We've spent several years working with market & CSA farmers in central IL before venturing away to find experience in other zones using alternative methodology. Our search led us to mentors in northern MN who reinforced their practice of many processes we sought advancement in and after communicating our previous work agreed to volunteer on their farm under an indeterminate basis that we could have a better chance to watch the seasons shift in such a different climate.
Below accounts for our experience avoiding assimilation into a dysfunctional environment by a consistently messy and emotionally abusive sustenance farm among The Canadian Shield.
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| Fig.1 ... june 12, 2020. roughly 1 month after tilling & seeding/planting. many transplants were purchased. |
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| Fig. 2 ... july 30, 2020. regular maintenance included pathways being tilled for weed control. |
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| Fig. 3 ... august 14, 2020. common appearance without expected visitors. |
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I: Unsafe Social Distancing Practices in a High Risk Habitat
We entered our arrangement before Sars-Cov-2 had become global and offered to rescind once it's strike on the states was widespread, even sharing an identity of managing a very foreign illness in late January that we believed to be Covid-19. The mentors would make us confident in our ability to prioritize safety and keep distance among a mostly empty, yet very large, house. We agreed to terms of initial isolation and continued our plans.
Upon arrival, the only residents were the elderly couple we understood to be our mentors but had a very large family who many of lived in MN, including a peer-aged son who primarily stayed at a separate family property nearby tho visited indoors often. Roughly a month into our stay, a teenage son was allowed to move back and isolated in a trailer for several days, with many complaints & comments opposed to social distancing, before returning to a room inside. Within the next month, another son would return home and be regularly visited, on occasion & days on end, by his partner & their infant son along with other family guests from much larger cities made welcome for sleepovers or week-long stays.
They planned a ceremony for the morning of 7/3 that would include a meal and 1 very crude sign on 1 door regarding the household's observance of social distancing. During the meal, a dozen or so non-household members of all-ages were allowed indoors without masks, directly among kitchen & dining spaces, whose bathrooms were only equipped with bar soap. We chose to continue our work in the garden and were projected upon with sarcastic malice by our hosts suggesting it was "safe" for "us" to eat because "all the indians were gone".
Visitations and over-nights would continue and increase as more children would move back to town, with no protocols for social distancing or cleanliness. Our hosts would regularly use their own meal spoons for use in communal condiments and leave used tissues on dining & kitchen spaces. Vulgar grandchildren would wrestle in the grass just to purposefully cough in each other's faces. Numerous purveyors of Hip-Camp would attend, with one couple in late July testing positive for C19 the very afternoon they left site.
One curious example was a friend of the peer-aged son who had flown in to visit with the intention of repairing the house's roof. They would be on site multiple times a day, but the friend seldom went inside with the less than handful of times seeming uncomfortable at the dining table for a shared meal. Our hosts went to spend a day at their lake house, where not only did the friend stay in a room that had recently been shared by the aforementioned grandchildren but the son would stay in our host's own bed. Eventually, we realized the friend stopped coming around with the son and roofing crews started visiting for consultations.
We decided to make an opportunity to visit an intentional community of 8 total members not far away and left the house for 3 days. We had our own accommodations, were very consistent with PPE & sanitizing and shared 1 meal together around a fire outside. Given that our hosts are elderly and social traffic had been increasing at their site, we opted to continue isolating ourselves while also choosing to wear masks indoors & prepare our own food in an effort to follow guidelines established by the CDC for shared households (which we were told didn't exist and mocked us for taking high-risk precautions).
Our hosts projected offense at our choices, calling us liars & disrespectful for not sharing their table, and showed no empathy for the understanding we sought thru the solidarity of those actions with at-risk loved ones close to us. We were asked, via text message from within the house, to "please make alternative arrangements immediately".
