Adventures in WWOOFing: Moon Valley Organics Herb Farm

WWOOF Takeaways

Through every up and down of my experience at Moon Valley, I am overall extremely grateful for the opportunity to WWOOF there. Getting to work outside with plants that I love for an entire summer was really inspiring and exciting, especially at such a large scale. Before calendula season hit, I felt a very positive balance in the workload; I was tired at the end of each day but also extremely satisfied with all that I had achieved.

All of that being said, there were definitely a few aspects of this experience that were not okay with me. I had heard many horror stories of WWOOFers getting used and exploited, and while nothing as terrible as those stories occurred for me, I still felt used during the calendula harvest

Reading Takeaways

Having a family emergency occur right in the middle of my WWOOF experience rearranged my entire summer, and also made me lose a lot of steam on this project. My mental health was all over the place, I needed to take care of myself and that made me fall majorly behind in my readings. However, it also opened the opportunity for me to connect more with the community at Moon Valley, for me to take part in group pesto-making, story telling, communal cooking and dinners, all of which

• overall Moon Valley thoughts
• overall WWOOF thoughts, would I again?
• overall experience thoughts
• reading – why didn’t it happen? + what happened instead
• journey to WAS

Learning Highlights

And just like that, this whirlwind of a summer has come to a close. My final week at Moon Valley was much less frustrating than the previous week; while still filled with calendula harvesting in the heat, we also had more time to work in the drying room, finally got a tour of the production barn, went to support owner, Kim, as she harvested honeycomb from her beehives, and even were used as models for Moon Valley advertising. It was an exciting week to end my WWOOF experience on.

I was really grateful for the opportunity to tour the production barn before leaving Moon Valley, as I had been working around it and interacting with the employees but never fully knowing what was going on. We saw the giant soap and salve-making containers, the lip balm and hand soap machines, the packaging process and the shipping warehouse. We saw and learned about how they source their oils, how oils from abroad may be considered organic in whatever country they are coming from, but must be checked by the USDA to be considered organic in the US as well. Giant jugs of essential oil lined the shelves, the production manager made sure to point out two 10-gallon jugs of lavender essential oil that cost around $4000 alone. It was really cool to finally get to put all of the pieces together, bridging the gap between the work I was doing and the Moon Valley products lining store shelves.

Later in the week, I even got the opportunity to help out in the production barn, first helping to clear out space in the shipping warehouse and then screwing hand soap pumps into newly filled bottles of foaming hand soap. We had to learn the right placement of the pump, to work slowly and listen for the click into place. It was exciting to get to be a part of this production process, to know that my hands helped to create those products that people could be using within the next few weeks and months. All of the herbs we have harvested and dried this year will most likely be used in next year’s batch of products, so it was cool to have what felt like a more immediate impact on this company.

A part of being a WWOOFer at Moon Valley that I was not expecting was being used as a model for Moon Valley advertising. Throughout the entire summer, WWOOFers have been whisked away by Jerad and Nick, social media managers for Moon Valley, to model products or the process of herb harvesting. This week was the big finale while there are still WWOOFers around, so Wednesday morning had a 7am start in the calendula fields to model with the flowers and certain Moon Valley products. I modeled chapstick, being directed to do different poses all with a cheesy smile on my face. It was honestly a pretty fun and silly experience, it’s clear that Jerad and Nick are super passionate about what they do and were super grateful for our participation. I am excited to see the final product once they’re finished putting it all together!

Finally, a big highlight from my week was getting to tag along while farm owner, Kim, checked on her beehives. It was so clear in this moment that Kim is full of knowledge and love for these creatures, it was a really inspiring experience. It was an empowering experience too, I used to be very afraid of bees when I was younger but felt very little fear even when one somehow made its way inside of my bee suit while out with Kim. I watched how Kim used her tools to open the hives, and she even allowed me to take the lead and open a hive in order to find the queen bee. Upon opening the hive and searching through all of the frames, we discovered that this hive had TWO queens, which shocked Kim immensely. If a bee colony is unhappy with a queen, they will create a new queen bee and kill the old one, or the two queen bees will typically fight until only one remains. But these queens were not fighting at all, we watched them for a good ten minutes in anticipation of something big happening, but they just walked right by each other. It was a crazy experience, definitely something I wish to follow up on.

