WWOOFing with Quill Nook Farm
Thank you for staying here as our guests! We love living here, and look forward to sharing it with you and learning from you. We want you to feel at home. Please ask if you need anything or have any questions! If you have not already done so, please familiarize yourself with the information on wwoofusa.org, for a general description of WWOOFing and what to expect.
The following notes are based on lessons learned from hosting WWOOFers since 2009. They offer real-life tips on how we can all have the best possible experience here. If at times they seem highly specific, please understand that in most cases they were added in response to a specific lesson learned. They are intended to provide clarity of expectations so that we can focus on a joyful and engaged experience together. Please read them carefully and let us know if you have questions or comments.
Once you have read these through, please visit this form to agree to them and to give us your emergency contact for your visit here.
What We Provide WWOOFers - Overall
We want to host you to the best of our ability. We want you to be comfortable, warm, engaged, and with everything you need to eat, cook, bathe, and enjoy the farm. We’ll probably ask you “What do you need?” We really mean it. If there’s anything at all you feel you need, please let us know.
We offer an immersive experience in our homestead. Let us know what you want to learn or experience while you’re here, and we’ll try to provide that. We try to vary the work and provide different experiences. We’re happy to point you toward hiking and other recreational opportunities, connections with other farmers etc., just ask!
We offer a comfortable place to sleep. We hope you will make yourselves at home, and enjoy your accommodations. Please let us know if you need anything.
We offer homesteading lessons, life lessons, feedback, and teaching. We have a lot experience in meeting someone where they are in terms of skills or interests, and giving you the opportunity to learn something new. As part of that, we’re happy to offer feedback and suggestions as you are taking on new skills, and when it comes to life-safety issues, it may behove us to offer you feedback or suggestion on how you are doing something. Please be open to taking in feedback. If you ever don’t want the feedback or don’t like how it’s phrased — please let us know. We are always teaching and always learning how to teach better.
About meals and other specifics:
We generally cook and offer lunch and dinner on days when WWOOFers are working on the farm, and ask you to cook your own breakfast. We provide breakfast staples and coffee- and tea-making supplies. Our kitchen is omnivorous but friendly to all eaters, so let us know your needs and preferences and we’ll do our best to accommodate.
Cooking and/or cleaning up — we often ask for help cooking and/or cleaning up as part of living here. Please be sure to pitch in and do your part.
On your off days, you are responsible for your own meals. However, on a day to day basis we often like to collaborate and share cooking/cleaning on “off” days as well. Feel free to take care of yourself on these days, or make plans to collaborate.
We offer full access to our well-stocked pantry while you’re here, and we invite you to harvest fresh food from our garden or foraged from the land! We’re happy to give pointers on what’s good to harvest. Our garden is currently small but there is always something to find!Please also provide some amount of food yourself. in the form of snacks that you enjoy and can bring with you
Your contribution: Please also plan to provide some of your own meals, particularly on “off” days. We recommend bringing with you some favorite snacks or specific foods from home that can plan to cook.
We love learning about new foods and new dishes from WWOOFers. If you like to cook, you will be invited to cook!
Please feel free to BYOB at meals.
Yes, we have Wifi. Password: goodmojo
Please explore our extensive library. Please put a book back where you found it. Let us know if you want to borrow a book so that we can keep track of it.
What We Ask of WWOOFers
As written above, we ask “What do you need?” a lot. Please really think about it, and tell us what you need. To all the “people pleasers” out there and anyone else that needs to hear this — please do bother us if you need something. Please give us the respect to say what you really need and what’s really on your mind. Examples:
If you’re cold in the middle of the night and need a blanket, do come knock on our door, even if you feel like you might be “bothering” us. Hopefully we get you enough blankets before bed, but sometimes something goes missing. Please do ask for it.
If we give you a project to do, and you don’t really understand it, please say so! Better to clarify exactly what plants to weed and what not to weed than to guess. Don’t ever feel like you have to grin and nod and say you are good with something when you’re not.
If you don’t feel like doing something, or you’re frustrated with something, even with one of us — we want to hear about it. WWOOFing here means living here, and we ask WWOOFers to bring their full selves to living here. If you wake up anxious or joyful, if you have questions, if you have feedback — we want to hear about it. Don’t hold back. We’re not afraid of difficult conversations.
Anytime you can ask “How can I help?” we appreciate it!