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Section II: Psychological Trauma
The
first week of June, a day before he would leave for the summer, the
peer-aged son antagonized an excited argument with the teenage son and
left the house. The teenage son went on to put several holes into walls
and destroyed 2 doors just down the hallway from our room before
peeling out in the gravel driveway and speeding down it. Returning
shortly, he was shirtless while shouting obscenities about what he
planned to do and swinging an extendable baton around. Mish was home during the entire event, behind a closed bedroom door no more than 20ft from where the bulk of damage was done. Our hosts never
directly addressed the experience aside from "it won't happen again" and
"he won't be staying here much longer", tho we did then learn about a
history of such behavior from the same son with other brothers as well as at least one other previous WWOOFer. We cleaned the mess after
him and his brother repaired the doors.
Later that
month, the teenage son would leave to move in with an elderly couple who
were long time friends of the family. 2 weeks after, while working in
the garden, his car sped back up the driveway, nearly crushing the
ducks. The teenage son would burst out of his car, tear his cat out of
the back seat and shout "I'M GONNA FUCKIN KILL HER" before moving back
into his room and shouting further obscenities about his plans for
prison over the murder of an elderly woman over asking for help with
household chores. This was never addressed by our hosts.
Thruout this time, we also experienced many offensive comments, in both general & sarcastic tones, expressed passively & directly to us. One member of the family believed his lack of success with relationships was because there were "too many sluts who live around here". Another member claimed the reason there wasn't much crime on the reservation was because "they don't have any blacks around". Yet another condoned male violence, both verbal & physical, because they believe "boys will just be boys".
Nok described the destructive son in question to us prior to our arrival as being afflicted with more than one psychological disability, but never that it manifested itself in such a way. Out of respect & empathy, we have chosen not to provide evidence of these circumstances as our conflict lies more in how they were managed and not why they occurred.
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Section III: False Advertisements
Using WWOOF allows farms seeking volunteers an opportunity to profess their work along with how/why they choose to perform it. These activities & methodologies have easily visible & dedicated sections on host profiles, encouraging volunteers to find their interests quickly and hosts to inspire the belief they will help explore & learn about those interests. Below are among their list things that we were frustrated to find commercial or limited practices of during our stay.
Activities:
Energy Production ... firewood only, driven primarily by ATV.
Fermentation ... using imported plastic containers and left on the floor next to microwave.
Food Justice ... grew seasonal crops without intention of use or storage while diminishing more desirable storage crops to share among various visitors. demonized edible invasives & instructed to remove all without use.
Irrigation ... store-bought sprinklers ran from grid sourcing through an aged & regularly leaking hose system. many hoses & sprinklers required repair from excessive age & use while others spring new leaks.
Kitchen Help ... primarily cleaning, both kitchen & dining spaces. after all meals (whether we attended or not) and storage food preparations.
Maple Harvesting ... syrup regularly purchased from cost-co, no signs or mentions of tap sites on property.
Seed-Saving ... only 1 variety of corn was planted from saved seed, all others were purchased along with many transplants.
Self-Sufficiency ... told 80% of diet consisted of food raised on site, but many meals consist of primarily store-bought products, including meat despite the 9 active freezers containing cuts processed on-site dating back to 2017. root cellar poorly cared for & waterlogged with many signs of rodents both living & dead.
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| Fig. 4 ... after storing our red cooler of personally raised ferments. |
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| Fig. 5 ... dozens of multiple year old rotten ferments & pickles with rusting lids. emptied directly onto garden pathways. |
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| Fig. 6 ... potatoes stored directly onto styrofoam insulation. |
Methodologies:
Biological Pest Control ... ducks occasionally venture in to help with cabbage loopers and visible grubs, but we were asked to manually remove 450ft of potato bugs several times over the course of 2 weeks while continuing to see signs of them as guinea hens never came into the garden. much scrap material in many places create great amounts of water collection to enhance fly & mosquito habitat. no other signs or directions provided.
Conservation ... wood cut annually for indoor winter stove and seasonally for sauna. home connected to electrical grid in heavy mining community, while many lights often remain on and many appliances used regularly. also connected to water grid in lake community, garden watered with generic hardware store sprinklers and no collection systems intentionally arranged anywhere. propane gas used for range & water heater. no other signs or directions provided.
Crop Rotation ... attempted plot mapping, but planting directions did not match and could not be tracked due to lack of previous years' cataloging. no directions provided otherwise.
