning walk

A WOOFer is a person that exchanges work on an organic farm for room and board. No money is exchanged and the worker is expected to work 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. Not an overly demanding schedule at all. All the rest of the time is free time to spend as you wish.

Daily Schedule

Breakfast is at 8am and usually consists of cereal, toast, fruit or anything you can find in the cupboards or refrigerator. It's pretty much self-serve.

Work starts at 9am and there is a roster that is posted so you know what your assignment is for the day.

New Zeland girls in the kitchen


Work begins at 9am sharp. It could be indoor or outdoor work. Types of work: garden (weeding, picking fruits or vegetables, watering, potting seedlings, etc); Painting inside or out - walls, shutters, windows, doors; helping with construction/renovation inside or out; cooking or baking; washing and hanging out clothes (no dryers, all the towels are stiff and scratchy- but highly absorbent!); and many other odd jobs that come up.



Lately I have found a niche as a sign-painter.






The owners being staunch English have everyone break for TEA at 11:00. After tea and biscuits (cookies) it's back to work.


At 1:00 the lunch bell is rung and the largest meal of the day, is served.

Meals are prepared by teams of 2 workers on a rotating schedule and when you are
assigned a meal to prepare it includes planning the menu, cooking, setting the table and
cleaning up afterwards.

Vegetarian pizza

I've prepared several meals in tandem with other workers, once it was vegetarian pizza - ALL meals are either vegetarian (no meat) or vegan (no meat, milk, eggs, cheese, or dairy of any kind). Lately we've had a bumper crop of zucchini and it appears in many different forms in most of our meals. Another time I cooked up some corn fritters - they didn't know what they were but they sure did like them!


After lunch we have free time until about 2 or 2:30, then it's back to work until we've accomplished our 5 hrs for the day. We are in charge of our own hours as long as we get 25 hours of work done for the week. We can do more hours in a day which would allow us to have more free time on another day if we wish.


Supper is at 7: or 7:30 and after the meal the evening is often filled with game playing which is loads of fun.


Right now the woofers that are here include myself, Christine (my daughter), Jonathan,
3 girls from New Zeland, and one girl from Canada.
The usual length of stay for a woofer at any one place is 2-4 weeks.



Le Chateau Brametourte

(view from the NW side)

view from the window in my room

Even when it's hot outside it's always cool inside the chateau, the walls are at least 3 ft thick. There are windows with bars, stained glass windows and some simple slits used to shoot arrows out of in centuries past when the chateau was being attacked. Many of the windows that are made up of small squares of glass have some of the original glass. You can tell the older glass because when you look through it the view is wavy, not clear. It's like looking through the glass into the past.


You can see that the steps on the staircases are worn down on one side from centuries of people walking up and down them.
This is a picture looking down a steep 'secret' staircase . . . it's very narrow and difficult to maneuver, scary too!


Must go now and enjoy one of our spectacular sunsets . . .