We ask you to put in a strong effort on helping with our farm for about 20–24 hours per week. Our default work exchange per adult is three 7-hour days per week (usually including one weekend day)
Our default work hours are:
8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
On top of that time, we ask for help cooking meals and cleaning the farm kitchen on work days. This time is collective “house mate” time and not part of the work exchange hours. A good rule of thumb is to please clean if you didn’t cook, or vice versa. Please clean for all, not just for yourself. Our usual rhythm is to tidy after breakfast and lunch and clean more thoroughly after dinner, including wiping down counters and sweeping the floor. Even if someone else is cooking, please check in and ask if you can help with anything, including setup, emptying the dishwasher, or doing meal prep or harvesting for another meal.
If you finish a project, or run into an issue, please proactively seek us out for the next task.
Please keep your space clean on a regular basis and when you depart. This includes:
Washing your dishes after mealtime and when you depart.
Leave sheets/towels at our house regularly to be washed, and when you leave.
Before you depart, please vacuum and mop and return any borrowed items. Please leave spaces as clean or cleaner than you found them.
Please don’t leave anything behind without asking. If you ask to leave something, please assume we’ll say “no,” and we hope you won’t take it personally. This request seems to surprise people, so here’s a little more explanation… If everyone leaves behind one object, stuff piles up fast. We try to keep the space clean and simple and we appreciate your help with this.
Please empty the compost buckets when you leave, even if they’re not full, and even if another WWOOFer is here and is taking them over.
We do not have trash service. We can take care of your trash that is created in the course of living but please be respectful and not cleaning out your car and leaving a huge pile for us to throw out, etc. There are bins for recycling containers and for paper at 2044 Branch Rd, West Halifax, VT 05358. We take turns in taking the recycling out. Please pitch in!
Return any books to where you found them.
Please observe quiet hours on the farm from about 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. (Talking over a campfire is totally fine well into the evening.)
Some notes about our working philosophy and approach
We operate on a trust basis and don’t count or monitor your work hours. This keeps us all focused on sharing an experience together—not a transaction. Please bring the same spirit and keep accountable to your commitment. If we feel something is not fitting with our expectations, we’ll ask about it (and hope you’ll do the same).
The schedule and work-exchange hours are meant to provide a clear structure, but we’re flexible to adapt to your needs. We also ask for flexibility: sometimes we’ll start early or work late if we’re in the middle of a big project. The focus is more about getting a project to a logical stopping place than watching the clock for break-time.
We try to anticipate your every need, but we’re not perfect. Sometimes things run out or sometimes they break. We rely on guests to tell us if something in the guest space is not working as expected, if a kitchen accessory is lacking, the toilet paper has run out, or if some food item needs replenishing. Please let us know!
We work to avoid having mice inside our buildings. If you hear mice or see droppings please let us know so we can address it. We may ask you help (if you are comfortable) trapping mice.
We have professional work outside of the homestead, as well as family and personal needs. Please understand that we are often juggling responsibilities through the day. We will try hard to give you full attention when we’re spending time together.
For these same reasons, we usually set WWOOFers up with a project and then leave you to work independently. If you are the only WWOOFer here, that will mean lots of solo time! This might or might not be what you are looking for. Some WWOOFers want and expect a more social working experience. This may be something you find here, but it depends on who happens to be here — no guarantees.
Sometimes we ask for flexibility and help in putting up guests. We might ask for flexibility in use of your space in those circumstances. We also have renovation projects where we might need to access your space. In both cases we try to provide as much notice as possible and ask for your cooperation, and for you to voice any needs you have.
Some key vibes we want to put out there:
Please take to heart the kind of experience that our profile describes and vibe check if this is right for you at this time in your life. For people who find Quill Nook Farm at the right moment in their lives, it has been transformational for them and deeply connective. We find that this is the kind of experience where whatever kind of intention or presence that you bring to it will determine how meaningful the experience will be.
That being said, not everyone needs or wants a ton of quiet time in the woods by themselves right now. This farm may not be the right fit for you at this time. Please consider it honestly.
It’s okay to leave or cancel anytime. Plans change, and we’re super okay with that. This is necessary to say because sometimes WWOOFers feel that they have made a commitment to be here for a certain amount of time and they are anxious about asking to change it. Please understand that you can leave anytime, no questions asked.