Apart from this crazy encounter, Kim showed me the difference between a frame filled with honey and one filled with new bee cells. She pointed out the younger bees and the drones, it was crazy to see these creatures so up close and to notice how unique each one really is. She told me about different diseases and mites and about the signs of an unhealthy or dying beehive, which include deformed wings, a lack of worker bees, or a small number of bees to begin with. The entire experience got me inspired to go home and help my dad with his beehives instead of always just watching from a distance, I think he even already ordered a suit for me!

Overall, this week of work was much more enjoyable and manageable, I am grateful to have ended on a high note. While I still think the conditions of last week’s work were unacceptable, I am glad that our concerns and frustrations were actually heard and taken into account, and I’m glad that all of us voiced them to begin with.

Learning Highlights

The emotions I have felt this week are not ones I was expecting to feel in my time at Moon Valley, but I think they are important to talk about. I wish to preface, however, by saying that my words are in no way trying to harm Kim and Aaron or Moon Valley as a whole; I am only speaking on my experience and the things I have learned from it.

This week was rough. Spending yet another week with my back bent over calendula plants in the blazing heat from 9-5 is really taking a toll on my body and my spirit. This is not the experience any of us signed up for; yes, we all voluntarily came out to work for Moon Valley but we also came with the expectation of fair treatment, education, and respect. When my body has been bent in half in over 90-degree weather for an entire day, I do not feel as if I am being treated fairly. There needs to be variety in the work we are doing. I am quite nervous for the long-term effects this may have on my back, with zero consideration or compensation from the company.

There also comes a point where it needs to be accepted that 6 WWOOFers working at a variety of speeds will not be able to harvest all of the calendula in one day. We just can’t do it. This harvest-focused mindset is also resulting in lots of molding calendula since we have had almost no time for processing in the drying room. All of that work harvesting went completely down the drain. I understand that this is the big harvest season for Moon Valley and they want to harvest as much as possible, but when you don’t have the space or the workers to make that happen efficiently and safely, something is ultimately going to go wrong, whether it’s spoiled product or unhappy workers.

Another observation that has caused some frustration for me started when my friends and I were reading through the WWOOF book, a notebook of thank you letters to Moon Valley from past WWOOFers. The experiences that all of them wrote about sounded vastly different from my own. They spoke of movie nights, dinners, deep connections with Kim and Aaron; they spoke of the education those two gave them. Have I learned anything from Kim and Aaron? Maybe 1 or 2 things maximum. They’ve barely even spoken to me and I’ve been here for almost two months. No deep connections whatsoever. It feels like there is favoritism within the WWOOF crowd; my past WWOOFer friends who left last week were the favorites and got special treatment while the rest of us have been cast aside. It feels very unfair, especially when the Moon Valley WWOOF profile promises education, connection, and respect.

I do not wish to heavily rant about this company or experience because up until now, it has been highly lovely and I have greatly enjoyed everything I have been doing. I just wanted to highlight these thoughts because I think they very clearly show the drawbacks of scaling up a business: very often, that business loses track of their core values. Moon Valley preaches kindness and education but falls short as capitalism takes hold.

On a much happier note, we did explain our feelings on the calendula harvest and the drying room to the farm managers, Dylan and Eva, who in turn, spoke to the owners. Dylan and Eva have been wonderful throughout my entire experience, treating us as equals and sharing in all of our emotions. I am greatly appreciative of them and their knowledge and kindness.

I also do wish to touch on the company party that Kim and Aaron threw for all of their employees this week, including the WWOOFers. I started with a sour mood about the entire thing because the WWOOFers were expected to help prepare and set up for the event on our day off, which was not what any of us signed up for (scrubbing chicken shit out of a kiddie pool so that actual children can swim in it? Not in my job description and also VERY unsanitary). But as the event commenced, it was quite sweet to see the entire company come together, to learn about how big Moon Valley is as a whole, and to have a moment to celebrate all of our accomplishments together. The highlight was definitely the Moon Valley tradition of “Dunk the Bosses,” where employees could literally dunk their bosses in a dunk tank.

