How a Volunteering Holiday Gave Us Total Freedom

Volunteering in rural France gave us a very different holiday experience
says Sarah Vanstone-Howe

During the Summer of 2019 we took our three children abroad for the first time in about five years. Having done a lot of travelling in pre-child days and worked in luxury travel, my husband and I were both keen to show our children the world beyond the UK. However, these days our budget and our lifestyle means that holidays are less about luxury and city breaks and more about staying local, usually in a caravan or a tent. This suits us fine as we really enjoy being in nature and find that parenting becomes a lot easier when things are kept simple. 

I was itching to go somewhere abroad though, so I was trying to figure out an affordable, family friendly and ideally green way to do it. Cue Wwoofing (Or Willing Workers on Organic Farms!). I already knew about this volunteer style holiday from some friends who had done it in more exotic parts of the world, so I decided to see what the options were in Europe. 

Less Commercial Holiday

Wwoofing is a worldwide network of farm and homestead owners, who advertise for volunteer labour on their land. This could be anything from mucking out stables, to lavender picking, to fence building or bee keeping. In return the volunteers receive food and accommodation for their stay. Exact hours and conditions are agreed between the farmer and volunteer in advance. I soon • found a small farm in Normandy that was family friendly and would be easy for us to drive to, via the car ferry from Dover. 

I liked this option for a working holiday as it offered our children a cultural exchange with a French family (they had four children who were about the same age), we would be working in the mornings and still have the afternoons free for exploring, the physical work offered a connection to the land that I craved, and it was definitely a less commercial kind of holiday. 

The eldest had been abroad only once before, to Mallorca when she was about 10 months old, where she sweated a lot and breastfed the whole time on the plane which was the only way to keep her quiet. This time we would be going by car and ship, with a six, four and one year old. 

Overland Travel

Our journey went smoothly enough, taking nine hours door-to-door. We took a morning ferry crossing from Dover to Calais. We packed a big travel picnic for the car, with toys and books to keep everyone happy. At that age they were all great at sleeping in the car, so we only needed to do a few toilet and breastfeeding stops. Once in France and navigating with a map, we got lost a few times, but the amazing scenery more than made up for it. It reminded me of Tuscany at times, with big open landscapes and tree lined avenues. 

We arrived in the pretty village of Beaurainville, about 30 minutes from the coastal town of Berck, just south of the Caps et Marais d'Opale Regional Nature Park, a protected area of dunes, estuaries and coastal grasslands. 

Once on the farm we met our hosts, Francois and Elodie. Their four boys were playing archery in the yard, with chickens running around. My older two quickly got involved in the game and we left them to it. The language barrier didn’t seem to be a problem for them. Francois and Elodie gave us a tour of the farm, before having a welcome meal in their ramshackle kitchen. It was primarily a chicken farm, with a small herd of cows, while Elodie kept an impressive food garden that surrounded the house. Any food waste went to the chickens, while Francois would regularly dump cow manure and straw from the tractor for Elodie’s garden. 

They were renovating another wing of the house, so we were put in a bedroom under the eaves there. We had a lovely view of the garden. The composting toilet was across the farmyard from our room and at night we would be rewarded for the walk with a spectacular crystal starry sky. 

Freedom To Roam

My husband was doing most of the real work on the farm, since I was with the children. So while he and Francois did the smelly and heavy work, Elodie and I picked beans in the garden, dug up potatoes, prepared lunch, and generally stayed nice and clean. Our older girls were usually off playing with the boys, rampaging about the farm in their welly boots, while the youngest was content to either be worn in the sling, sleep in the hammock, or sit on a canvas bag on the ground and pick grass. 

Elodie soon became my guru in all things permaculture and I picked up lots of ideas for my allotment back home, such as her broad bean tunnel that you can walk through and pick the beans from the inside. The bathroom window looked out onto a sea of pumpkin plants, the back terrace had grape vines growing up past the windows and every spare bit of ground had something growing on it. Their living room was like a treasure trove of books on all things eco, it was just a shame they were all in French and I couldn’t read them. 

Idyllic Vs. Hardcore

Overall our time at the farm was split between idyllic and hardcore moments. The idyllic bits included hanging out the washing under a willow tree with the youngest in the sling, watching swallows swoop over the meadow in the morning mist, having a dinner party with lots of French friends on the terrace and the time we canoed up the river which ran through the farm. The eldest and middle one were perched regally at the rear, while I cradled the youngest at the front and my husband struggled with the oars. The middle one said idly at one point while he flayed about trying to get us past a bramble bush “Daddy, are you rubbish?”

The hardcore bits included the composting toilet (one shared between 11 of us), the sense of there being a layer of grime everywhere and the constant mess indoors, all giving it a ‘cold comfort farm’ feel. On the flip side by the second week I’d adjusted to this and was quite enjoying the lack of fuss about cleaning that the English are so obsessed with. 

Our afternoons out included picnics in the local forests (we found lots of picnic tables thoughtfully placed in random spots across the woods and countryside), plus exploring the local villages such as Montreuil, which is beautiful and boasts a castle complete with city wall that you can walk along the top of. The older two chomped on their baguettes with creamy goat’s cheese and salami, before scampering off to find mushrooms and build dens against trees. The youngest sat on the picnic table and grabbed at everything in sight, she gets very excited about food. We found plenty of sandy beaches too - ginormous sandy beaches that stretched over the horizon. The ones at Berck, Le Touquet and Merlimont were the best, it is a beautiful stretch of coastline.

Slowing Down

Our favourite bit of the trip was the slower pace of life and the great food. Woofing in this way also gave us a chance to see a bit of France we would never have otherwise seen. We were definitely off the beaten track. The oldest and middle one’s favourite bit was the ice cream (so many flavours, lavender was a hit), plus the fact that the local organic food store had goats that you could milk. The eldest also lost her two front teeth while we were there, so she had a visit from the French tooth mouse (it’s a mouse and not a fairy in France). The youngest’s favourite bit was probably my boobs and maybe the plums from the orchard that she liked to smoosh into her face at breakfast time.

My adventures into permaculture and food growing continue at home. I’ve begun mulching all the beds on our allotment with manure and straw, donated from my friend who keeps alpacas. I’ve also built a broad bean tunnel with fence panels to walk through, inspired by Elodie. 

So would we go Woofing again? I think so. It depends a lot on the host you end up with. But ours were lovely and living on a farm for two weeks was a real eye-opener on a different way of life, and maybe on a different future for ourselves. We might try another country next time. The oldest one would like to visit Italy and is already asking when we are going… 

Sarah is a freelance writer and middle school teacher, with a background in publishing and travel who lives in Bedfordshire with her husband, four children and dog Coco. 

MORE RESOURCES

EXPLORE Find opportunities for you and your family at wwoof.net or wwoof.org.uk

READ Find Sarah on X @vanstone_howe.