A City Man on an Organic Farm

Growing up in Bombay with its concrete roads, teeming trains, ever-declining tree population; the closest I came to agricultural farms was when my long-distance train journeys passed by paddy fields and fruit orchards. With few humans in sight, the fields looked devoid of any interest. My mother tried to educate me on the names of the fruit trees. To me, they all looked green and undistinguishable.

At the same time, I always took great interest in eating. Indian dishes and potato remain my all time favourite. However, the only food supply chain I knew started from our local street market and ended on our dining table. If I were to come across tall trees with potatoes hanging from them, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

Organic farming

Things began to change, as they generally do, with my marriage. Mena was the opposite of me. She grew up in a village; her father had spent his entire life farming. Mena can drive in a jungle without maps and smartphones; yet know the directions and her whereabouts based on the landscape. With her arrival in my life, plastic bags in the house were replaced by cloth bags, water and milk are stored exclusively in glass bottles, burnt crumbs in the pans (which I thought were tasty) became avoidable as they were carcinogenic,  garbage was meticulously separated between dry and wet, my sugar and salt intake went down. I also learnt I was buying the wrong sort of fruit. The big and bright oranges and pomegranates I chose owed their lustre to the chemicals injected into them. Smaller, lustreless organic fruit was far healthier.

Organic farming tries to sustain and enhance the soil fertility without using any synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones or genetic modifications. What grows on organic farms is natural. For thousands of years, farming was only organic. It was only in the twentieth century that modern farming methods started interfering with nature.

The organic farming movement tries to make sure we go back to old, healthier times. The organic products - fruit, vegetables, even meat - certified by the appropriate authorities fetch a substantial premium. I don’t know how unsafe chemically injected or genetically modified food is. It could be like the Kodak vs Fuji case study. By marketing the Kodak moment, Kodak encouraged consumers to pay 20-25% more for a Kodak over a Fuji film. Professional photographers knew the two films were identical. Perception is as important as reality. If you consume organic food and feel healthier, that’s what counts.

Having said that, I remember my business trip in 1989 to Poltava, a Ukrainian town not very far from Chernobyl. Walking in the market, the delegation I was with remarked on the size of the local tomatoes. They were huge and bright red (radiant, I might say). We said no to the tomato salad that evening.

WWOOF

Why do we waste our precious vacations visiting capital cities of the world, one after another, Mena had asked me. They all looked like one another. (Trees look the same to a city man, and cities look the same to a woman who loves villages). With me rapidly running out of relatives and friends willing to offer us a free home stay, I needed to look for alternatives anyway. My internet research came up with WWOOF.

WWOOF originally was a short form for ‘Working Weekends On Organic Farms’. This initiative was conceived in 1971 in the UK, to give city-dwellers an opportunity to spend the weekends working on farms in nearby villages. Later, as the idea spread, volunteers wished to spend more time on farms. The movement was then renamed as ‘Willing Workers On Organic farms’. However, with its global spread, the word “workers” confused the bureaucrats and visa-issuers who detested people working without work permits. Finally, WWOOF settled on “WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms” as its title. Though the name changed twice, the principles remain the same. A host, generally a farm owner, seeks people to help on the farm. A volunteer, called a WWOOFer, reaches the farm at his own expense. The WWOOFer is compensated in the form of free accommodation and meals for his labour on the farm. He can stay for as long as he likes – weeks, months or sometimes, even years. Over a 100 countries have WWOOF hosts. Australia, New Zealand and USA lead the list, with more than 2000 hosts in each.

Becoming a WWOOFer is a fairly easy process. Generally, by paying a nominal fee, you can access the directory of a particular country. You may, then, short list the farms and kind of work you would like to do and contact the hosts. Once the host confirms, you are booked for the agreed period. Most of it works on trust, there is no formal agreement. In 2013, Devyani - our nine-year old daughter, Mena and I decided to work on a Polish farm.

Nowina, WWOOF Poland

Jurek (pronounced as Yurek), our chosen host, confirmed he would like our family to collect pumpkins in the summer on his remote farm in the heart of Poland. Many years ago, in Austria, I had spent two weeks picking cherries, strawberries and apricots. That’s the sort of farming job I love. Pumpkins sounded good enough. Because of my advance planning, we were ready with our WWOOF confirmation in January. Jurek’s farm was shut for the winter. He himself was on a three month holiday, travelling through the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

In June 2013, after changing trains twice from Wroclaw, we reached a deserted station. A lone sunburnt man in khaki shorts waited on the platform. Not surprisingly, he was our WWOOF host. In a car that was evidently bought in the previous millennium, he took us to his village. Nowina, he said, had a population of sixty. (I didn’t tell him that the number of my cousins is higher than that).

