We are writing from the farm in Korinthos. This is the first Wwoofing stop of a few on our trip. In case you do not know WWOOF stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. This means we exchange working on the farm for housing and food. We have been very lucky to find ourselves on this particular farm. This is a family farm that has been in existence for 150 years. sometimes you flip over the dirt and find a piece of history. They grow many vegetables here, broccoli, cabbage, leaks, lettuce, carrots, spring onions, various herbs ect. The cool thing is that it is warm enough to grow all year around. This does not mean it very warm at night. Luckily we have a heated mattress.
The people here are Kostandis, who runs the farm along with Alexandra, Pavlo, and Elias. We are very fortunate because Elias is a wonderful cook. Every meal is served with feta cheese. This is definitely not your typical grocery store feta. Two other wwoofers are here as well. Josh, he is Brittish and is doing a trip around the world as well, except on a bike! Nooria is from Barcelona. She is here visiting Pavlo after they met when she was wwoofing here before. She was working in social work in spain but due to the poor economic cant get enough funding to continue her job. This is unfortunately how a lot of people end up on the farm.
We are learning a lot about Organic principals and the benefits of eating this way. They grow everything organically. The only fertilizer used is chicken poop and all the weeding, planting, and harvesting is done by hand. This is a huge farm so all of these things come with a lot of work. It's very cool to eat food the way that God intended for it to be, straight from the earth. We hope to be able to learn more about these principals and take them back with us as we learn to live a more sustainable life.
We eat a lot of vegetables. It is amazing what you can cook up using the same ingredients over and over. There is also a lot of trading between farmers here as well. Our chicken we get from exchange as well as almonds, currents, tahini, and eggs. The farm used to be all fruit trees so there are lemons, olives, mandarins, and oranges. We quite enjoy walking into the back yard and eating an orange right off the tree.
There are 15 dogs and 7 cats on the property. We enjoy playing with the four puppies and want very bad to take one with us. The dogs were all strays that the family finds in town and take home to the farm. They are very dirty but we love them.
Being gone from Spain we have realized a few things. The biggest of these is that we were spoiled rotten living in Ryan and Tracys's apartment. It was warm, clean, and had hot water. In case we didn't say it enough, thanks guys!
Thanks everyone for your well wishes and prayers. We will try and write again soon.