As much as I ranted above, this party did help to show the love and appreciation that Kim and Aaron have for their employees. I just also believe that WWOOFers, who are still technically employees at Moon Valley, deserve that same love and appreciation as well.

Learning Highlights

Another week occupied primarily by calendula. We seem to have fallen into a new routine that fills three out of four of our weekly work days with calendula harvesting, which is luckily feeling a bit easier now that we have extra bins for transporting all of the calendula. Our Wednesday harvest was accompanied by a thunderstorm; rain dumped on our backs for around five minutes while we were in the field and it honestly felt so refreshing after the heat of the morning. I was actually thankful for the rainy work day, even if the rain didn’t last too long.

The biggest change for this week was the fact that I am now the WWOOFer who has been at Moon Valley for the longest, the “farm expert” as my friends have begun to call me. This meant there were a lot of opportunities to teach new WWOOFers about the farm which felt very exciting; I do not get to be a leader too often, but I really enjoy it when I do. It also felt nice to have the farm managers acknowledge my skill and trust me with passing everything on to the new WWOOFers.

A big highlight of the week was the giant pesto-making party that the owners of Moon Valley threw with a bunch of their friends. Tables were set up in the outdoor kitchen and a giant assembly line was soon churning out batch after batch of fresh pesto, it was chaotic but also really fun. My friends and I were in charge of taste testing, sealing, and labeling the bags of pesto.

Learning Highlights

It was wonderful to finally be back at Moon Valley after two intense weeks of travel and recovery. I received a warm welcome back before spending the evening learning how to make pesto with farm owner, Kim. It was a relaxing evening, stripping basil leaves off of their stems, grating parmesan cheese, and juicing a lemon before combining it all in a food processor to blend. Our recipe also substituted walnuts for pine nuts which was exciting, and the end result was absolutely delicious!

Not much had changed since I had been away, but the biggest difference was discovered upon first arriving at the incubator farm again after my return. What was once a few small calendula plants had quadrupled in size, creating the vision of the calendula fields I had originally envisioned for my summer experience at Moon Valley. It was quite stunning, the beautiful sunny orange speckling the entire field brightly. However, it became less stunning as we began our harvest, which took way longer than it ever had before. One row took a person an entire hour to harvest, we weren’t even able to finish after an entire day of work.

I think the heat contributed to making this calendula harvest so unenjoyable, but the limited number of harvest bags didn’t help either. My bag became so full of flowers, I had to drag it along the ground after me, it was unbearable to have it around my shoulders. I eventually rummaged through my car to find some extra grocery bags we could harvest into, but the overflowing harvest bags definitely hindered the amount of work we were able to get done. Luckily, this big initial harvest made every following harvest a lot easier for the week, which prompted the farm managers to change our work schedule to only have two-day weekends instead of three, meaning we get Thursdays off and work on Fridays. A shorter weekend will allow less time for a bunch of calendula flowers to build up, so hopefully next Monday’s harvest will not be as awful as this past one was.

While most of this week was occupied by calendula harvesting, some of my other tasks included more work in the drying room processing mint, and also another comfrey harvest. Harvesting the comfrey this time around proved to be way more enjoyable due to it not being overgrown like last time, it went quickly for me and was actually quite rewarding. While there weren’t too many new things to learn this week, it was very nice to begin to settle back into the same routine, I am quite thankful to be back in the swing of things!

Unexpected events occur for all of us at some point in time, and so this week, I had to make an unexpected trip down to Abilene, Texas to support my family through the death of my grandmother. This, obviously, put a pause on my WWOOFing, so to make up for the work I was missing, I wanted to do a little research on the abandoned Northern State Hospital Farm in Sedro-Woolley that I had gotten to visit before leaving Washington. Abandoned places have always fascinated me; I love finding and exploring old buildings or cemeteries that are getting reclaimed by nature as time rolls on. I am really intrigued by the aspects of history that have slipped away and been forgotten, the antiques in vintage shops or the dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of towns. So when I visited the Northern State Hospital Farm, I instantly wished to know more. An entire farm completely left in nature’s hands; it was incredible to walk through. I wanted to dive into the history of this place, and this post is where I will do just that.

