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:
Following WWOOF guidelines, we provide staple foods for three meals per day on every day during your stay here. WWOOFers have full access to our kitchen and pantry, which is stocked with rice, beans, lentils, nuts, oats and other grains, pasta, tuna fish, various oils and sauces, etc. 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.
WWOOFers sometimes ask us if they should bring food. Here’s what we find. You are welcome to fully rely on our pantry and the meals we offer. We also find that some WWOOFers enjoy having their favorite snacks or being able to cook specific dishes, in which case you are welcome to bring groceries.
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.
Cooking is generally a shared responsibility. You’ll find that on WWOOF “project days,” we try to cook and offer breakfast, lunch and dinner for WWOOFers, but depending on what’s going on we may ask for cooking assistance. On “off days,” you are more likely to be cooking your own meals. However, we often like to collaborate and share cooking/cleaning on “off” days as well. Please feel free to cook for yourself (using the farm kitchen and pantry as needed), or check in with us about collaborating.
Coffee and tea are available.
Cleaning up — please pitch in and do your part. We generally feel that if you’ve cooked for the group, go ahead and relax while the group cleans up. A good general practice is to clean for all, not just for yourself, and please put in a complete effort, including wiping down counters, emptying the dish rack and dishwasher, etc. We generally are able to do this together and make short work of it. 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 meals.
Do you like to cook? Are there dishes you love to share with others? Or are you simply interested in exploring more in the kitchen? We welcome this kind of energy, while also understanding that not everyone likes to cook.
Please feel free to bring any beverage to meals. We are currently not drinking alcohol very often ourselves, but you are welcome to enjoy a drink (BYOB).
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!
WWOOF USA provides the following guideline — that we “ask WWOOFers to help for no more than five half days per week or around 25 hours per week.” Here’s how we structure things here:
We do “WWOOF project days” for three days per week, with the following default hours for adults:
8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. (21 hours)
At present, those days are generally Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but that can change week to week in order to accommodate everything from weather to WWOOFer arrival and departure times, outside commitments, etc.
We also ask WWOOFers to take on a routine daily farm chore. This helps keep the farm going on a daily basis, and having a daily responsibility is also very grounding. When you’re hopping out of bed first thing in the morning to feed the animals and let them out, it feels good to be there for them, and you seen sunrises that you wouldn’t otherwise see, etc. This kind of thing might be just a few minutes out of your day or it might be an hour — there’s not a hard and fast rule. Overall, the intention is for the daily chore to fill out the 25-hour suggested commitment. We like to work with WWOOFers to identify a chore or set of chores that they have a personal interest and affinity for, and we are open to your ideas. Examples from the past have included:
Twice-daily animal care — letting the chickens out in the morning, closing up in the evening. Feeding the pigs and/or goats (depending on what animals we have).
Daily garden harvesting for the evening meal.
Harvesting and dehydrating culinary herbs (like thyme and oregano), and/or harvesting and preparing medicinal herbs, e.g. drying calendula flowers to make a salve.
Doing a little bit of weeding every morning (in the heat of the summer, very early in the morning is the best time to weed)
Going for a daily walk on our trails and conducting maintenance, i.e. pulling invasive species, removing blown-down branches, cutting back overgrowth, etc.)
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 pay $5/bag, plus gas, to dispose of trash at the transfer station in Brattleboro. Recycling must be sorted but is free to dispose of. Please help us keep costs down and reduce trash in our landfills by helping keep trash to a minimum. Help in making a dump and/or recycling run is gratefully accepted.
Return any books to where you found them.
The quiet here is something that we strongly valued, and guests appreciate. Please observe quiet hours on the farm from about 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Playing musical instruments is encouraged at any time of day, and talking over a campfire is totally fine well into the evening. However, except for special occasions we don’t play amplified music (i.e., music on phones or speakers) outdoors. Please feel free to put on some music when cooking dinner, but at other times we have found that using headphones works better in terms of sharing physical and auditory space with multiple people.
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 we expect and request you to 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. For example, when children are part of a WWOOFing family, we want and invite them to participate but they are not subject to the work requirement. 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.
Here are some key vibes that we have found helpful 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.
Of course, if there is something about the experience that’s not working for you, we want to hear about it before you go. There have been those few times when a WWOOFer has been unhappy with something but chose to send an email to us after they left. Those times break our hearts. We hate to find out later that you didn’t like something and had some feedback but kept it to yourself. We have confidence from almost 20 years of hosting WWOOFers that we are good hosts. We are safe to talk to about anything, and if you need something, you can tell us.
