A jump across the ocean

Greetings from a peaceful honeybee farm in Wymondham, England! How’s that for a culture shock from the noisy city streets of Central America? To bring you up to date on our travels, Travis and I are back in Europe. We are at the start of the next “phase” in our year of traveling adventures… no more teaching English or learning Spanish for awhile. Now it’s time to put our hands in the soil, get a little dirty and learn about farm work. For the next few months, Travis and I will be working on a variety of farms in Europe with the organization www.helpx.net as our guide. In exchange for 5-6 hours of our hard work each day, the host farms provide us with food and accommodation. It’s an excellent way to see more of Europe without having to spend money. Although during our weeks we’ll be somewhat isolated on these various small country farms, the weekends will be ours to explore and travel from place to place.

As we’re finishing up our first week of work here, we’re already enthusiastic about the new things we’ve learned how to do (potato planting, trench/sod planting, hedge trimming) and are anxious to see what other tasks are ahead of us. We’ll give you more details of all we’re experiencing in the next blog. But for now, I want to direct you to the following blog, which is a post to close off the Central American phase of our trip, by elaborating on some of the details we didn’t tell you earlier about our home stays there. With another few months of farm/home stays ahead of us, we now know what things we value in these unique opportunities. Typically we appreciate these authentic insights into the places we travel, although they can come with some sacrifices. See below…