It's not just about the food!
Before I heard about WWOOF, I'd started to get into the organic movement. You've probably seen me with my red half-gallon of Horizon's organic chocolate milk, and maybe you've had my chocolate chip cookies with all of the organic ingredients I could find. I just did it because it tastes better, and that was about the extent of my experience with the Organic world. And that's all I really knew I could count on when coming here: good food.
But while I've been here, I've learned that there's so much more to it than the good food. The key word here is sustainability. They do everything they can to have a minimal negative impact on the environment. But they also care about sustaining the human world. For example, they run an alternative school that kids can attend from kindergarten through high school graduation, and it's really cool. The students have such a huge say in what goes on at the school (which classes are taught, etc) and they have a pretty relaxed attendance policy so that everyone's at school because they want to be. They've taken school trips across the US and down to Central America, and the kids have a great perspective and set of priorities.
Most nights after dinner (or even just randomly throughout the day), we end up talking about the world and its people, and the problems and hopes that we see. They're pretty anti-consumerist here, and I'm starting to sway that way too. We were just talking a while ago about how many people go to work to make money to buy goods and services that they don't have the time to create themselves because they're working. It's kind of a vicious cycle and it's tough to get out of. I'm not saying everyone should quit their day job and become a farmer, it's just food for thought.
Aaaand on that note, the food! For your viewing pleasure, I have pictures of two pretty standard lunches this week.
One glass of unpasteurized whole milk from a friend's farm about 10 miles away
A salad entirely from the greenhouse
One egg, less than 24 hours old, from the chickens on a slice of 12-grain bread from a Maine bakery
One peanut butter and egg sandwich with organic, store-bought peanut butter
and... soy dogs from the supermarket.. (gotta get my protein)
and the other lunch was pretty similar, but a little weirder:
Two eggs from the chickens, this time probably less than 12 hours old!
Two slices of rosemary bread from a local bakery, soon to be a sandwich with the same organic peanut butter on one slice and organic spicy chipotle relish on the other.. (I've been experimenting with peanut butter sandwiches. Don't knock it til you try it)
aand the finished product, with the greenhouse salad and the local milk:
YUM
