WWOOF Italy: WWOOFers Helping to Make Ends Meet

26 April 2011

Giancarlo lives alone in the house he grew up in..."alone" with an average of six WWOOFers at any given time. He has mainly olive trees, a garden, and an organic produce box drop off business. In essence, alone, this man organized with other local organic farms, gained clients, and now drops off boxes, general and upon request, every Wednesday and Thursday at people's doorsteps. It is a fabulous business, and it is amazing that he has somehow made it run so smoothly. It perplexes me the complexity of what he organized, and even more it perplexes me how he ever managed before the help of WWOOFers, which he has only had for the past eight months.

He needs to prepare how much produce to order every week because, only using organic, seasonal produce, the actual products change week to week and season to season. He then emails everyone who purchases a personalized box with the list on Sunday, and prepares a spreadsheet based on their requests on Monday. On Tuesday, he picks up all of the produce from several different farms, organizes it into different boxes, picks and prepares the produce from his own farm, and loads his truck for the drop offs the next morning. Wednesday he spends about ten hours dropping off boxes, returns home to prepare more, and has a shorter drop-off of more boxes on Thursday. The planning and the paperwork he does to prepare all of this is spread out through the entire week. This work consumes a good four and a half FULL days for him, so without the help of WWOOFers, I cannot imagine how he ever managed to maintain his own garden of produce before.

The work of his WWOOFers, thus, revolves around the garden and the olive trees. He has a regimented system: five hours of work a day, five days a week. We work in the morning, everyone 7:30 to 12:30, and then we enjoy the afternoon off. Giancarlo does a nice job of planning work for everyone. He either spends the time to demonstrate how the work needs to be done, or he makes sure that another one of the long-term WWOOFers can supervise. Thus, at any given time, he has between four and twelve young people doing work for him, each 25 hours a week, whether he is there with them or out running boxes of food around. That means that a HUGE amount of work is accomplished, unimaginable if it were not for WWOOFers.

WWOOFers at Giancarlo's farm are paid nothing to help his system work. However, they get exactly what they want: knowledge about agriculture and experience with it, without having their own farm.