Ecological Farming ... strip farming applied on edge of rolling pasture but no swale/berm systems or prevention of soil compaction applied. little humus development from applying year-old uncomposted manures, little biodiversity smothered by common invasive, wild edibles discarded without use. beds tilled twice (once @ 4", again @ 8" but advised against raking clear), pathways tilled regularly for attempted weed maintenance (4-8", also advised against raking clear), no cover crop in use or suggested through invasive growth, no windbreaks applied.
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| Fig. 7 ... paths pictured tilled 5-6 times since planting/seeding; huauhtli, wild spinach & quackgrass never diminished. clear bed hand cultivated & raked before direct seeding spinach. |
Grazing Management ... chickens & guinea hens free range in multiple pastures, ducks freely roam entire grounds without protection, sheep free range in fenced pasture. 27yo horse pastured alone without shelter, eventually accompanied by ram for breeding isolation also without shelter. no tractors used anywhere for chickens or rabbits.
Livestock Management ... pigs hold their own pen, fed slop (plant & animal wastes, including pork & freshly dead fowl) & commercial hog grower and are purchased to raise annually for butcher, no breeding (3). rabbits are always caged, fed kibble & various greenery and are bred for meat (3). ducks penned overnight in a cluttered tack room, fed commercial game bird feed & allowed to forage and are not bred (4 remaining; 6 presumed hunted, 5 died from incubation hazards, 5
disappeared when attempting to draw bought-by-mail ducklings out overnight). chickens & guinea hens cooped together & forage during afternoon hours, fed commercial scratch/egg mash/oyster shell mixture; most lay eggs and some raised for butcher (41 with 10 roost boxes; 1 guinea hen died of unknown causes, 3 hunted). sheep hold their own pen that takes on rain in former chicken coop, forage in pastures, occasionally fed oats and are bred for meat & wool (5 remaining; 1 struck by lightning).
Low-Stress Animal Handling ... pigs' 20G water tank often bathed in & filled with manure, regularly dumped for cleaning & refilling. rabbits' cages left in direct sunlight during summer and immediately behind sauna where smoke can blow onto them. ducks' territory expands far & are allowed to brood naturally anywhere, creating sources for predator attraction & poor reliability for egg gathering. very hazardous & oddly shaped chicken run creating difficulty with nightly herding and no wings are clipped, leading birds to explore anywhere outside of containment area. 30 guinea hens raised in 9sqft pen & later accompanied by 20 broiler chickens in the same room, who were not of size yet to roost and commonly defecated on by guineas.
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| Fig. 8 ... rabbit coop. manure ramp built early in stay to collect fertilizer, later destroyed without dialogue to alter structure. |
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Fig. 9 ... chicken run full of rusting scrap metal opens into back pasture. |
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| Fig. 10 ... duck pen, also former tack room. rear cage housed 30-45 various chicks at interval timing. right cage previously housed ducklings, currently intended as kindlebox for rabbit kits before slaughter. |
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| Fig. 11 ... indoor sheep pen, former chicken coop. water intake at back of room, multiple mummified fowl found under heavily matted chicken manure during raking & collection with no viable ventilation. |
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| Fig. 12 ... outdoor sheep pen. various waste clutters scattered throughout from broken cages, scrap wood & broken bricks. |
Pasture Management ... pastures only managed by sheep & horse grazing.
Permaculture ... 4 of 12 principles loosely applied. several attempts to sheet mulch with cardboard, rabbit manure, tinder & stones dismantled without conversation, passively told "we have plastic for that". no use of intercropping, no defined guilds or zones, no agroforestry, no hugelkultur, no rainwater harvesting.
Regnerative ... food wastes only recycled into chicken manure, slop for hogs only to benefit meat production. horse & cow manures left in pastures & coops for extended periods of time applied directly to pathways. attempts to establish collection of rabbit manure destroyed and composting site declared as "stockpile" with request to dismantle.
Renewable Energy ... see "conservation".