Northern State Hospital Farm

Learning Highlights

This week marked the end of the lemon balm processing, which meant we were finally able to move on to the comfrey fields. It was way past the desired harvest point for the comfrey, a lot of the plants were molding or beginning to send out flowers, so this harvest was more about speed than about getting every single plant. Using harvest knives, we grabbed handfuls of leaves at a time, chopping at the base and picking out any moldy leaves or flower stalks. Mold is obviously undesirable when creating a medicinal product so it was important that we picked these leaves out while harvesting as it would be harder to distinguish once the plant was dried. The flower stalks are undesirable because the plant is sending all of its energy into creating the flowers instead of into the leaves where we want it when creating medicine from comfrey. In the drying room, we also discovered that the thick flower stalks immensely slow down the drying process for comfrey, so a lot of this week was spent sorting the flower stalks out from the desired material as boxes of comfrey were delivered to us in the drying room.

While the comfrey harvest was the biggest focus of this week, Moon Valley owners, Kim and Aaron, also wanted us to help with cleaning up around the farm for an event they were hosting Friday evening. I helped to clean the outdoor kitchen, picking up trash and sweeping up piles of dirt, along with miscellaneous weeding around Aaron’s front yard and the production barn. The work week ended with a quick calendula harvest and the spreading of manure in the freshly harvested comfrey fields. We were instructed to spread the manure by hand using buckets, so by the end of the afternoon, we were covered in sweat and manure and were very ready for a restful weekend.

This week was a big lesson in letting go of perfection. When harvesting comfrey, it was hard for me to focus on getting it done quickly instead of making sure to harvest every leaf. Once I let perfection go, however, the harvesting process went a lot faster. I also feel as if I am really getting in the groove of working in the drying room due to the amount of time I have spent up there and letting go of perfection. Because of the amount of space and time available for drying, the process will never be able to occur perfectly; the best we can do is get things done as efficiently and quickly as possible. I really enjoy this process though, the meditative groove of sorting through fresh or dried plant material, moving the screens around, consolidating plant material to create more space. Working in the drying room never really gets old for me, none of this job does, but the drying room has definitely been the most intriguing and enjoyable part for me. I am super thankful for the opportunity to get to learn and grow there.

Learning Highlights

This week was filled with lots of time in the drying room and lots of time working with strawberries. We were able to speed up the process of drying the lemon balm quite a lot with guidance from Moon Valley owner, Kim, who taught us how to get the most use out of the limited space in the drying room. This included stacking the screens higher with plant material and relying on the warmth of the room itself to complete the drying of the lemon balm instead of always using the finish dryers. In a perfect world, our meticulous method of laying out each individual lemon balm stalk would be ideal but is simply impossible with the amount of space available at Moon Valley currently. Kim’s guidance allowed us to speed through the lemon balm processing; hopefully, we will have it entirely finished by the end of next week which would allow us to get to work on the calendula we are continuing to harvest weekly.

A big portion of this week felt like it was dedicated to the maintenance of the owners’ garden and yard which is not a part of the job that I was expecting. We weeded around their house, targeting the strangling bindweed that snaked its way around desired plants and was a huge pain to unwind and remove. I also learned how to use a weedwhacker which was an exciting job. The weedwhacker was used to mow all the places that a lawnmower couldn’t reach, including the edges of buildings and along the main entrance to the farm. Before weed whacking, I was taught the difference between gas and farm diesel as the containers of the two were greatly mixed up by accident. The gas appears more clear or yellow-ish while the farm diesel has a pinkish-red hue or sometimes even blue-ish. Pour out a little of the fuel into a clear jar if unsure to be able to spot the difference.

