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Kim Horsing Around

Kim found a farm project called the Neverland Farm on the Wwoof website that sounded interesting with agro-something-intersting and sustainable-blah-blah so we thought that we’d check it out. It didn’t turn out to be quite what we expected. It was an interesting experience, but unfortunately we didn’t think it was nearly as amazing as other reviews from volunteers.

To start, the lady who runs the farm, an American woman named Tina, wasn’t there while we were. She had to go back to the US to deal with family problems. There also weren’t any other volunteers. Therefore the remaining people on the farm were all Ecuadorian and weren’t as organized as we had hoped. Angel, aka Killo, seemed to be in charge of the running of the farm, even though he was there only a little over half the time. His brother Pio had only been there about a week so really didn’t know much. They were the only two people besides us who ever spent the night there. During the day Andres came from the nearby village of Tumianuma to work. Nobody talked much without prodding and everybody left a lot. They were all nice enough, but we were hoping for a more social atmosphere.

Us Near a Waterfall We Hiked To

We went to the farm with the intention of learning a little about gardening, sustainable living, or novel construction, but we found ourselves a bit bored. Whenever we asked what we could do to help we were told we could do whatever we like. However, we didn’t even know where the main garden was until our third day on the farm, let alone what kinds of projects would actually be helpful. We ended up cooking a lot, mostly for ourselves, weeding, and I went out hacking stuck with a machete which is fun (I feel kinda like Indiana Jones), but dangerous – I cut my shin when I lost my grip on spring tree branch. One of the first days we carried rocks to help make a wall for a new house, but we never went back to that project. We were hoping the pregnant horse would have her baby while we were there, but no such luck. I rode the other horse a little bit for trips back and forth to the nearest little pueblo, Tumianuma.

Mostly we read a lot. I read a few books from the Dahli Lama which were quite interesting. Buddhism really interests me – until you get into some of the weirder details. We also hiked a bit up the valley to a little waterfall. There was a guitar I got out to play a few nights. Other than that it was pretty slow.

The bridge on the way to the farm

Sleeping was a little difficult since our bed was dreafully uncomfortable. It was a very thin mattress on top of a bamboo frame. Two nights Angel was gone we slept in his bed and it was insanely more comfortable, but didn’t have a mosquito net on it. The bugs weren’t too bad while we were sleeping though. Just while we ate. Ugh. Don’t wanna remember that.

At the end of the week Killo asked us to pay $25 per person for food, which pissed us off a bit since we were told before we arrived there was no cost except bringing in some food, which we did (about $20 worth), since we were working 4 our more hours a day. There’s a sign on the kitchen that says $15 a week is suggested, so we paid that as it seems somewhat fair, but we’re still just angry about the lack of communication about it all. Overall we were quite happy to be leaving, but it was definitely an intersting experience for a week. Not that I’d choose to do it again – at least not without Tina there.