Wwoofers

Wwoofers ( WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) are people who volunteer on farms around the world. They help the farmers and the growers do work in return for food and accommodation. In Cloughjordan Community Farm we take Wwoofers on to help with planting, weeding and harvesting of vegetables. They also help in areas of the ecovillage land doing jobs like moving topsoil and trampling weeds in the forestry area.

We have Wwoofers from April til  the end of October. They work with our two veg growers, Bruce and Pat, generally doing jobs that take a long time and lots of team work to do; they seem to be doing a lot of weeding!!!

Most of our Wwoofers are aged from 18-27 and are a mixture of men and women. Some of them come on their own and some come with friends, some come to improve their English, some of them because they want to travel, but most of them come to learn about growing and to experience the community we have here.

The majority of them come from France, but some come from Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. At the moment we even have a family who live in the United Arab Emirates.

Wwoofers stay with us from about 2 weeks to a month. Normally they would stay with the farmer and the farmer's family, but here they stay at the Eco-village hostel. During the week members of the farm and the Eco-village sign up to cook them lunch and dinner (they make their own breakfast) and on Saturday and Sunday they cook for themselves.

I think Wwoofers are a great help and I like meeting them and working with them as they are very interesting people.