BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi guys,

I was just wondering if any of you did some WWOOFing while on your RTW trip with your children.

If so, is it something you would recommend to other families? Did you have a positive or negative experience? Whereabouts did you do your WWOOF?

Thanks
Nic

I haven't done it, but it's something I'm interested in. The main thing I am worried about is what the children do while you are working. Our children will be 4, 6 and 8 years old, which is fine if they just have to entertain themselves for a short while, but not if we will be working all day. Does anyone know if it's possible for one of the adults to work on the farm while the other looks after the children?

I've just found this website, which looks quite interesting. You work for five hours a day in return for food and lodging. Some hosts will accept families.

http://workaway.info/

I had thought about similar to this but working (usually cleaning but sometimes reception etc) in hostels - it was how I worked my way around the UK pre-baby and I even spent a year managing a hostel in Scotland. From this experience, the idea of managing a hostel seemed like the perfect job to do with a child. Mornings spent following me around to help clean (possible at this age as she is only 3 and cleaning is a game to her!) and then in reception evenings. The other benefit (from past experience) is that there are often other travellers coming through who are looking for brief cleaning/wwoofing stints and the ones I employed in my previous life as a hostel manager would have much preferred to spend an hour or 2 entertaining my child to cleaning or handling customers.

My mum runs a caravan park/camping business near me and I sometimes do relief management for her and although it is more tiring to have the little one around, it is work-able and a better option than perhaps getting a 'proper' job and then having to look for childcare etc.

As for farm work, it would depend on the type of work you are doing. My parents did a sort of wwoofing thing with us in the 80s when they travelled Australia, and spent about 6 months or so working on a property near Arnhem land in the Northern Territory. Dad and his mate would work on the property while our mums managed the homestead (which was really something of a hotel) with a combined number of 6 kids under 6 around their feet. As a kid it is one of the best memories of my childhood. My parents even managed to fit some correspondence schooling in there for me and my preschool aged mate.

Would be interesting to hear from others who have done this?