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01042021
As many social media oriented platforms offer & ask, we left a public review reflecting the larger concerns and left a massively abridged version of our biggest concerns due to character limitations. It was then flagged as offensive for containing "personal opinions" and we were asked to edit our response to more technical comments about our stay. We were unaware that reviews could be commented upon by hosts and were never notified that ours had been. Said comments are italicized below with responses; names & gender pronouns have been changed to respect anonymity.
"This couple were welcomed into our home and family and we worked hard to provide them with the information they needed to be successful farmers in zone 3. _____ was open to all the new knowledge presented and went way beyond what was requested of _____. _____ assumed many household chores because as _____ told me "I love to clean and keep things organized". _____ was curious and pleasant and embraced our home and household. I did 100% of the cooking and food preservation. ___ took care of cutting and splitting and hauling wood for our sauna and for our winter heating needs. We provided our summer cabin for them to enjoy and encouraged to take time off and explore the area."
_____ expressed a history with having to keep their living environment clean due to the lack of that support from people around their family homes or other civil households. In relationship to that, _____ also expressed those past spaces creating trauma and compulsive tendencies which were compounded upon by cluttered hoards in all but 1 bedroom of the house. (Said bedroom was provided to us, but the mess in it prior to our arrival was simply moved to another room which was among the 5 bedrooms we eventually sorted & cleaned.) Specifically regarding the summer cabin, the 4 opportunities we were able to stay there came with cleaning the space after other's uses of it; laundry had to be picked up from every room, used dishes were left piled in a broken sink, counters never wiped off and bathrooms left with scum & hair. 3 of those 4 times were also limited by other family's expected use of the cabin or to be called back for help with chores. _____ offered assistance to ___ with many projects, including the processing of firewood, but was asked to be "left alone" as "all Mish jobs were for one person." _____ also expressed an interest in learning about construction & processing firewood but was only scoffed at. As this was a family sustenance farm, we did not expect to be included in all of the long-term food stores and did work personal methods to create our own. We did not anticipate much cooking as part of our agreement was that room & board be provided for our volunteer efforts caring for the garden & animals. Subsequently, many of the meals we did prepare for ourselves were declined upon by the rest of the household.
"_____ was not the least bit interested in learning how to produce 80% of our household's food during a 99 day growing season."
_____ asked for chores on a daily basis until and many days were told it wasn't necessary to do anything, tho Figs. 1-3 detail the benefits of our labor. The perceived lack of interest did not address or respect that the most of the techniques Nok chose to teach had already been learned & practiced by way of conversations regarding our investment in such efforts prior to & after our arrival. We also invested ourselves in several 10-14hr days driving as far away as eastern WI for massive u-pick hauls, which we were also primarily responsible for processing upon return.
"The 'dismantling' we did was removed paper mulch covering cold clay soil surrounding hot weather plants."
The area in question can be seen in Fig. 3, one bed to the left of the farthest pictured, sandwiched between a row of annual herbs & perennial raspberries. The plants were ground cherries, which Nok expressed having never worked with before and _____ reflected several years of effort toward a self-seeding bed of them. A frost in early june nipped them to a degree where Nok was prepared to abandon the patch. The plants were thoroughly weeded before covering around them with used paper feed bags, weighted down by various stones found throughout the garden, and amending it with leaf compost & rabbit manure. After the plants had fully recovered, the sheet mulching was dismantled, without any inquiry as to why it had been placed or who chose to remove it.
"We gave them a garden plot of their own that about 50 x 25 and although they started three small beds they never planted anything there."
A row of bushes to the right of Fig. 1 borders the plot in question and was just opposite it, which can be seen @ 0:08 in their WWOOF introduction video as a large patch of tall brown grass. It ran at a downward slope toward the garden and was primarily composed of rock, clay & sand which we were told was why they didn't integrate that section into the rest of their garden and emphasized by the lack of use between the video & our stay. The beds we agreed to start were intended for a perennial herb garden specifically focused on native plants and we discontinued the effort after the discouragement from our attempts with the ground cherries, as it was not perceived that our methodology of garden care was desirable.
"Social distancing was not an issue until the last week they were here. There was no cause for concern, in fact when they came he told us they were not concerned and were sure that they had both had COVID in the winter. We were very careful about who we were exposed to because Jim is 84 so in the at risk group."
