Have you ever wanted to live on a farm?
Have you ever wanted to learn to grow your own food?
Have you ever wanted to live a simpler life?
There are places in South Jersey where you can do these things – for a day, a few weeks or months, or sometimes longer.
The program Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) helps connect volunteers to local farmers and homesteaders who exchange work for food or a place to stay and a ton of learning experiences.
What is WWOOF?
WWOOF is a nonprofit organization founded in the United Kingdom in 1971, with the goal of connecting volunteers with organic farmers. Volunteers, or “WWOOFers” as they are known, work on their host farms for lodging and meals.
For hosts, it’s a good opportunity to receive help for their farm or homestead. And for volunteers, it’s a cheaper alternative to hotels for travelling, as well as an opportunity to learn about agriculture, organic methods and sustainable living.
“I just think it’s a really unique way for people to learn so much in just a really tangible, hands-on, connected way,” said Tori Fetrow, outreach and marketing manager at WWOOF USA. “And I think maybe now more than ever, people are looking for that type of connection.”
WWOOF, like other work-stay organizations, is known for volunteers being able to travel to faraway places and have cultural and tourism experiences alongside sustainable living. However, Fetrow believes that it’s possible to have an interesting exchange right near home.
“I think it’s great to start super small and local, especially if you’re brand new to the idea of WWOOF,” Fetrow said. “You know, maybe there’s a host farm in your local area that welcomes people to come out for a couple of hours or a weekend. If you just sort of want to get, you know, see how the program works, get connected with a farm in your local community.”
South Jersey is home to three WWOOF host farms.
Tiny Homestead in Carney’s Point
Anthony Giunta is a passionate man who can talk about any plant at length.
He moved from Philadelphia to his homestead in rural Salem County in 2013 in order to grow the flowers for his business.
“I had a beautiful house and a big yard for a city, but I never had space to really plant or in the ground planting,” said Giunta. “So I came here and kept planting and planting and planting.”
Today, Giunta has large gardens with flowers and vegetables, but also fruit trees, chickens, geese, goats and even macaws. A vegetarian, Giunta does not eat his animals.
The homestead is also organic. Giunta uses no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, which can be an issue for operating since the farms around him are not organic.
“I have not sprayed any of this since I’ve been here. That’s my goal,” Giunta said. “I’d like to eat clean and whole foods. I think every pest in the world comes here to eat because they’re killed off all around me. So this is the only diner that’s open 24-7, you know?”
With two acres of plants and animals (and another two Giunta maintains for his neighbor), doing it alone is a “near impossibility.” He learned of the WWOOF program through connections at the Philadelphia Urban Farm Network, and around 2019, he renovated a back laundry room into a living space for WWOOFers, and started accepting guests.
Giunta hosted WWOOFers from local areas, like a student from Salem County Community College, and from farther away, like a woman from Michigan who visited to get a sense of what moving into the area would be like.
WWOOFers on Giunta’s homestead help him with various tasks depending on the season and the projects that need to get done. Firstly, Giunta takes them on a tour, and then they’ll get to work.
He especially relies on volunteers to help with tasks that need “just another pair of hands.” Sometimes, that’s basic work like moving a table or helping to clean or helping to build systems around the property.
“The one young guy, he was really instrumental in helping get that irrigation system in. And then another person kind of came in behind him and helped with that as well,” Giunta said. “It’s not that it’s difficult. It’s just you got to do it. And I get distracted because there’s a million other things.”
Other tasks include making seed trays, harvesting plants or helping take care of the animals.
For Giunta, using WWOOF has mostly been a positive experience. But with any network, there are some people who don’t match what he needs or can accommodate. For example, the small living area can only accommodate one person, so Giunta has had to turn down many couples looking to volunteer for him.
Giunta is also not interested in people looking to stay only one day.
“It’s ridiculous to accept someone that wants to come for a day and a half. Like, what are you going to get done?” Giunta said. “By the time you get into the groove of even trying to do something, you need more than a day, you know? It’s just to learn how to avoid the geese because they could be somewhat intimidating.”
His advice on the geese is to stand ground and not run away.
For hardworking people looking to learn a lot about taking care of plants and animals organically, Giunta is a ready and willing teacher, and a great cook, according to recurring WWOOFer Jennifer Gleason.
Gleason is a full-time worker, but has a great interest in owning a farm. Wanting experience to ease the intimidation of farm life, she works with Giunta almost every week.
