Life on the Farm

I thought my left arm might be permanently damaged. Well, maybe not permanently, but I knew at a minimum, it was seriously fazed. I couldn’t lift it without feeling some kind of combination of pain and exhaustion. I was both disappointed and frustrated… after all, I would consider myself to be in decently good shape. But after just one day of working on the farm, I thought I might be in big trouble.

What exactly did I do to faze my arm so seriously? Dave and I spent about 7 hours shoveling a heavy combination of goat poop and hay off a barn floor. (Please note that Dave was NOT suffering from extreme arm exhaustion. Just me.) And how exactly did we find ourselves doing that? Let me back up and give some back story.

Almost a year ago, we joined a work exchange network called workaway.info. It’s basically a service that connects you with hosts all over the world. As a member, you can organize different work sites where you are provided free meals and accommodation in exchange for 25 hours of work each week. So, because it never worked out any of the other places we had tried in the world, we thought maybe we should take advantage of our membership while in the Pacific-Northwest, a region of the US where neither of us has spent much time before.

Back in February, we contacted Jeff and Robyn Sowers, who live on an organic hobby farm in Olympia, Washington. We began to set up the details and decided that we would spend a couple of weeks there shortly after our return to the US, before we really got started on our cross-country cycling route.

Us with Jeff, Robyn and Corbyn… great hosts for our stay on the farm!

The week before we came, Jeff had sent me an email with a few more details, and mentioned that his plans for our first week included cleaning the barn and planting a squash patch. Perhaps we’re just naïve, but Dave and I both imagined cleaning out the barn might mean organizing tools, getting rid of old stuff, general tidying, etc.

Not the case. Cleaning out the barn is a once-annual necessity, when all the goat poo and hay (several layers of each) that have been building up over the course of the year need to be scooped up with the pitchfork, piled in the back of the truck, and hauled away. So we spent our first two days tackling this chore… and after just one day, I couldn’t lift my arm. This is when I began to think I might be in trouble.

Fortunately, after resting it for the evening and taking some ibuprofen, I woke up the next morning and was able to use it again. This was a huge relief, since we still had plenty of barn cleaning to go… as well as two more weeks we had committed to working on the farm!

But don’t worry, we didn’t spend all our time shoveling poo. We stacked firewood, mulched raspberry and hazelnut bushes, cleared fence lines, dug a trench for water lines, helped with the squash patch… and more.

In true farm fashion, Dave unloaded this hay bale into the chicken barn.

On our last day, we got to help move the chickens, one by one, into their new, larger fenced space.

But perhaps the biggest accomplishment was helping build this great covered workspace. Dave and Jeff did most of the work, but I helped a little with some of the measuring.

First stage: setting up the materials.

Stage two: lots of carpentry work!

And… the finished product!

Oh, and just to add to the novelty of this experience, we got to strike something else off our “Never Have I Ever” list. You might be familiar with this game … it’s a classic ice-breaker for youth groups or high schoolers. (When you’re in college it is likely a drinking game… but we’ll go with the family-friendly version.) One person says something they have never done (Never have I ever… ridden a camel!), and everyone who has done that particular thing has to get up and switch seats. Whoever is left without a seat (musical chairs style), is next to say something they have never done. Throughout the course of our trip, we’ve tried to whittle down the list of things we’ve never done. So, should we ever find ourselves playing this game in the future (somewhat unlikely, I concede), here’s the most recent thing that we would no longer be qualified to say:

“Never have I ever lived in an RV.”

Yep, that’s right. Not only did we get to work on an organic family farm for two weeks, but we got to live in an RV while doing it. Beat that. Jeff and Robyn had it set up so we had our own private quarters… we came in the house to use the kitchen and the bathroom, but the RV was our own personal living space, which actually worked out great for us.

Our home away from home in the backyard. It was actually very comfy!

Now you might be asking “WHY?” Why were we compelled to spend so much time in one place? Well, here was the real motive:

Emily Jane Kuhlers, born May 14, 2013. Beautiful little girl!

My only sister, Sarah, was expecting her first baby, and my mom, knowing we couldn’t get there on our own, generously offered to pay for the flights if we would come for the baby’s arrival. So we gladly accepted this offer and made plans in our schedule to “stay put” for the weeks surrounding the due date. We knew we would get a call and book flights at the last minute, and it would be helpful to be in one place. By doing the workaway on Jeff and Robyn’s farm, we were able to spend two weeks in Olympia without paying for accommodation or food, which is HUGE for us. When the call actually came, we were able to hop on a red-eye flight that night and actually made it before the baby even arrived! It was a tremendous blessing for us to spend even just a couple of days with family, especially at this special time.

After our trip home, we came back to Olympia and finished our time commitment for farm work. We also went back to Seattle for a day just to catch up some of the touristy activities we’d missed on our first pass through. (It’s true, we spent a large chunk of our time at the REI Flagship store, which was amazing.) So we took a day to explore Pike Place Market, enjoy home-brewed and roasted Seattle coffee, check out the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, and embark on a sunset ferry ride to Bainbridge Island and back.

On the boat back into the city, with sunset on Seattle in the background.