Of course, if there is something about the experience that’s not working for you, we want to hear about it before you go. Those few times when a WWOOFer has been unhappy with something and left, and then sent an email providing their feedback after the fact — those times break our hearts. See above — we really want you to have the extra blanket when you need it. Please ask! We are super safe people to talk to. If you need something, you can tell us.
If you need to update your plans for any reason, please just let us know as soon as you know. But don’t stress about it or feel you have to explain yourself. If your plans change and you would like to stay long, know that is always a possibility but not always something we can offer. Please just ask!
Some specific notes about using the main house
Overall, we strike a balance of opening our house to you as our guests, while keeping it quiet/private for use as our home.
You’re welcome to use the kitchen and bathroom in the main house during shared mealtimes. We generally prefer that the house not be used outside of those times. The quiet downtime in the house is helpful for us.
The bathroom and other shared spaces in the Ododom are generally available at all times. (But please be quiet in using them outside of daytime hours.)
Although we have a washer/dryer in our house, we have found from experience that making it available to WWOOFers creates too much laundry activity for our small quiet house. From experience we have found we need to limit washer/dryer use to our family’s use as well as washing bedding and towels for WWOOFers (which we are happy to do for you). There are three laundromats in Brattleboro we recommend.
Off days are not only for you, but also for us to focus our time and attention recharge and have some downtime and quiet time. We are usually happy to be social on your off days, but overall plan to be independent on those days — good times for hiking, swimming, reading, art, and just chilling with the farm animals.
Looking for a place to sit with your laptop and work, or take a phone call? Just ask and we will point you to private office options.
Some Other Helpful Notes
The WWOOF experience is meant to be inherently rewarding for both you and us. The work-exchange specifics are meant to provide structure to free us to focus on that.
Please exercise a healthy amount of self-preservation! Working with farm tools, climbing ladders, even cooking dinner, can be hazardous. Be smart and slow down when you’re tired, ask when you don’t know how, and don’t put yourself in an unsafe position in order to do a task. Please use all safety equipment that’s offered and ask for it if it’s missing.
We are always trying to maintain a high standard of cleanliness and organization throughout the farm. We don’t always live up to that ourselves, so please if you see something out of place help us by putting it back.
If you ever feel unappreciated or that your needs aren’t being met, please talk with us about it! In the course of staying here, especially for multiple weeks, it’s not uncommon for some communication issue to come up. We’re basically housemates (farm-mates?) and anytime you’re living with someone you can rankle each other from time to time. We promise we will try not to take it personally if there’s any issue you need to raise! In our experience, small issues that are tamped down (“It’s not that big a deal – not worth saying something about”) grow into larger issues. Please do express any feedback you have even if it feels minor so we can stay on a clear and authentic course with each other. If communicating in this style is not familiar to you — no problem! We are happy to learn together.
In our experience, the quiet environment here away from your usual home can lead to personal exploration and emotional experiences at times. Sometimes latent anxieties or grief can come up when spending this much time with yourself. We consider this part of normal life and we encourage you to be present with difficult emotions and use tools that you have like journaling, meditation, etc, to take care of yourself. We are also here to assist. We strive to provide a safe and welcoming environment. Please don’t hesitate to share to the extent you feel comfortable and ask if there’s something you need.
Phones/devices — Everyone’s got them and we’re all addicted to them. We also invite you to take some time off from your devices. Guests have often told us that they were able to go to sleep without a white noise machine for the first time in memory, or that they were able to delete social media and happily spend more time outside, etc. If you are looking to cut back on your screen time and be more in nature and making art, this is a great place to do it. We do use texting to communicate with wwoofers, so the phone can be useful on the farm, but please seek a healthy balance. Don’t be checking your phone constantly in the middle of an immerse garden project — you’ll be missing out on the fun of just being here.
Cleaning up from a project is part of the project. Please put tools away after a job. If you’re not sure where that is, bring them back to the house and ask us. Please turn off water spigots, turn off lights, close doors, close gates, etc.
Nurturing our health is a part of life, and for many WWOOFers it is one of the motivations to take this time. We’ve been there! If any of the following describe you, please let us know:
You’re experiencing health issues (whether physical or mental)
You have have specific health needs
You have a health intention for your WWOOFing time
We don’t mean to pry—this simply helps us be attuned to your needs, to share any relevant needs we have, and to support your access to resources.