The "last week" mentioned was an arrival of new WWOOFers we were unaware
of and the lack of "cause for concern" came from them providing
negative C19 test results (despite massive national coverage of testing
inaccuracy; even the young HipCamp couple who tested positive the day they left had negative results within a week prior to their visit). Our perceived lack of concern related to Sars-COV-2 likely came from our belief in it having
an organic origin and a purpose to teach, which we expressed as a
direct relationship to nature showing us how to move forward with it. Section I elaborates our concerns regarding social distancing and the ways we felt moved to isolate as a result of our discomfort, along with a disclosure regarding our personal health history. We did discuss being struck very ill in late january and, without resources or ability to seek medical care, could only identify with our symptoms. Conversely, Nok & Mish shared that symptomatic identity with us around very coincidental timing after a late January vacation to New Orleans and how they were told by primary medical practitioners they entrust that both would have been diagnosed with C19 if it was on america's radar at the time. In the same section, links to 2 different pages of CDC recommendations for supporting shared households with at-risk members as well as a description of Mish & Nok's response to our cautions with respecting that after camping at a communal site. Mish directly accused _____ of fabricating evidence about our choice to isolate & prepare our own meals during a 2-week follow-up period to that camping trip in response. Section I also details our concerns about sharing a bathroom with a
family member who was outwardly vocal about their opinions of the global
pandemic and how they ignored protocols & safety. We are embarrassed to read through our emails prior to arrival regarding this subject and opt out of making them public to avoid projecting those emotions.
"The Costco/Aldi products consumed in our household included things like olive oil, maple syrup, coffe, and dairy products. When they first arrived it was the rnd of winter. Our fresh food supplies had deidked to potatoes and fermented food. We bought avocados and other fresh fruits at our local co-op mostly for their benefit. Virtually all the meat served was raised on our farm.(they ate very little meat because they had observed plant based eating before they came. I tried to always have plant protein cooked and available for them There was certainly no issues about enjoying the food we cooked for the first 2 months they were here. We had 5 freezers full of meat fruit and vegetables that they were welcome to eat if they did not like what we served. As the garden began to produce they had free choice of anything they wished to eat and to preserve for themselves. We had fresh eggs and they were welcome to eat as many as they wished."
We expressed no qualms over purchased staples and ate much of what was available to try avoiding spoilage. Fig. 5 displays the bulk of fermented foods available and Fig. 6 displays the only stored potatoes we found on site aside from those prepared for planting. We did open ourselves to an omnivorous diet as husbandry & culling was a part of our drive to explore other sites, but did feel discouraged when store-bought chicken, beef, bison & fish were provided well as noticing it's impact on our health. None of the 8 (eight) freezers in question (3 in the garage, 2 downstairs, and 3 on the front porch, not including the 2 running refrigerators) were organized in an easily accessible way and all were caked with frost. Within our first week, we helped clean out the main refrigerator and threw away year old dairy products & poorly covered spoiled meats; the secondary basement fridge was doubly worse. We did take advantage of our own food preservation & cooking, but were met with passive aggression about what we prepared and even criticized some choices of ingredients.
"We live on 100 acres. Only a very small part of that is cultivated. We harvest dozens of the wild plants that grow on our land for food and medicine. We have nurtured many of these resources not by cultivation but by clearing out invasive species to encourage the native species. _____ did not explore the land nor learn to recognize the hundreds of species that grow here so he did not understand that."
The garden space was >1 acre. Defining invasive species among a nature preserve seems redundant to us given that if nature is preserving itself, we don't understand how any of it could be invasive. The only clearing done on their property during our stay was a jogging trail leading to an old rail grade, which we used daily. we stored almost 4 gallons of dried greens, herbs & fungus through the exploration of their grounds and inquired about many of the fruits & wildflowers found there. Despite being neglected about following up with several of them which interest was expressed in, we yet managed to provide Nok with large harvests of mullein leaf & flower, dandelion & comfrey root, usnea fungus, poplar buds and several baskets of spruce tips. It is conflicting to be projected upon with comments suggesting known behaviors given how much time we spent working on our own with only the fruits of labor to be remarked upon.
