WWOOFing Week 2

Week 2 on ze farm:

Went to Easy Bean with Joey on Tuesday and had a great time harvesting veggies. We picked spinach & broccoli rabe, washed scallions, and helped pack boxes. This week's box had broccoli, kale, spinach, broccoli rabe, lettuce, bok choi, and scallions - delicious! We also met a lot of really cool people and got to experience first hand how a CSA works. We definitely look forward to going back again.

We also got our first experience with an electric fence as we set up the fence to train the hogs. Next week we'll be letting them out to graze and forage.


Scott learned how to use a chainsaw and cut up firewood for his homebrew boil (the homebrewing experience is separate post for another day). I rode the riding lawn mower around while Scott weedwacked like crazy and we were able to clear out a nice area for the turkeys, since we're about to start letting them out during the day. We also switched out their feeder and went to Montevideo to pick up their special-order feed.


And of course there was more fishing! We went to Green Lake (about an hour north) on Sunday and spent the day fishing for bass and sunnies (Happy Father's Day, Joey!) and everyone caught several fish - Azure and Aurelia especially were having a great day, as their respective Batman and Princess rods were the lucky poles, yet again. We came home with 6 small-mouth bass and about 15 sunnies, and while Scott and Joey bottled the beer, Jessi and I scaled and filleted the fish. We pan-fried them and had fish tacos with a raddish slaw - fantastic!

Looking forward to next week, when we have 100 baby chicks arriving!

Scott & Ashley

June WWOOF'ers: Two Southerners Experience Northern Hospitality

So what do two 20 somethings do when their college town gives them the boot? Drive to rural Minnesota and volunteer on an organic livestock farm, right?

Having been unfulfilled by the post graduation lifestyle of very few job opportunities and doing something for the sake of a paycheck, Ashley and I finally got the opportunity and a bit of courage to pursue a cause we are quite passionate about; organic farming and sustainability.

These days, people are becoming more detatched from how their food is raised, produced, handled and shipped to stores than ever. We saw plenty of documentaries (Food Inc.) that led us away from processed food, but getting the information is like dipping your toe into the kiddie pool to see if its cold. By using the WWOOF website, we wanted to dive straight into the deep end of the organic food movement.

We were fortunate to find the Stout Family (Joey, Jessi, Azure, and Aurelia) through WWOOF and more fortunate that they would have us for a month stay.

This first post documents our first week on the Humbleroots Heritage Farm.

Week 1:

We showed up, got the tour and went straight to moving hay to the respective turkey and chicken houses. At this point, all the turkeys and chickens were in the same place, so naturally two suburban college kids had to gather the 100 chickens, by hand, and place them in their new, recently hay laden coop. Welcome to livestock farming! We also made roosts out of branches and twigs, because chickens and turkeys like to be off the ground at night.

In between visiting other farms (Earthrise was kind enough to share lunch and we got to pick thistles and sample strawberries at Coyote Grange), we had some time to get our Minnesota fishing licenses and try our luck at fishing the land of 10,000 lakes. A little beginner's luck struck my fishing pole that day and I caught a catfish.
Lunch next day was delightful. We really couldn't have asked for a better first week experience at Humbleroots.

More to come!

Scott and Ashley

Program helps beginning farmers get started | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Program helps beginning farmers get started Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