Adventures WWOOFing in Normandy

WWOOFing in Normandy has turned out to be an unexpected challenge.  WWOOFing here has been my first experience with this type of volunteer relationship amongst strangers and unfortunately it has not turned out, as I would have hoped.  The first farm I was at was relatively comfortable in terms of the people I met and worked with however there were severe problems with money that could not be avoided and always turned up in the discussions we had.  Last Saturday I switched farms and while I stayed within Normandy, I am in the department of Manche (which is technically in the Bay of Mont Saint Michel, although I wouldn’t exactly describe it as that).  It is a much smaller farm and V_ the woman who owns the farm lives alone and relies solely on the volunteer and presence of WWOOFer volunteers. The farm is relatively small and although she is government funded to have a “pedagogic farm” she has only owned the farm for four years and either hasn’t gotten around to that, or has decided that it is too much work.  This woman is a strong, bull-headed, independent woman who I think has suffered a lot in her life and is now trying to come to terms with her situation.  V_ has fibromyalgia and therefore she suffers a lot of pain and cannot do the things she used to love to do.  An active woman even now, V_ rode horses, motorcycles, lifted weights, etc. and now she is left to her own devices and is trying to sustain a life in Normandy. 

When I arrived the first thing I saw was a Newfoundland dog and immediately I assumed things would be fantastic!  But after the first meal I had with her and the other WWOOFers I knew that our characters and personalities didn’t mesh and that it would be a very challenging three weeks.  The one silver lining in this situation has been that when I arrived, another WWOOFer arrived as well.  G_ is a German medical student, my age, who is also on vacation and decided to make WWOOFing a part of that experience.  While working and living together may have encouraged both of us to think worse of the farm than it might have been for others, it has been great having a confidante and someone that I can trust.  A few days ago G_ and I decided to email other WWOOFing farms in the region to see if there was any possibility they would take us for the remaining time.  Luckily we got a response from a farm that is composed of two families and they said they could take us starting Monday.  While we would have liked to leave the farm a bit earlier, it took us a few days to process all the information, and to see if in fact, we really wanted to leave the farm.  Our plans were unraveling slowly and it became more clear as the days went on that we were indeed making the right decision. 

The farm has a gite on site and there is a family staying there at the moment with two small children.  Over the course of our time here the young girl has helped us every morning with the animal chores and we have gotten to know the family.  Both G_ and I felt very comfortable with them and we trusted them much more than we trusted V_.  So yesterday when G_ and I had made our decision that indeed we were going to leave the farm we confided in the family of our plans because we knew how close the young girl and become with us and because we wanted to let them know why we would be leaving.  It turned out to be a great conversation and after we told them our situation, we talked for an hour and a half over tea and tisanes.  Last night, both G_ and I slept a bit better because both of us had been quite anxious about the whole process and we decided that today we would inform Valerie of our decision and see what the next days would bring.  We worked all morning and there were numerous incidences of our clash of personalities, work ethics, etc.   Her lack of confidence in our abilities to weed the garden, feed the turkeys, etc, led us to believe that we had indeed made the right decision.  While we planned to tell her in the afternoon, we ended up delaying it until the evening because she ran some errands and we were brushing the dogs, etc.  Finally after dinner, we sat her down and said that we didn’t feel comfortable at the farm any more and that we had decided to leave.  I told her that I was sorry that we were interrupting the time we had said we would be available to work, but that it is our vacation and we do not feel like spending it here.  Thankfully, she took it fairly well and she is willing to drive us to the train station on Sunday.  Hopefully the next farm will be a bit better and Sunday G_ and I will be spending the day in Granville, a fortified costal down in Normandy.