The green house experience

Work what?

Work stay, work exchange, Wwoof. Use what ever term you like. It's basically volunteering in exchange for room and board rather than compensation.  So this isn't something that I have found to be super popular with Americans- at least doing them here in the States. Maybe it's just the people I know? And the reactions when I tell people I know that is something we are going to do is pretty varied. Kind of like the reactions when we told the we were spending the summer traveling Alaska staying in a roof top tent. You get the "Good for you"'s, "I'm so jealous", "Interesting..." "You're braver than I am" and some of those turn into "So I kind of wondered how that was going to go- how is it really?" as the summer rolls on. And all I have to say is to each their own. Some people are completely happy with 9-5 everyday, an hour in traffic, rinse and repeat. So what we are doing probably seems completely mad.

But really- why?

Traveling is expensive. Even if you are sleeping on top of your car most nights and taking nightly accommodations out of the equation. We had a lot more little expenses that added up at the very beginning that we didn't think of. Water jugs, gas cans, straps, my favorite item: the heater buddy. Every time we walked out of a store it felt like a few hundred dollars disappeared. And there was a lot of things we decided to make due with what we had over upgrading to what we knew would actually work better. But you start somewhere. And GAS. I'm not sure if you have heard. But Alaska is a pretty big sized state. We've been as far as you can drive in the south, nearing up close to north, and east and west. It all adds up when you are doing it day after day. Plus, honestly- you start seeing amazing things every single day you can start to forget how truly incredible it is. So you want to get to know an area a little bit better, meet some interesting people, learn how to do something new, eat, shower, have a real bed. It's a pretty interesting concept. The hosts I have talked to in Alaska said they don't get a lot of Americans, or Alaskans for that matter. Well I am here to break the norm. But what is it really like?

What I was looking for

I am a silver lining kind of girl. I really try my hardest to not harp on the negative and find something positive to take away from every situation. Some times it is hard. Our first Work Stay- I will be honest, I was pretty darn disappointed. I don't know how people write bad reviews, while it's needed sometimes- it makes me feel really guilty. I've delayed this post and felt like I needed to do some soul searching to decide what I actually wanted to say about it.
So most of the postings I have read seem to ask volunteers to work anywhere from 3-5 hours a day, and not everyday. There are usually promises of taking them around to do fun things in the area. Everything seems to vary a bit. I had this vision of planting seeds in a greenhouse and chatting with the host about what to grow in what season, and how long it takes, and what goes into starting a greenhouse. What do I need to know about solar panels? And showers. I pictured showers.
So I picked our first Work Stay based on the location. It was a recommendation from a friend who thought we would really like the area and we wanted to check it out. Besides that- I really didn't read the reviews or spend a lot of time looking into other ones. Live and learn. I feel like I can't just not talk about the negatives- so here we go. 

This was probably my favorite. You sit on the little metal seat on the back and stick the starters into the hole. It goes pretty fast. Think I Love Lucy in the chocolate assembly line.

Cabbage. He had too many starters to plant so we took some baby ones just like this to add to our pasta dinner one night.

The plants are seriously beautiful. We panted most of these in an afternoon.

Scot and I fixed the drip line in here our first day, then spent forever hand weeding and hoeing the middle sections where it is green to just dirt our last day.

Baloo acted like a fool our first day. But assimilated to farm life quickly.

Scot on the planter. The farm also gave us our first opportunity to wear our insect repellent clothes from ExOfficio. They do in fact work.

Taking off my rose colored glasses

Within our first 24 hours we heard this massive plan to start a community in the ocean on plastic and to get eager, idealistic people who will just volunteer their time because they don't have anything better to do- to come out and get it started. And then since it was in the middle of the ocean, once they go there, they were just stuck and couldn't leave. He also made several Hotel California references during our stay- and we all laughed along. I also didn't visit the root cellar where apparently the "good volunteers" are kept. I know he was joking- I wasn't actually scared but I kind of feel like it's something you don't really joke about. Lets just keep kidnapping off the table in any form. I mean the plan was so massive it probably took 10 minutes to explain and was clearly really well thought out. And also kind of left me with the impression that there was a general lack of respect for the people who come stay at his greenhouse. It made it seem like he thought they were all spoiled, didn't need to have real jobs, hippy dippy going out into the world to find themselves. He made several comments about how nice it would be to be a teacher and have time off to go and travel. That might be my biggest pet peeve in life. Like I just woke up one day and found a teaching degree and didn't go to college. And somehow in their tone they seem to think I make a fortune. Those were the life choices I made. I don't tell a doctor "Oh it must be nice to make a fortune." Discounting the years and effort it took to get there. We stayed in a dry cabin. We were the first of the season so it was pretty dirty just due to existing. We didn't really have anything to clean it with. I think Scot used some car cleaning wipes to at least defunkify the counters. And the mosquitoes. We were told there was one of those electric bug rackets in there. There was not. And no one really seemed to care. I probably asked 5 times as I started accumulating about 20 bites per limb. I'm not exaggerating. I was absolutely miserable. The mattress was like sleeping on the ground. We pulled the mattress pad out of our tent which made it bearable- not comfortable, if we didn't want to walk all the way to the main house, we used an outhouse. There was supposed to be showers available at the main house- there wasn't. We have 5 days of working in the fields from 9am to 6pm with no showers. We all ate together. And generally me and a young girl from Europe cooked. Because were told to. And we never really knew how he wanted things done and usually found out after we did it wrong and felt like we were scolded. And I'm not going into the dirtiness of the kitchen. Lets just say I am forever scared. I felt my work ethic go "blah" and I just did not enjoy spending that many hours weeding a field. We were under the impression that the property was inherited and everything seemed very haphazzard, unorganized, and inefficient. The opportunities to really learn anything- just were few and far between. See- I feel terrible for saying that. Like it's okay for it to live deep inside me- but to actually articulate my thoughts....
So after plenty of time to really think about it I decided that there was no intention for it to be a bad experience. We just had different expectations. 50% of the time I had no idea what he was talking about- but he tried to be nice? Maybe just kind of socially unaware? He took us out to a live band and pizza our first night. We drove into town to a community thing another night- so there was some effort there. And then our life styles of how we live were just so far off. Like. I enjoy soap. It seemed like there was too much reliance on volunteer workers and he just needed some more actual employees. Scot and I agreed that what it boiled down to in the end was that the amount of work expected, for the accommodations we got- just didn't match. And also I felt uncomfortable a lot. We left early and I felt really guilty about it. We did leave him a nice Sarah Palin pocket knife though. Three for $10 at a gift shop. We still have 2 if anyone is interested.

But again- don't forget the silver linings

You have to hang on to the good things or negativity can take over your life. I learned there there are a ton more varieties of vegetables than I ever knew there were. We planted like 6 different kind of cauliflower. I thought cauliflower was cauliflower. False. The growing season in Alaska is pretty wonky. It is short but the days are really long. There are some plants where only certain varieties grow. I saw a glimse of how amazing cooking with our own food can be. I'm trying to mentally block out the vision of the dirty kitchen right now and just think about grabbing the fresh  baby cabbage and herbs and loading them into a pasta dish. Or did you know there is a dark dark purple potato?? And I was reminded about how fun it can be making connections with people you wouldn't normally. Like the young girl from Europe. We have been in the car zipping around just the two of us. You can find things in common with just about everyone when you just stop and and talk. And especially when you are having some sort of shared experience.

We are trying another one in just a few days. It seems a little more our speed. I'm not letting one disappointment jade me. Plus our last text asked if we like steak and seafood- something about 2-3 hour work days and shuttling us around for kayaking. Perfect.