In fact, we really need and ask you to give us your feedback and this is a core expectation of WWOOFing here. The WWOOFing experience is a form of co-habitation. Think of your experiences living with your family, or in a dorm or with housemates. Rubbing each other the wrong way can happen, even with the best of intentions. Think of examples in your life when slights have accumulated due to lack of communication. We don’t want that here. If you have feedback for your hosts or for other WWOOFers, please show us the respect of communicating about it as soon as you become aware of it.
Here’s one helpful rule of thumb about healthy communication. People often express the desire to be able to “let it go” when it comes to a negative feeling. However, that isn’t always possible. If you go to bed unhappy with how you were talked to that day, and you wake up still thinking about it, it is probably not going to be something you just “let go” magically. In that kind of situation, providing us (or the relevant person) with your feedback as soon as possible that same day is probably a really good idea. Going through a day of WWOOFing while holding unexpressed hurt, anger, or other heavy emotions probably won’t feel good to you, won’t feel good to the plants that you’re tending to, and it won’t feel good to your collaborators and hosts, who can probably sense that your head is somewhere else. Withholding your true thoughts and feelings can compound issues.
Conflict avoidance is not helpful, and in fact, we have found it to be toxic and result in negative dynamics. For example, if you find yourself sharing with another WWOOFer about a discomfort that you feel with your hosts, that is a very strong indicator that this would be appropriate and useful feedback to share with your hosts. Consistently complaining about your hosts or another WWOOFer to a someone else (even to your partner) without directly addressing it is triangulation. Triangulation has numerous toxic repercussions. Please be direct.
Example: We once hosted a WWOOFer who did something of their own initiative that didn’t work for us (they let our dog out when we were out of the house without checking with us). Lesson learned — we are now asking WWOOFer explicitly not to undertake animal care here of any kind without express permission and a basic orientation to that animal. In this situation, we gave the WWOOFer some feedback. It turned out that they told us a few days later that they didn’t like the tone of that feedback. In addition, they had accumulated a growing list of slights over the course of those days (real or perceived doesn’t matter — either way, they were unexpressed, which went counter to our basic expectations). We believe strongly in, and support vulnerability in striking up difficult conversations with the intent of building trust. In contrast, withholding your trust predictably results in deepening distrust. If you are withholding issues from us while continuing to WWOOF here, that is dishonest behavior. Please, please do share with us what’s on your mind without waiting days.
If for some reason you find you can’t express yourself and feel safe, this is a serious issue. This may be a sign that our farm is not a good fit for you. We again encourage you to ask for help in finding a way to address any issue while you are staying here. One resource we could both turn to for resolution in this case is WWOOF-USA.
If communicating openly and honestly in a family environment is not familiar to you — no problem! We are happy to learn together. This is about paying each other the respect of honesty and directness. There is no “perfection,” only an expectation that we do our best and are open to feedback.
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. You don’t need to explain your change in plans or even give a reason. The one thing we ask is that you clean up after yourself, as covered elsewhere, and if your responsibilities here include animal care, please do ensure a clear handoff.
This is our home and we are responsible for the safety of our home, for our family and guests. If we find that you are not meeting the basic expectations of being here, we are likely to perceive that as a serious safety issue and you could be asked to leave. In the very few number of times when this has come up, the issue is usually serious enough that you would be asked to leave that same day, or within 24 hours. We don’t want things to come to this, and we usually try to provide immediate and constructive feedback if we see things going in this direction at all, so that we’ll have a chance to get on the right track with each other so that a WWOOFer can stay for their entire planned visit. Frankly, if things are not working out, you are probably feeling it too and the decision to leave has in every case been the result of mutual understanding and agreeableness. The reason for stating this out loud is to try to name and set down the stress that we’ve found can come with this power dynamic. We are the source of your housing and food for the time that you’re here. The very possibility of losing this place as your housing can be stressful. Paradoxically, we’ve found that the stress of trying to maintain a positive relationship with us, the people providing your housing, can lead to behaviors like “people pleasing” and conflict avoidance. We unfortunately find that making small choices to avoid conflict in the short term can lead to worse misunderstandings the longer this goes on. Therefore we want to be upfront that yes, we could ask you to leave but no, we don’t want to, and we invite you to be upfront about your thoughts and feelings about anything you encounter here, as discussed elsewhere.