If we lend out recreational equipment, please take good care of it and return it to its storage place afterwards. If something breaks or doesn’t work as expected, please let us know so we can fix it.
You are welcome to receive personal letters or packages here at 1015 Thurber Road, Brattleboro, VT 05301. Please don’t use this address for “business” use, such as banking, etc., as we’ve found it leads to us getting more junk mail. Feel free to grab our mail/packages if you see them out and leave them in the mudroom. Thanks!
Tristan and Felix and Loie’s pronouns are he/his; Alison’s are she/hers. Let us know yours.
Notes on Winter weather:
Before operating a woodstove here, please get a hands-on instruction and safety lesson. Please observe all safety measures in using the woodstove.
Proper woodstove operation means that the stove is burning cleanly and smoke is going up the chimney. If for any reason you are smelling smoke indoors from the woodstove, please be concerned — something’s not working right. Please alert Tristan and we will troubleshoot together.
Please help us shovel all paths and porches immediately after every snowstorm or ice storm. This keeps them safe for you and everyone else. (Otherwise snow builds up quickly and becomes unsafe.) We also dust paths with ash from the woodstove when icy.
Our driveway is steep and often icy in winter. Although we work hard to keep it drivable, it is not always passable. Depending on your car and tires the driveway may not always be drivable – please plan ahead, be flexible, and be excessively cautious in avoiding situations where you may get stuck.
In case your car is not suited for winter weather please it’s likely you will need to park at the bottom of our ½-mile driveway and walk up. In case it comes up, please understand that we are often able to give you a ride into town or pick something up for you but we are not usually able to lend out our vehicle.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs):
Will other WWOOFers be here when I’m here?
We often have 1–5 WWOOFers at a time, with more in the summer. People come and go. There may be a small group, or it may be yourself (and anyone in your party). Please see the guidance above about being comfortable on your own while you’re here, as well as within social situations.
Where will I be staying?
We have a couple of accommodations for WWOOFers:
a three-season rustic, non-electric cabin on a meadow called the Solar Barn
the Moonhouse, a quirky finished cabin (currently unavailable due to long-term guest)
a tent platform
the art studio in the finished building we call “The Ododom”
Some of our WWOOFer accommodations are more rustic with no electricity or running water in the space. Some are more finished spaces with more amenities right at hand. Everyone has access to a hot shower and kitchen facilities. All spaces are either heated or three-season. If you have a strong need for a certain kind of space, please let us know.
We will try to forecast prior to your arrival where you will stay so that you can feel prepared for it, but often the availability will be determined on your arrival.
If the accommodations aren’t what you were expecting, please don’t hesitate to say something, and we can adjust things to the best of our ability.
What should I bring with me?
We provide most of the basics you will need for living here, including bedding (unless you are tent camping), farm tools and equipment. The following is not an exhaustive list, but here are some helpful suggestions:
Work gloves
Clothes that can get dirty
A change of clothes
Footwear options for muddy/dirty conditions
A headlamp (although phones perform this job pretty well)
A raincoat and rain pants are encouraged
Some snacks and foods for yourself and/or to share
Art supplies (also you can use ours)
A good book of poetry
A musical instrument
If I don’t have a car, how do I get there?
There is an Amtrak line from NYC to Brattleboro, Vermont. Train service from other locations is more roundabout. There is also Greyhound service to Brattleboro. That also works best from NYC but is possible from other locations such as Boston and Albany. Let us know where you’re coming from and we can make suggestions.
What is the transportation situation there? Is there public transport?
WWOOFer usually have cars to get around because we live in a rural environment without a public transportation network. However, WWOOFers can use bikes, getting rides, and buses to get around as well. We regularly go into Brattleboro for errands and things and can give you a ride when we do this. It’s a long bike ride but doable, and some people like to do this. There is also a bus called the MOOver which has a dropoff point in Marlboro. We may be able to drop you off or pick you up from there if you want to utilize that.
Are there hiking trails?
YES! There are lots of formal hikes in the area that we recommend. Our land also connects directly to a network of miles of hiking trails that are well-maintained.
I’d like to learn something specific while I’m there (art, mushroom foraging, etc). Will there be opportunities?
Just ask! We often have opportunities for learning things. We also like to learn from you, if you want to share your skills or interests. We often encourage WWOOFers to take on a specific learning/exploratory project while here. If you want to do a deep dive on tree identification, foraging, etc, this could be a great opportunity.