Jake Asher: Back in Action

How does one pack for five months of living in a foreign continent where temperatures will range from the low-70s to the low-30s? How does one dress accordingly for 7 hours of outdoor work, when regularly can one see half a year's worth of weather patterns over the course of half an hour? And why does one go from living the simple, free-room-and-board, yet unpaid easy life in the parents' house, to the toilsome, unfamiliar free-room-and-board, while doing unpaid labor, life in some Irish stranger's house?

Well, to quote some guy I've never heard of named Bolitho, "Adventure must start with running away from home."

Hello, family, friends, and fans, and welcome to the revival of Jake Asher's traveling blog! I've been completely flattered and delighted by the number of you who told me you enjoyed reading my blog when I kept it in Mali, and when some of you expressed hope that I would continue to write through my latest travels, I figured I would give it a try. Knowing that there is regular internet access here, at least for the first couple months, will make it easier for me not to disappoint.

I'll assume that most of you reading this now are the same folks who started reading my blog at some other point during the last three years, but for the consideration of those of you just tuning in, I'll briefly backtrack. I entered service with the Peace Corps in July 2008, being assigned to Mali, West Africa. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are given three goals to fulfill while living in our host country: to engage in technical exchange of ideas and knowledge, to inform our hosts about our life back home and outside of our service, and to take what we've learned and bring it back home. This blog was my way of fulfilling the Third Goal, not to mention my way of keeping in touch with everyone at home en masse, and a blueprint for the memoir that I have vague pipe dreams of someday, possibly, thinking about trying to perhaps get around to writing...maybe. For more about my experiences in the Peace Corps, just read any of my earlier entries.

So why have I again picked up the quill to play cultural liaison? Well, it all began like this...

I was bored. I was, aside from a small tutoring gig, unemployed. I was developing an unhealthy habit of Facebook, streaming online movies, and going out drinking with those of my few friends who were still in Philly until 1 or 2 am. I needed to change things up. I had tried job hunting, but between the market being bad, my own standards being admittedly too high, and my own lack of personal oomph, plus the fact that I was living at my parents' house for free and relatively comfortably at that, things were going slowly. Between having no woman, no job, no dog, and only a bottle and a guitar for company, my life was beginning to resemble a country song, and while it might well have been a very good country song, it lacked the romantic quality that those Hank Williams classics portray. Some of you - well, my parents more than anyone, who I know are less than thrilled about this latest frivolous excursion of mine - might be a bit put-off by my candor. I understand that I'm not painting myself in the best light right now, but the truth is, I'm more interested in being honest and frank about my situation, because otherwise I would have to lie for my story make sense, and I'm not about to do that.

Anyway, I was looking for some direction to go in when a friend of mine suggested that I go with him to Sweden to work on an organic farm. It would be through the WWOOF program - World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms - and we would get housed and fed in exchange for labor, and hopefully a fun working experience. Those of you familiar with my previous exploits probably won't be all that surprised that I spent fairly little time thinking about this idea before giving an enthusiastic "Yes!" To be fair, I did carefully weigh all my options and talk with my parents before agreeing. I knew I would be setting myself back in the job search, depleting a good chunk of my savings account, and making myself appear to the casual observer like an aimless itinerant, travel and adventure being my narcotic high of choice. But on the other hand, I wasn't doing a whole lot better for myself back home, and a plethora of nostalgic cliches kept entering my mind: "Youth is wasted on the young"; "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"; "It is regret for the things we didn't do that is inconsolable"; and "Europe is nice this time of year!"

So we made our plans - my friend Matt, his friend Amanda whom I had not yet met save through mutual internet-investigating, and myself. We expanded our plans to include Ireland as well as Sweden, planning to spend two months in the former and three months in the latter. We scoured the WWOOF website, looking for the few organic farms who would host three volunteers for a relatively long period of time. There were a few interesting options: a Viking historical recreation site where workers dress in period garb and live on boats or in huts (I, for one, had taken my fill of living under a grass roof for a while), and an Irish goat farm which provides tourists with the experience of strolling along the nearby scenic cliffs accompanied by goats (nothing else was said about why one would want to be accompanied by goats, so we figured we would keep that option left up to the imagination).

Finally, we found our winners, or rather, they found us. For Sweden, our application was picked up by Rosenhils Tradgard, a combination operation of farm, garden, bed & breakfast, cafe, music venue, and flea market, with apparently quite a bit of experience hosting WWOOFers as well. Our Irish hosts were a bit less...conventional. According to his profile and the email he sent asking us to come out, he is a native Dutchman named Floris Wagemakers who moved to Ireland years ago and started up an organic, mostly self-sustaining falafel stand in the Galway market. He'd never hosted WWOOFers, but he had just moved into a new house and wanted some volunteers to come out and help him realize all of the many ambitions to improve the place that he had in his head.

So we had our plan, we had our assignments, and after going through the usual steps taken when one goes on a five month farming excursion in Ireland (as I asked before, how does one pack light for two seasons of volatile weather?), I made some last minute visits to friends in New York. They were were duly credulous as to what I was doing (Floris what?? Do they even eat falafel in Ireland?? What the hell is a Woof??), and predictably jealous once I explained it.

So we met at the JFK airport, myself and Amanda formally meeting for the first time, and a hop, skip, and a non-stop flight later (since people always ask: I watched "The King's Speech" in-flight...I was not too impressed), we landed in cloudy, misty, 50 degree weather we would soon learn to be typical of the region this time of year.

And here, dear readers, I will leave you. Tune in next time where I fill you in on what life is like as an organic farmer in Ireland, living "Real World"-style in a house with an old friend, a new friend, an even newer Dutch/Irish friend, a pair of youngsters who do not ever seem to run out of energy, and a duck-egg-stealing mutt. And, I answer the one question that's on everybody's mind:
Who Is Floris Wagemakers?

Until then, "Pogue mahone!"