We were given a cottage to ourselves. There was no one else on the farm. We spent the first evening in the company of ten horses, three goats, two dogs and three cats. Took the horses to drink water. Drank fresh, hot milk straight from the goats’ udders. Our job description changed on arrival. Jurek told us the intense heat wave had wilted and killed the pumpkin creepers, so there were no pumpkins to harvest. Instead, he was running day-camps for school children from the nearby town. They would come in the morning to learn how to make paper by recycling newspapers. Jurek said he would appreciate if we could help him in running the camps.

By the third day, Devyani was helping the fifth graders at the workshop. Jurek’s house walls were made of clay. He wanted to decorate them with Sanskrit verses and Indian paintings, something he had learnt were auspicious during his trip to India. Mena was only too happy to paint his farm walls.

A city person learns something new every day. The following day, other than my attempt to milk the goat, I learnt that tea can be made from poison ivy leaves. I plucked the poison ivy leaves, and how well I remember the stinging sensation and angry red welts on my hands.

One of the evenings, an elderly Belgian couple arrived for an overnight halt in their camping van. It transpired one could also stay at Jurek’s farm without working; I presume the Belgians paid daily charges instead.

Jurek’s trip to Iran

Jurek was a single, a divorcee, in his fifties, living alone on the farm. He was the owner of several hectares in remote Poland, hectares that had little property value. Other than farming, he looked after horses kept on his farm by horse owners. Jurek’s income was meagre, and he tried to supplement it with activities like running kids’ workshops. He was in no position to hire labourers, he relied on volunteers.

Every winter, Jurek shuts the farm and the house. He sends the horses back to their owners. Each year, he visits a warm country for the three winter months. In my life, I have seen some light travellers, and Jurek was one of them. At my Polish volunteer camp, a Swiss boy had arrived with only a toothbrush. Jurek carries a maximum of five kilos of hand luggage in his backpack, nothing to check in, and is willing to spend nights anywhere - on a railway platform, at a camping site, in a jungle. That’s an advantage of being a farmer. He carries his annual savings, which is not much. Out of the several travel stories he told me, I found his Iran stay the most fascinating.

Jurek was pleasantly surprised at the reverse racism in Iran. Because he was a white man, nobody took money from him. He would eat on the street or in a small cafe, offer to pay the bill, the Iranians would smile, utter a few words that he didn’t understand, and refuse to take money. He also managed to knock on a few doors, and find a free place to stay for the night.

All this changed when an Iranian policeman arrested him. Jurek was busy taking photos, when the police came and arrested him. He was taken to the police station and put inside a cell. Jurek knows only Polish and basic English. Nobody in the Iranian police station knew any English. Jurek had no idea what he was accused of or what would happen to him.

In a few hours, though, an interpreter arrived. The policeman and the interpreter sat with Jurek.

“You are a journalist” translated the interpreter. To the policeman, it was obvious that a white man taking photos worked for some foreign media, probably American.  

“No, no, please tell him I am a simple tourist.” Said Jurek.

“Not journalist, but a tourist.” Said the translator.

“Oh, just tourist?” said the police. They talked for a few minutes more and the police knew Jurek was genuinely a tourist. Also, importantly he was not an American. The police brought Jurek out of the cell.

“Where are you staying?” asked the policeman.

“Nowhere in particular.” Said Jurek. He was in fact wondering where to spend the next night.

“You must come and stay with me.” Said the interpreter. He also translated it to the policeman as a matter of protocol.

“No, no. Don’t go to his place, you please come and stay with our family.” Said the policeman. He then turned to the interpreter. “And listen, you will help us with translations if it becomes necessary.”

Jurek spent the remaining weeks in Iran at the house of the policeman who had mistakenly arrested him. Though they didn’t share a common language, he was treated and fed very well.

“Iran is possibly the best place I have visited.” Jurek summarised.

*****

At WWOOF, you usually meet interesting characters that you never come across if you were to book a hotel room.

(To be continued)

Ravi