My First Time WWOOFing Began Like A Stephen King Novel.

Right now I am sitting at a tiny white wooden desk in a tiny white wooden chair, typing away on my Macbook Pro. The wallpaper in front of me is eggshell white, with a generic yellow floral pattern. Actually, there are floral patterns all around me, from the sheets, to the drapes, to the bed spread. Pasted all over the walls are old newspaper and magazine clippings, classical music plays in softly in the next room.

The tiny desk in the tiny room.

A southerly wind howls outside, spitting rain whips against the single pane windows. The drapes float up and down in the corner of my eye from wind sneaking in, yet every time I look, they are calm again. Chills creep down my spine. In the other room, the wood fire crackles, the WWOOFing host sits in her floral pattern sofa chair, rocking back and forth, knitting silently.

This is the end to my first day of WWOOFing. Kinda’ sounds like a Stephen King novel huh? Ya’ know, the one about the writer in the cabin? Maybe I just have a wild imagination. But the beginning of this day started with exactly that, my imagination racing, an anxious feeling, and uncertainty.

Hannah, a backpacker friend who I met in Auckland, and I took the train down to from Wellington today to a small town outside of the city. This would be the first time I would ever WWOOF, and to be honest, I was a little nervous. I am always a little nervous meeting new people, but especially when it comes to living in their house. Hearing a story about a WWOOFer being surprised by nudist hosts didn’t help either.

We arrived at the train station right on time, and after standing around for a couple minutes, I hear someone call out to us. Across the tracks stands a small, older woman with grey hair, our host. Now, I am a tiny guy, but her car was itty bitty. The silver Honda Logo could barely fit our bags in, let alone us. Packed in like sardines, we drive a short distance to the house, silence the entire drive.

At this point, I know what we are thinking: What the Hell do we say? This is so awkward.

Soaking wet, we drop our bags our room, then sit in silence. The host walks off, and we can hear some tinkering going on in the kitchen. We both chuckle quietly at the situation since it seems so odd, and we have no clue what to expect next. I inspect my bed to find that it is nearly identical to a prison cot, metal frame and springs with only a thin pad on top. But, I did have an american flag blanket, so that got some points.

I wander out the room to use the bathroom and notice all sorts of power tools everywhere. Glass jars line the house filled with different colored pulpy mush which kind of gave me the creeps. There is clutter everywhere, stacks of knitted things and books, the same classical playing softly as I noted above.

The host calls Hannah over to give her something to do, and asks me to head out to the garage for some pliers. Horror movie rules: Never go off into the garage. I venture out into the rain and hear a thump behind me. There goes Hannah I think to myself. Of course I would go back in to save a friend, but first I need find something to take in with me.

I enter the garage, always looking over my shoulders, and scan around. Hatchets, axes, and hammers hang on the wall. I’ve seen this before. I find some rusty steel surgical pliers, like something out of Saw, and I take the hammer…just in case.

The door knob turns silently, but the door creeks loud when I open it. I look around and see no one, so I enter, then BAM! The host comes out of nowhere, and on her face is a sweet smile. Hannah is wiping dishes dry and sorting them, alive, and a feeling of relief comes over me. She is suddenly chatty, her and Hannah make small talk, and the anxiety seemed to dissipate quickly. Then it was time to work.

My first duty of the day was like pulling nails. literally, I pulled nails for an hour and half.It was quite torturous trying to remove rusty nails from a baseboard that used to have a mat tacked to it. They poked out just enough to catch a mop and be an annoyance, but not enough to be easily removed. After 90 minutes and 6 pulled nails, I was victorious!

Next up was organizing the pantry. I have never seen so many cans of beans and sliced tomatoes in my life! Remove them all, sort the cans by type, label them with marker, put them back in. I don’t know what was more tedious, sorting cans of food into type of food, Hannah’s job of the day.

Around the corner, Hannah was drowning in old dusty books. The entire day she sat organizing books that probably hadn’t been read in 20 years. Mainly organizing the hundreds of cooking books by type: Cooking in 20 minutes, vegetarian cooking, organic cooking, cooking for your live, you get the point.

Finally it was dinner time, and as hungry as were, there was a hesitancy with us both as the food was passed around. The peppered roast beef looked good, but seeing that the pieces of carrots had been salvaged from rotten ones made me a little nauseous.

We did get a chance to get to know our host a little bit better over dinner which helped bring down the awkwardness levels a little bit. She knows heaps of information about Wellington’s history, the geography and Māori culture and loved answering our questions.

Her grandfather had fought in the first World War, and was killed in France where he is buried today. She showed of some of her amazing stitch work, and even a portrait she stitched of her grandfather that looked just like him. If I ever go to France, I’m going to visit the memorial wall for her so she can finally see his plaque.

After dinner, she took down some of those creepy glass jars that turned out to be just homemade jams and mashed fruits. Eh em, of course I knew what they were the whole time, don’t be silly! We tried Hokey Pokey ice cream for the first time, apparently it is huge in New Zealand, and now I see why. The toffee infused was utterly delicious, and I did try a dab of the jam on it, even though it was labeled 2009 which made me gag a little.

Old food jars.

So, after a roller-coaster of a day filled with an over active imagination and a nervousness for the unknown, I realized something. Chucks are not easy to slip on if you need to run for an escape. Just kidding. I realized that, like some people, I still tend to jump to conclusions just because I don’t know someone, or the situation isn’t familiar. I didn’t even book the WWOOFing gig, Hannah did, because I was iffy about ringing up strangers.

I see a lot of backpackers who are nervous about things like WWOOFing or Couch Surfing and end up not getting to experience the amazing opportunities and benefits that come with them. If you want to be a traveler, and get the most out of it, you have to start being comfortable with the unknown. And stop watching so many horror movies like me!

I have a whole week left of this still very new experience. We keep chuckling to each other at some of the weird and gross things happening in this house, but it’s only a for a little time. There are so many different types of WWOOFing to be done, and now I think I should be fine pursuing it.

We’ll see how the gardening work ends up being like when the weather clears, I don’t know how long I could sort news papers and canned food for, and how long I can stand the fleas. I think I would like chopping wood all day better, I hear that is how Jude Law got ripped once, and I need to lose this meat pie belly.

*This article in no way reflects on the WWOOFing organization, just my first night experiences at the hosts house. It is about how my imagination got the best of me, and the fear I was overwhelmed with at first because of the unknown environment. The rest of the week and the interesting stuff that happened will be posted soon! I will be keeping the host’s name out of the articles.

Have you ever had a really weird experience WWOOFing? What was your first time WWOOFing like? What fears did you have in the beginning?

Share on Tumblr