Related to this, we have found over 20 years of hosting guests on land that we own, that a lot of people associate landowners with being wealthy swine, and how dare we tell you what to do! This doesn’t come up with every or even with most WWOOFers, but it can come up with some and it is a lingering issue for our entire society. Sooner or later we find that a well-intentioned piece of feedback about how to plant seeds can be perceived by a WWOOFer who carries an understandable dislike of the patriarchy to perceive us as ill-intentioned in being just another landowner telling a “peasant” what to do. We are mentioning this now so that if it comes up during your stay, we’ll have a better shared understanding for talking about it. And we would like to say for the record that we are not in fact swine, or wealthy. We have had both our privileges and our challenges in life. We feel immensely grateful to own a farm in southern Vermont that we can call home, and we are genuinely excited to share it with you, and to do our daily work to deconstruct harmful frameworks of the past, of which we are all victims.
If your plans change and you would like to stay longer, please do ask. However, please understand that we may be able to accommodate a longer stay, or we may not. Don’t take it personally if we can’t.
Some specific notes about using the main farmhouse
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 from around 7 a.m. to after-dinner cleanup. You don’t need to ask permission to come in — and we don’t want you to. You are welcome here! Please simply observe general respect ask you would in any situation where you are sharing space with o ther people.
The bathroom and other shared spaces in the Ododom are generally available at all times. Please simply be quiet in using them outside of daytime hours, e.g. no loud conversations in the yard, and please take phone calls outside earshot of our house and other WWOOF accommodations.
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. If you arrive on the train or otherwise don’t have transportation, we can usually help problem-solve with this.
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 more 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.
We love music and podcasts and watching videos as much as the next person. However, we have noticed that the level of media in the farm environment is low compared to more typical American settings. We like it that way, and we invite you to give it a try. We really treasure and enjoy quiet, and being able to hear owls call outside, and simply being able to talk, read, or write without distractions. Simply being, without also feeling the need to “catch up” on a podcast. If you want to listen/watch something, it’s totally okay — we trust you to do what’s right for you and your experience here. We only ask you to be considerate of the environment around you, and maybe use the time here to try out a lower-media way of being. Maybe try not taking your headphones with you on your walk — just take in the sounds of the forest.
Playing musical instruments, singing, or other real-life sounds are a different story. We find these emerge more organically from the shared environment and fit in well. Don’t hold back!
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. If you encounter a safety issue (example: you encounter an exposed nail while getting a tool out, or you can’t find a bandage when you need it), please let us know right away and/or fix the issue immediately. Observing a safety issue and not doing anything about it prevents it from being fixed for you and for other people. As the saying goes, if you see something, say something.
We are always trying to maintain a high standard of cleanliness and organization throughout the farm. This requires consistent work of picking up and putting away. If you see something out of place — a piece of trash blown across the yard, or a tool out in the rain) please take the initiative to pick it up. Not sure where something goes? Just ask.
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. If you’re checking your phone constantly in the middle of an immersive garden project or texting in the middle of a share meal, you’ll be missing out on the fun of being here for this brief period of time in your life.
Cleaning up from a project is part of the project. Please away any tools you have used, put away farm gloves, and cover any sensitive equipment with tarps. If you’re not sure how to put something away, please ask. 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!
We are flexible in our pronouns. Please let us and other WWOOFers know if you have preferred pronouns.
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. For privacy reasons, we don’t post this information online but feel free to ask about specifics prior to coming if you have any questions.
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, and (though we try to keep thing consistent) it may also change while you are here.
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.
Please keep in mind this is not an Airbnb where we hire a professional cleaner, etc. This is a working farm.
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
Optional: Specific snacks and/or foods that you particularly like having around
Art supplies (also you can use ours)
A good book of poetry
A musical instrument
Can get there without a car?
Yes. 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 arrive with their own cars 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 regional bus called the MOOver that could be helpful.
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.
What are your values around talking about people who can’t talk for themselves, i.e. anyone not in the room?
Sometimes in the course of hosting WWOOFers, we might refer back to a specific experience with a previous WWOOFer. Sometimes that story could involve a lesson learned — in fact, that’s one of the main reasons we tell stories. That, and because they’re funny. One time we did this with a first-day WWOOFer (explained a rule about the gas oven by referring to a past experience in which we almost blew up the house), and they later told us that if they made a mistake, that we could make a negative story about them in the future, a.k.a. they didn’t want us to talk behind their back. This was really good feedback! We hate saying negative things about other people, we don’t like repeating negative stories about other people. Please be assured going forward that if you hear a story about a WWOOFer or anyone else who isn’t in the room, the following will in all cases be true: a) we are probably telling the story to share what we learned, and how we got through something hard, not to criticize another person. b) in all cases we make every effort to share feedback with everyone directly, and thus if we are sharing it with you we will have definitely shared it with that person, or attempted to do so. c) we like laughing with friends and along with life.
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.