WWOOFing in Spain

WWOOF, or Willing Workers on Organic Farms, is an organization which connects volunteers with organic farms around the world. In exchange for working 4-6 hours a day, 4-6 days a week, the volunteer is given room, board, and a farming education. We knew we needed to volunteer to make traveling in Europe affordable so we decided to give WWOOFing a shot and went to La Montañuela, a farm in La Prada, a tiny town of 20 people in between Burgos and Bilbao in Northern Spain.

We were met at the bus stop by Iñigo, owner, agricultor, and our host for the next five weeks. He gave us the first day off but on Sunday, we started work on the finca, which is a farm that only has fruits and vegetables as opposed to a granja which also has animals. A typical day on the finca for us started at 8AM when we would arrive after a hasty breakfast and immediately get to work. We would work until 11AM then stop for an almuerzo of bread, cheese, fruit, and tinned seafood (mussels, sardines, octopus). After a half hour break, we'd start up again and work until 1PM at which point we'd be free for the rest of the day.

First day, first task - weeding the garlic. We would end up doing a LOT of weeding. Being an organic farm, the weeds grow just as quickly as the plants and everything is done by hand, without the use of chemicals... which means a lot of time bent over in the field. Some of the weeding consisted of hacking at the earth with our hoes and pulling up huge clumps of complex root systems (such as the three days spent weeding along the fence to plant beans) while some weeding was done by crawling on hands and knees, pulling each weed by hand, careful not to disturb the young tomato or cucumber plants.

Another main task was working on the construction of a straw bale barn. This is an example of sustainable construction made with local materials - the foundation and lower level stones all came from the property itself and the straw came from a neighbor's wheat field literally on the other side of the road. The basic concept of the construction is to pile stacks of straw bales on top of each other and encase them in a cement mixture to waterproof and preserve them. The walls are then sturdy, insulated, and last over 100 years. Most of our work on this section involved hoisting up buckets of the cement-like material called masa which was made by mixing one part lime with one part cement with eight parts sand and then adding water until the consistency was right. I also made thousands of grapas, or staples, to hold in the wire mesh you first cover the straw with before laying on the masa. And both of us helped cut and place wood paneling along the front of the barn, which was sometimes a bit terrifying as we'd be on our tiptoes at the top of forty-foot tall wobbling scaffolding.

The last major order of business was planting. We didn't get to do as much as planned due to the constant rain (La Prada received the most rainfall in this period in recorded history - it rained for over 40 straight), but we still filled up the greenhouse with eggplant, cucumber, tomato, beans, various peppers, zucchini, basil, parsley, lettuce, asparagus... while outside, we mainly just planted onions, though there was plenty of garlic, lettuce, potatoes, and peas already in the earth. I was pretty slow at planting at first, but you get used to it and learn that even baby plants are not as fragile as they might appear.

Other duties included:

Sowing seeds in huge trays to let them sprout before we'd transplant to the earth.
Leveling earth in the greenhouse to put down tarps which would keep weeds from growing through.
Constructing platforms to place the seed trays on so the roots wouldn't grow into the ground and to keep the plants safe from any animals.
Building a fence around the reservoir.
Installed a new door to the greenhouse.

All this was to help Iñigo get the project up and running as La Montañuela is only two years old now and just about to start it's first season producing. Iñigo is selling subscriptions to the crops to people as far away as Bilbao where they get a weekly delivery of fruits and vegetables from the farm. They have similar programs around the world, often called crop sharing, which allows for locally grown, fresh, organic produce and similarly lets the farmer grow a wide variety of food rather than only one cash crop - a practice which is much more ecologically sound, much more sustainable, and much better for the soil itself.


So that was our experience farming - but there was much more to La Prada... which will be coming soon...