"Some Wwoofers come here to learn what we have to teach. Others come to show us what they know. _____ did not understand that what made sense in Central Illinois did not make sense in Northeastern Minnesota."
_____ was very clear about an interest in learning zone 4 agriculture and endured their instruction to try understanding it. The duality of that would have shown both of us being open to learn and communicate about the things we don't. Section III details that much of our confusion & retardation came from a lack of explanation as to the methodology we were being instructed. Our questions about things like tilling pathways instead of tamping & mowing, raising garden laborers like guinea hens outside of the garden or alternative designs to benefit irrigation were regularly shrugged off.
"Never once during their stay with us did Chris ever mention any of the above concerns to us. Not once."
There were many things left unspoken and much passive aggression projected during our stay. Section I details an eventual indoor social environment we were not prepared to expect or asked to endure. Until the morning of ____ birthday when _____ returned home from jogging
to find a text message sent from within the house asking us to vacate
immediately, we had not been confronted about wearing masks indoors or cooking for ourselves when the kitchen & dining areas were
not in use well after asking permission for 3 days away to spend at a communal site. Section II details severely impacting internal conflicts and how we didn't see them addressed. We absolutely had expressed our concerns about the conditions of
shared spaces, specifically during a pandemic, and were not provided
with support to improve them. Section III details what sort of labor opportunity we believed we would be engaging and the conflicts of our own experience with those activities. We recall multiple allusions & anecdotes that were shared with us about previous circumstances & situations with volunteers supporting very linear requirements with minimal tolerance for deviation, which didn't present any openness for how they instructed us aside from "it's just how we do it to make it easier on ourselves" or their willingness to be instructed, as described with sheet-mulching the ground cherries. Considering the terms we understood & expressed were interested in a multi-year stewardship and had completely moved ourselves up to this site, the "my way or the highway" attitude we felt projected upon with was difficult to approach without finding where the highway could go. It was hard feeling so neglected and expendable after seeing such extreme benefits of our labor and having to abandon them without discussion or defense, including specific crops we provided seed & care for to empower our own mother ferments.
"To suggest that we do not practice permaculture is ridiculous. We live in a very unpredictable climate with growing seasons as long as 120 days and as short as 60. Our choice of varieties, when and where to plant and how to produce a balanced variety of fruit and vegetables to sustain us is always our goal. We have developed strategies for planting, weeding and watering that produce good results with the least amount of energy. We use organic fertilizer and ducks and guineas for insect control. We time our weeding and tilling for the maximum affect. We have not had to "restore" our land because it was never destroyed."
Section III details how not ridiculous we perceive the application of permaculture on their grounds and how much energy we saw going into our labor. Consequently, we would argue that if there is no need to restore your land, there is no need to practice permaculture as it is publicly defined as "a set of design principles". Section III also includes the types of fertilizers we were sourcing & applying, which is especially charged by prefacing with the word "organic" considering all feed used had "no gmo" simply written on their bags with sharpie over other labels. Section III also details some of the pest control we personally performed because, while the ducks mostly visited when the soil was soft, the guinea hens never once explored the cultivated garden in our time there.
"We treat our land and water with love and respect. We carry on food traditions that have been practiced in this area for hundreds of years."
Two of our closest plant allies are epazote & huauhtli, both of which have varieties of historical significance to many indigenous cultures across the planet (even predating corn in some american tribes). We were chided by both Mish & Nok for our alliance with and use of these plants, as they would refer to them only as "devil weeds" when mentioned. We proclaim the unreasonably thorough devolution through all of these issues as a clear depiction of how priority our love & respect to wild food systems are to us as well. Nok & Mish never contacted the 5 references we provided them, all directly from farm & garden operations in our hometown, and we believe that neglect contributed greatly to how little they chose to investigate our characters which impacted how they chose to invest themselves in our shared education.
In response, we believe there to be a number of opinionated attacks directed personally toward us and have also flagged their comments as offensive.
We still look forward to hearing from 2 of the sons we shared time with here and will continue hoping our letters to them at this site arrive safely.
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