“I just feel like my labor is what I pay for my education,” said Gleason. “He’s very knowledgeable so he teaches me every single detail.”
Sunshine Farm and Learning Center in Mullica Hill
Education is at the heart of Sunshine Farm and Learning Center and its owners.
Mary I (the name she prefers and uses) was born and raised in the city of Camden. By 10 years old, she knew she wanted to farm, the urge coming from “nowhere.”
In 1980, she bought the 13-acre property that is Sunshine Farm and Learning Center today. Nancy Schroek attended an event at the farm in 2016, fell in love with the farm and moved in. Mary I and Schroek have been partners on the farm since, they said.
Both are passionate about teaching, organic growing, and spirituality. The farm hosts a variety of events and classes in music, holistic health and growing food organically. Different parts of the farm include a 35-foot medicine wheel created by Bear Tribe visitors from Spokane, Washington, and a 45-foot labyrinth that Mary I built in January.
The farm is also home to gardens and a greenhouse, where Mary I and Schroek grow a variety of plants such as sweet potato, many kinds of tomatoes and herbs. They also grow a plant called Cherokee Trail of Tears every year to honor indigenous peoples.
Sunshine Farm became a WWOOF host in 2019 and have hosted more 70 volunteers.
“Mary and I both had friends that we had spoken to about getting some help because we’re both older,” Schroek said. “[We started WWOOFing] To have people do some heavier stuff and to get educated because the passion here is to get younger people to grow their own food.”
They also want to teach their organic methods, which Mary I catagorizes as “regenerative sustainable agriculture.”
Some of the organic methods include worm farming to create fertilizer from the waste (vermiculture), lasagna gardening which is a method of composting without digging, and Hügelkultur, which is using a log as a raised bed with compost and soil on top to grow plants. These methods are among the many that Mary I and Schroek teach WWOOFers at Sunshine Farm.
WWOOFers and other volunteers are also responsible for maintenance projects on the farm, such as weeding, and sometimes construction projects. WWOOFers built the greenhouse on the property, which Mary I said is made of mostly recycled materials.
“They [the WWOOFers] didn’t know how to do it,” Mary I said. “But my next-door neighbor knew how to design it. He would show them.”
Mary I and Schroek can host up to four WWOOFers at a time, but most often they prefer fewer because of space and cost limitations.
“Food is extremely expensive as you know and the price has gone up,” Schroek said. “We still need to buy most things, you know. You have to buy milk and you have to buy butter and you have to buy rice and beans and all that stuff. And I don’t just do rice and beans. Like sometimes I’ll do shrimp, I’ll do salmon. I do different foods. So, that’s very costly.”
Mary I and Schroek also have to account for the time spent cooking, cleaning, and teaching. With everything, the work becomes a “full-time, non-paying job,” according to Mary I.
Mary I and Schroek appreciate the help from WWOOFers nonetheless. Even if the work can be demanding, WWOOFers like Cedell LaClair from Arizona found the experience educational and found appreciation in organic farming.
“Mary treated the farm like a classroom as much as a workplace,” LaClair said. “She would review concepts at the end of the day, share resources to study, and explain how each task connected to the bigger picture of soil health. That level of detail made the experience unique compared to other farms.”
Mary I and Schroek plan to host more in the future. They also plan to open the farm publicly to paid classes and experiences to keep teaching.
Tuba Farm in Glassboro
Cyara Phillips and her husband, Muhammad Khan, believe in the value of sharing.
Their 1.25-acre, solar-powered farm is a non-profit that gives food to those in need, as well as sells food at farmers markets and through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.
Phillips started growing backyard gardens at her home in Linden, NJ before moving to what is now Tuba Farm. She and her family moved because they needed more space, and Phillips also got inspiration from Harriet Tubman’s estate in New York.
“She just had so much, seven acres. And I was like, we should just do more,” Phillips said. “We should grow more. We should expand. So that’s what we did.”
Tuba Farm also uses a lot of organic growing and pest control methods, such as trap crops.
“Everything that would eat my plants goes to those and bothers them instead of the plants. And so they’re like a distraction,” Phillips said.
She also uses a “chop and drop” system. Instead of tilling the soil, she’ll use plant waste she chops off as a naturally decaying fertilizer. If the plant waste is diseased, she’ll use it as fuel for a bonfire to protect the other plants.
