Busy Hands, Wandering Thoughts

Well, I've made it to the end of my first stint of WWOOFing, and I feel like I should share my thoughts about my experience so far with my reading public, such as it is.

While I've written about specific tasks and experiences, all the stuff between the lines seems a little more important. All of the work I've done in Italy - stacking wood, hoeing, weeding, harvesting anything at all - have one thing in common: my hands are busy, but my mind is free to wander. In short, I've had time to think. Lots of time. Here's what I've been thinking about, more or less:




I have found that I enjoy working hard, being outside every day, eating well, sleeping deeply and waking early. Slowly, this trip became less about Italy and more about the work I've been doing while I'm here, and in turn WWOOFing has become less an inexpensive way to see the world and more an indefinite (but economical) internship.
I have certainly learned skills while I've been here, but most of these skills (winemaking, olive harvesting, etc.) don't translate directly to my life. The values behind these skills, however, certainly do. I've come to value even more the creating of something out of almost nothing - or at least from the rawest of ingredients. Before coming to Italy, I was already baking bread and pizza from scratch. Now, I want to grow the tomato, onions, garlic, etc. I want to milk the cow and make the cheese. I want to grind wheat I've grown. I want to bake it in my wood-fired oven.




I've always daydreamed about the perfect kitchen; now, I'm taking that to a whole new level. I'm thinking about everything from large-scale project to the smallest of details. How long does it take a newly planted orchard to produce apples? How much could I charge for apple sauce at a farmers market? How much apple cider vinegar would a small bed and breakfast use in a year? How much do used shipping containers cost? How well-insulated are they? What if I half-buried them in a hillside? People pay HOW MUCH for heritage turkeys?! Could I attach a small grain mill to a bicycle? Would I grind my own meat for sausages, or do I let the butcher grind it? Etc? Etc? Ad nauseum?




In short, I've been thinking. Right now, I'm going to keep learning as much as I can. I'm considering another stint of WWOOFing in the states next year (this cycle of earning money in the summer and traveling the rest of the year seems oddly sustainable). Right now, I love what I've been doing, and I'm going to keep doing it until I'm sure whether or not I want to do it for the rest of my life. Then, if I've become irretrievably possessed, I'll get started on that homestead.

(An aside: Florence is great, and I'll have a post on my food adventures in Florence and Bologna soon!)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Toscana, Italia