Another big part of this week was spent working with strawberries. Strawberries are probably my favorite berry so I was excited to get to work with them in and out of the field. We started by picking basketfuls of the ripe berries and weeding around the plants. We separated our berries into two categories: the perfect berries to be eaten or frozen and stored, and the overly ripe or critter-bitten berries to be made into jam that evening. The perfect berries were taken into the garage for processing. We removed the tops and stems and laid them out on trays to be left in the freezer overnight. The following morning, we moved the fully frozen berries into gallon-sized plastic bags for better freezer storage. Not only were we able to work with fully matured strawberry plants producing fruit, but we also got to transplant younger plants into the soil at the incubator farm at the end of the week. I really enjoyed getting to see almost the entire process of working with strawberry plants, and of course getting to pop a few sweet berries into my mouth as I was working.

One of the biggest highlights of the week was finally getting the irrigation system up and running at the incubator farm. For the previous weeks of work, WWOOFers had been assigned the task of dragging a hose up and down every row for watering, which took hours to complete every day and was not the most enjoyable task. Thankfully this week, farm manager, Dylan, was able to finally hook up the irrigation system and teach us a little about the process along the way. Moon Valley uses drip tape irrigation, which consists of thin tubes with little slits along the side to allow water to drip out when the water is turned on. Each plant row had two lines of drip tape which were already laid out under the plastic row cover; all that needed to occur was the connection of the drip tape to the main water line. Dylan taught us how to measure and cut the correct drip tape lengths, punch a hole in the main line, and use a connecting piece to screw the drip tape into place. He also showed us how to cap the drip tape off at the other end using a smaller piece of cut-up drip tape. It was exciting to have the water come on and to see our work on the irrigation system finally pay off. No more dragging a hose around for hours in the blazing heat!

A final big learning highlight of my week has more to do with my WWOOF experience overall. I am realizing that the choice of working at a more popular WWOOF destination for my summer means that a lot of my tasks are going to be easy filler tasks instead of in-depth learning opportunities directly with the farm managers or owners. There have been around 8 other WWOOFers with me for my entire two weeks so far, which is quite a large number for the scale of Moon Valley. This means there are sometimes not enough tasks for everyone, or more people will be assigned to a task than are required. For example, four of us were assigned to set up hoops for the pepper hoop house when really only two people needed to be doing it. This isn’t a huge issue, I am still learning a lot and having a wonderful experience, plus I was looking for a larger WWOOF community to enter for my summer anyways. I think it is just maximized here because of how many of us there are. As the summer goes on, I am sure this will change. Most of my fellow WWOOFers are leaving before me and I have a hunch that there will be a week or two in August where I am the only WWOOFer left. Hopefully in this time, I will get a bit more in-depth learning from the farm managers and owners. I will also keep this thought in mind for any future WWOOF endeavors; maybe WWOOFing with a smaller community or even solo would yield more opportunities for learning directly from the farm managers.

Reading Highlights

This week, I wrapped up the first section of Braiding Sweetgrass, which was entitled “Planting Sweetgrass.” As I discussed last week, a lot of this section revolved around the idea of gifts, but the two chapters that stood out the most to me as I ended this section revolved around Kimmerer’s journey as a Native scientist. Kimmerer entered University with one question: “Why is the world so beautiful?” But upon asking this to her professor, he told her “That’s not science, go to art school if you want to study beauty.” This response was a shock to Kimmerer, but she decided she must’ve been mistaken, and so fell into the scientific side of botany through a master’s degree, phD, and teaching position.

It wasn’t until she heard a Navajo woman talk of botany for hours on end without the hint of a university background that Kimmerer realized what had been missing: the Indigenous side of botany. She had fallen into the science at university and had completely lost sight of her question: “Why is the world so beautiful?”

I arrived at Moon Valley Organics on Sunday the 26th of June along with two other new WWOOFers. We were greeted by two current WWOOFers who gave us a brief tour of the property, showing us the pantry and outdoor kitchen, the combined shower and laundry room, and finally, “WWOOF world” where all of us would be sleeping. Within WWOOF world, I would be taking the spot of a girl who was leaving the following day within the LeSharo RV; it’s a cozy space but becomes outrageously warm in the summer’s heat. However, overall, I am quite content with my living arrangements for the rest of the summer.