When she established the farm in 2021, she started hosting WWOOFers to “offer that to other people” and would like to take a turn as a volunteer at other locations.
“I think it’s been wonderful. Having different people come over, teaching them, just small tasks, introducing them to the farmstead kind of a life,” Phillips said. “If you want to learn to farm, you got to learn some farm tasks, and it’s not all like big, you know, meaningful tasks.”
On a volunteer day Phillips held, she needed to install a bug net around her tower and hydroponics growers. This is a small but important task, not unlike one WWOOFers take part in.
Phillips only accepts WWOOFers for day visits. In previous years, she had space in the house’s basement for overnight stays, but it’s no longer an available option.
Even before, Phillips would only house WWOOFers for a weekend.
“I can’t house you for a month. I can’t be dedicated enough to any person other than my family.” Phillips said. “Because it’s a lot to do a farm and care for other people. And I just don’t want that responsibility for the entire month.”
During the short stays, however, Phillips and Khan like meeting and getting to know the WWOOFers.
“It’s always interesting to hear the WWOOFer’s like, just their life stories,” Khan said.
WWOOFers who reviewed the farm generally had a positive experience.
“My family and I had an absolutely wonderful experience,” said Lydia, a WWOOFer who reviewed Tuba Farm. “Cyara and Muhammad are incredibly kind and welcoming. We learned so much in just a few days and gained essential knowledge that will certainly come in handy as we set out on our quest to steward a farm one day.”
Phillips and Khan hope to grow their CSA membership over the next year, and bring more WWOOFers for day trips.
WWOOF Challenges and Opportunities: “It’s not a resort.”
WWOOF has the capacity to be an inviting and interesting way to travel and learn about organic food cultivation. Whether it’s to learn more sustainable living or how to start a farm abroad or right in South Jersey, WWOOF is a program with a goal of education.
For hosts and WWOOFers alike, mindset is key. It’s a common frustration for hosts when WWOOFers are more interested in taking a vacation than doing work.
“I’ve learned that sometimes people want this to be like a resort,” Phillips said. “So they’ll bring their kids and their husband and they’re not interested in actually working. It’s just like, oh, it’s a resort and we’re going to have free vegetables and a pool.”
Giunta has a similar issue, with many last-minute requests as well.
“There’s two batches [of WWOOFers]. There are people who are very sincere, and then there are people who are looking for a three-day cheap place to stay,” Giunta said. “And the sad thing is that we’ve had a lot of that in the last year, I will say.”
For hosts, a vetting process is a necessary step to getting volunteers. This is especially true when WWOOFers plan to stay for a month or longer. Mary I and Schroek have a questionnaire and make an effort to evaluate potential volunteers over a Zoom call.
“We do a little pre-questionnaire. And then if everything sounds good, then we have a two-sided page that we go through everything, on a Zoom call,” Schroek said. “We do a Zoom call so we can see the reaction. And people should know about somebody coming to your house, there’s also mental health too. Some people are really depressed and WWOOF farms are not rehabs.”
While many WWOOF farms have a looser process, hosts find it important to make sure they fit with the person who will be staying with them, and also to be aware of allergies, experience, and health accommodations.
For those who are willing to work hard and learn sustainable living, as well as fit with their hosts, the experience can be fruitful.
“I was doing a lot of research of anything and everything I could do to learn more [about farm life]. I was just doing a bunch of YouTube videos, a bunch of different blogs and all that, and then I stumbled onto the WWOOF program,” Gleason said.
Gleason believes that the work she’s doing with Giunta is getting her the experience to start her own farm in the future.
“I am learning more than I thought about the different challenges he may have as a farmer. The different land, the animals that come in, the critters and all that stuff,” Gleason said. “I was just intimidated by the idea of having so many animals and crops and stuff and then working with Tony has definitely made me feel a whole lot less intimidated by the whole farm life.”
Making the process of growing food and caring for animals less intimidating is a way WWOOF is making a difference, especially for young people, according to Fetrow, since the average age of farmers is 58 years old and rising.
“I get so excited by the young people who are coming to us every day, just looking for meaningful, purpose-driven work,” Fetrow said. “The future of our food system here in the U.S. absolutely depends on people getting involved, getting their hands dirty, learning how to grow their own food, seeing where the food that they eat comes from, that it doesn’t just magically appear in the grocery store.”