Wwoofing in woodend/ Wwoofing in Woodend

Our wwoofing hosts for 8 days are Ruth, her 10-year-old son Aidan, and the golden retriever Kia. They live in the small town of Woodend, about 70 km northwest of Melbourne. It takes about 1 hour by train from Melbourne, and the town has about 6,000 inhabitants.

They have a very nice house and also a beautiful vegetable garden, some fruit trees (peach, nectarine, plum, apple, cherry), and a few chickens. Ruth works as a history lecturer at the university and has little free time. That's why the garden is quite neglected, and we take care of cleaning up the rough chaos a bit ;) The cultivation is ecological, and Ruth tries to follow as many principles of permaculture as possible to plant the soil sustainably.

The work is mostly really fun. We mainly prepared and planted older beds (including pumpkin, leeks, carrots, asparagus, onions, watermelon, wasabi, lettuce, and herbs), pruned trees, supported overgrown tomatoes and cucumbers, removed weeds, and mulched.

One day, a friend of Ruth's, a retired gardener, came and explained a little bit about pruning trees. Ruth was also always very helpful in explaining things to us or at least showing us her maaanny gardening books. So we definitely learned a little something.

We work about 5 hours a day from 8 am to 1 pm and in return, we get very good food and a room for ourselves. Sometimes we cook together, sometimes Ruth cooks for everyone, sometimes we cook for everyone. It's pretty relaxed and uncomplicated.

In the afternoons, we often went for a walk with Kia, went to the second-hand bookstore and the meeeega organic store in Woodend (just for looking). One evening, we also went to the beerhouse for (pretty bad) live music and met nice people. Saturday was our day off, and we just let our souls dangle.

All in all, everything fits very well! We're lucky to be with such a nice family that gives us so much freedom in our work.

On Tuesday morning, our road trip along the Australian east coast to Brisbane begins!

Our Wwoofing hosts are Ruth, her 10-year-old son Aidan, and their golden retriever Kia. They have a country house in Woodend, a town of about 6,000 inhabitants an hour by train from Melbourne.

We stay with them for 8 days. The house they have is beautiful, although a bit messy because it's very big and Ruth doesn't seem to have much free time. They have land with fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and chickens. They plant everything organically and try to practice permaculture to preserve the rich soil.

Our tasks are preparing the soil for planting, planting vegetables, pruning trees, staking tomatoes, and, above all, removing grass, loooots of grass. We work 5 hours a day and in exchange, we receive a room in the house and free access to the kitchen, fridge, and, of course, the rest of the house too. Sometimes Ruth cooks for us, and sometimes we cook for them. The truth is that dealing with them is very pleasant and straightforward, and Ruth seems quite happy with the work we do, although sometimes we're not very convinced if we're doing it right. Plus, she lets us take the dog for a walk.

Another day, a friend of Ruth's who used to be a gardener came to teach us a little bit about pruning trees, so we must have learned something.

In conclusion, we're quite enjoying the experience because we're learning some things, they let us do the tasks at our own pace, and we've been very lucky to find such a nice family.

On Tuesday, our road trip along the coast to Brisbane starts!