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[MadPlanter]

Ran across this interesting site while researching permaculture gardening techniques. Supposedly a program to actually house interested gardeners on actual farms to get hands on experience in organic methods. Sounds wonderful to me and I want to try this someday provided life permits.

Check it out!

https://wwoofusa.org/how-it-works/

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[fairdinkumseeds]

I did a bit of that for a while, and then just kept doing it unregistered afterwards, the farmer would recommend me to a mate of theirs and off I would go.
Great way to meet cool people all over OZ and learn a lot about farming without having to lock down too much.
Recommend it to everyone and I personally reckon all 15year olds should have to do a couple years of that sort of thing before they decide on University.
Good for the economy, less costly yet pointless degrees, the farmers get more profit from a less intensive system, and the minds of our youth are opened just a tiny little bit to what is really out there in the world, and how the food and economic system should work.
Anyway, Blah Blah Blah, its bloody awesome.

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[Greench]

I've done some WWOOFing once in Chile. It was a very good experience (thanks to the very nice host).
One is supposed to buy the WWOOF list of registered farmers for each country one wants to WWOOF in. There are also some lists available for free online. Some hosts are nice, some not so much. I was advised to try WorkAway instead, because it's free and it has a feedback system for both parties involved. The website is not limited to organic gardening though.
http://www.workaway.info

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[ONandONandON]

Thanks for making this thread. i've considered starting a WWOOF co-op type business that could profit everyone.
This has been a dream for a long time, and it might never happen, but at least i should try, because what if it did.

i live on (but do not own) a perfect location for this. it is family owned, but they will probably try to sell eventually,
but if i was in business there, they may allow easy long-term payments, and this isn't a concern for several years.

The place is a pecan orchard, about three acres, very close town, next to the main highway, leading to the beach.
it's very open and private, with woods and swamp, and the front could probably make a decent business location.
Next door is a country night-club (Hm our own night-club) Other-side is a large field rented to a farmer every year.

Also, to make some money i think food would be a good market, maybe a roadside pizza oven, something sweet.
it could be anything we imagine... Some ideas i thought about are... Rare medicinals and entheo-plants of course!
Maybe mushrooms, rare fruits (pawpaw, goji, vanilla, moringa) alcohol (wines/beers) herbal medicines, art-crafts.

One concern is thieves, i have some trust issues. Who can you trust really, yourself, but stand together we must!
The idea is people will build their homes here, and create a business to pay off the land, thus become co-owners.

So what do you folks think? iam still unsure. it's difficult to find good people these days, so thought i'd start here.
All comments welcome. if enough people are interested, this might even happen, but until then it is just a dream.

[BubbleCat]

Pizza is just awesome to keep any "hobby business" in the positive numbers, I have pretty early mansoned (?) my pizza and bread oven and honestly, what goes in a pizza comes at way less than 1€ and people pay anything up to 10€ a piece, and the effort is non existent. So if I sold my pizzas I could make a living from it I guess I think its important that, if you do something like that, you dont just keep throwing good money after the bad but have a concept how its going to sustain and only cost you your sweat blood and heart

1 Like ONandONandON likes this.

[ONandONandON]

Right, people over pay for food! Also hotdogs, and burgers, and breakfast, and ice cream, or sno cones, or something sweet. Sweet Tea.
 
Maybe raise rare animal breeds (cause i really dislike the idea of raising food animals) pretty chickens/birds, rabbits, bufo toads, coy fish.

[BubbleCat]

I wouldnt say overpay for food in general... in fact I strongly object. People might overpay for prepared food / cuisine maybe especially because its convenient and already tickles all the primitive instincts when we walk by the take away.

But in my place its really severe and troubles me, how people compare their food by the last cents altho everything especially meat is already hilariously cheap. And when they then sit in fromt of their TVs munching their stuff or reading their newspapers while having a snack they grow angry abou and dont understand where all the scandals come from, if its now the chicken that has to die for less than 50 cents at a fraction of its lifespan, bees dying from pesticides or lakes going bad from fertilizers. I dont think people overpay for food in general, since most people have never witnessed what goes into making a bread from seed with your bare hands, let alone done it, they don't really cherish the bread they pick up in the store.

But yea a delicious and fragrant slice of pizza will tingle their instincts, nauseate their usual discount mentality and makes them spend good money on it. Now next time at the store, with that money gone ...

The most efficient way to get someone to eat something, (even if its not even tasty !) is to combine fat and carbonhydrates, preferably sugar but any carbs work. The effect of this peaks at approximately 50:50, it appears that the confirmation we experience when eating either fat or carbonhydrates exaggerates at exponential rate when we consume both in combination, a case thats not present in nature because a organism develops and concentrates on one way of energy storage, would be a waste to do two. So our brains had no time to adapt to that kind of overstimulation. Guess why so many presumably heavy guys slam a steak on the coals at completely the wrong temperature and get everything just so wrong every chef would go *facepalm* and as soon the tragically screwed up "steak" (fat) appears ready it will be drowned in "steak sauce" (whatever) that basically consist of sugar (carbs) ... now youve got a combination of two things that wouldnt be tasty individually, still arent tasty in combination, but massage and excite your brain cells heavenly.

So yeah, I am absolutely with FDK, everyone who would have spend any time farming would have a completely different attitude about food, especially animal protein.

[ONandONandON]

That's a good point, people do not fully appreciate their food.  So then a community garden in the field next door could make a great tool.
i wouldn't mind a dairy cow, for milk, butter, cheese, bulk mushroom substrate. We could supply fresh squeezed mostly unprocessed milk.
Didn't mean to hijak the WWOOFF thread, but i'm looking for anyone who might be interested in this co=op type business, just in case

[MadPlanter]

No worries brother about hijacking the thread. If it gave you an idea that you can run with and do some good from then this thread did its job. Let's change the game peeps our sad world needs us!

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