The owners of Moon Valley, Kim and Aaron, were on vacation until Wednesday so it would be a few days until I was properly introduced to them. With them gone, we pretty much had free reign of the entire property, including using the owner’s kitchen for cooking our meals. Cooking is done communally for the most part, with a weekly sign-up sheet for who is taking the lead on which meals. So far, all of the food has been incredible, there are some wonderful cooks within our group for sure.

Learning Highlights

Since it was my first week on the farm, there was a lot to be learned about working at Moon Valley. First off, it’s the WWOOFers daily responsibility to care for the chickens, ducks, goose, and turkey that reside on the farm. The ducks and goose must be let out of their cage every morning and then herded back inside in the evening. Waters need to be cleaned and refilled and food needs to be refilled daily as well. A daily egg hunt must also occur, as the chicken eggs have been scarce. We’re afraid the hens have found a hidden spot to lay them and there’s a pile of rotten eggs that will be discovered in a week or two (the other WWOOFers have already enlightened me on the horror stories of picking up a rotten egg and having it explode on them, along with cracking open eggs with half-formed chicks inside of them).

Lots of harvesting occurred this week, starting in the lemon balm fields out by the silo. We were taught to snip the lemon balm at the point where the leaves started to turn brown and spotty; these leaves could be stripped off right away or would be removed later during processing. Once this point on the lemon balm plants was found, it was important to try and trim the rest at about the same point down the row so all of the lemon balm would grow back fairly uniform. It was relaxing to work in the lemon balm fields, a slight drizzle coming down overhead as we filled bin after bin with the harvested plant material. Once a bin was full, it could be taken to the production barn and carried up the stairs to the drying room where all of the plant material was laid out to be dried for use in future body care products.

The drying room has been my favorite part of the job so far. When tasked to work here, WWOOFers have to wear a lab coat, hairnet, and gloves, and are essentially in charge of laying out plant material on mesh screens to be dried and then picking through the fully dried material for any leftover grass or debris that are unwanted in the final products. The room becomes heavily heated in the summer months, with constant air circulation provided by multiple fans. Two finish dryers are also available for faster drying as well; the finish dryers are essentially two large cabinets with dehumidifiers and spaces for fitting in the screens of plant material. The finish dryers aren’t always essential for drying all of the herbs, the room is warm enough to dry most everything, but are highly important for drying calendula as the flower heads hold a lot of moisture.

It has been so meditative to sift through different herbs. Each one is processed a little differently; the chamomile above was a big challenge as the grass and debris blended in quite well, we were never able to fully remove all of it. The lemon balm was easier and just required us to strip off the leaves from the stem and remove any brown leaves from the mix. Once the herb is fully picked through, it is funneled into a giant plastic bag. Then, once the bag is full, desiccant packs are added to remove moisture and the bag is weighed and tied off to be taken down to the production team for product creation. I have really enjoyed working closely with the herbs in the drying room and I am excited for further work up here in the future.

Something I was not expecting upon arrival was the fact that a lot of our work would occur at an incubator farm about 20 minutes away from Moon Valley. The excess rain this year has caused the ground at Moon Valley to be too wet to farm in, so the owners had to improvise and lease land on an incubator farm. An incubator farm is a farm that provides land for other farmers, generally start-up farms that don’t have land of their own yet. Before my arrival, it had been a chaotic couple of weeks as things were moved over to the incubator farm and issues were encountered and worked out. My first few days at the incubator farm included lots of planting of onions, as well as some cauliflower, leeks, basil, and nasturtium. I also had the joy of harvesting a bunch of calendula, a task I greatly enjoyed. When harvesting calendula, look for the flowers that are open and pinch off right below the head. I am already so enamored with this plant, could there be a more wonderful shade of orange?

My final learning highlight from my first week involved the blight-stricken tomatoes in the greenhouse at Moon Valley. These tomato plants were in bad shape, so Aaron, owner of Moon Valley, taught all of us how to remove the blight and properly prune a tomato plant. The first part of pruning a tomato is to find the two lead branches, the stems that the leaves and fruit clusters will grow off of. It’s usually best to select the two tallest as the leads, and then to snip off any other forming leads, which are referred to as suckers. The tomato suckers grow in the notch between a leaf and the main stem, and can easily be pinched or snipped off. This allows the plant to focus its growing energy into the two selected lead branches instead of dividing its energy among a bunch of leads. Along with the suckers, any blight-affected leaves or fruit should be removed; these appear as browned leaves or tomato fruits with rotten ends. Be sure to touch the plant as little as possible when working with blight as the fungus can spread easily to unaffected parts of the plant. Finally, trim off the bottom leaves of the plant and provide support by clipping the main stems to a piece of bamboo. With all of this knowledge in mind and guidance from Aaron, we were able to transform the sad-looking plants into happy-looking tomatoes. I am excited to taste the fruits of our labor later on in the season!

A jam-packed first week of work, I enter the weekend feeling content and satisfied with what I have achieved so far. I am continuing to discover who I am and how I best learn, and I truly believe that learning by doing is best for me, so this experience has been highly valuable even in these first four days of work. I am excited to continue learning and doing and being outside as the summer goes on, discovering more about who I am and who I wish to be in the coming years of my life. Huge appreciation for all of the support so far from the farm managers, Dylan and Eva, from the owners, Kim and Aaron, and of course from all of my fellow WWOOFers. I have entered into a wonderful community of people and I am so excited to draw closer to all of them as the summer continues.

Reading Highlights

With the chaos of my arrival and falling into a new routine in an entirely new location, I did not get very far in my reading of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. However, even the first few chapters have been insanely thought-provoking for me, and pair very nicely with the work I am doing at Moon Valley and all of my prior herbal experiences. I wish to highlight these thoughts and connections here.

Braiding Sweetgrass opens with the Skywoman Creation story. Skywoman fell from the Skyworld, clutching a bundle of seeds in her hands as she was caught on the backs of geese flying up from the dark ocean below. Using mud from the depths of the water to create Turtle Island, a land for Skywoman to live in, Skywoman scattered her seeds and the world turned green, creating the beautiful home we all live in today. This story asks us “in return for this gift of a world on Turtle’s back, what will I give in return?” (8). Skywoman used her gift for good, and in doing so, she passed on the instructions for us to use our gifts and our dreams for good as well. What are my gifts and my dreams? How can I use them for good? These questions reminded me of a conversation I had with a fellow WWOOFer, who was talking about her experiences meeting all of these incredible and unique people in the short two weeks she was at Moon Valley. Each person came to the farm with something different to offer, she wished she had more time to pick each of their brains and connect more deeply. Maybe right now as I continue to grow and discover who I am and what my gifts are, my greatest gift is myself. Offering my time to Moon Valley as I work each day, offering my conversation and my history to my fellow WWOOFers as we grow closer while we are together. I hope for right now, that is enough.

The following chapters furthered my pondering over the idea of gifts, focusing more on the perception of nature and the world as a gift. To explain this, Kimmerer talks of her love of wild strawberries and the relationship she formed with this plant from a young age. Wild strawberries are always a gift to be received and given, never a commodity to be sold. They belong to themselves; they give and in return, teach us how to give back. This relationship is sacred; both entities are transformed through it. Yet in our modern market economy, this relationship is quite non-existent for most, amounting all items to a mere number and severing any deeper connections that could form. “How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?…even in a market economy, can we behave ‘as if’ the living world were a gift?” (31). These questions continue to sit with me, and I don’t think I have any one answer, I’m not sure if there IS any one answer. I know for me, I have been able to find a sacred relationship with nature through my time spent in and with nature, learning and growing and giving back. But would this be the case for everyone who spent time in nature? Again, reflecting on my experience at Moon Valley so far, the majority of my fellow WWOOFers are new to agriculture and herbs, and have been transformed through their WWOOF experience. They speak of taking back what they have learned during their time here and using it in their day-to-day life at home. This experience has been a transfer of gifts for them; they gifted their time to the land and in return, the land gifted them new knowledge to be used once they depart. If this relationship can be created for a bunch of random college students through even just a few weeks of work on a small herb farm, I have hope that it could be created for anyone.