KG & Coco B go to Europe: Part 3, WWOOFing

"We live in the big building, also known as 'castle,'" read an
email we received from the Franciscan Milieuproject a couple months before pulling up to the large building in Stoutenberg, the Netherlands. For the next week, Corey and
I would be "working" here in exchange for our room and board. We found the site
through an organization called WWOOF, World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and after scoping out farms in Slovenia, Belgium, Croatia, and the Netherlands, we chose this one. Turns out we were their first WWOOFers--fitting since this was our first WWOOF experience,
too.

Not knowing what exactly to expect, we were warmly welcomed by Carolien on Sunday evening after a long day of traveling. She poured us some fresh tomato soup for dinner and gave us the "quick tour." "If Marco was showing you around, it would take at least two hours," she told us. There are 6 people who live at Castle Stoutenberg throughout the year: Carolien, Marco, Guy, Cocky, and two Afghani refugees, Nadar and Shojan. Unfortunately, we didn't get to know Cocky and Guy very well, as they left for holiday shortly after we arrived. In addition, there was also another WWOOFer who showed up on Sunday--a Berkley grad who had been living in Belgium and Holland for the past year.

We started the week on Monday morning, getting up at the 7:15 bell and meeting outside for morning meditation at 7:30. Each day went, more or less, like this:

7:30 Morning meditation
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Work
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Work
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Siesta
3:00 Coffee/tea break
3:30 Work
5:00 Free time (i.e., cleaning up)
5:30 Silent meditation
6:00 Dinner
9:30 Evening meditation

Work consisted of weeding, planting, weeding, harvesting, weeding, digging, weeding, cleaning, and some more weeding. The garden was fairly large, and they had help from various local volunteers throughout the week. They used the produce to feed themselves and other visiting groups, and anything that was left over was canned or frozen for use in the winter. We became very familiar with a certain invasive weed called heermoes. After a while, we started having contests on who could pull out the longest root. I usually won, with the longest stretching just over 2 feet (though, apparently, they can grow up to 3 meters!). During our week's stay, we harvested asparagus (white and green), strawberries, mustard greens, rhubarb (though Corey would hate to admit it), and various herbs.

Andre and Danielle were right about the weather. It was sunny about 5 minutes of each day. But, since the ingredients were fresh and prepared with such love and care, the food was delicious. Everything was vegetarian--no problem for me, but by the end of the week, Corey was craving some meat. One meal that stands out was an asparagus soup. I have no idea what Carolien put in it--aside from asparagus--but it was absolutely scrumptious. For breakfast and lunch, we generally ate lots of whole-grain bread with a plethora of spreads, schmears, and cheeses. One Dutch favorite is something called Hagelslag, i.e., chocolate sprinkles, which they put on bread and crackers, often on a layer of butter, peanut butter, or honey. It was a little odd, but I couldn't argue with chocolate for breakfast...

Another thing we enjoyed was the scheduled coffee breaks. Despite the feeling that we weren't accomplishing much in the garden by being interrupted by these breaks, we grew to appreciate them. We often had cookies of some kind during the morning break--anise, speculose, stroopwafels, and even chocolate chips. I developed a slight addiction to the stroopwafels, a sort of waffle sandwhich cookie with a gooey, caramel-like substance in the middle. It was a special treat finding them at the market in Utrecht, fresh off the iron.

On Thursday, Corey and I were assigned to cook dinner. Marco joked that we could make anything--even order pizza. Instead, we just decided to make it. Corey and I had brought some wild rice with us from MN as a gift, but decided it would be better if we incorporated this into our meal, playing off of one of our favorite pizzas in Minneapolis, "The Paul Bunyan" from Galactic Pizza. Our version consisted of tomato sauce, mushrooms, onions, arugula, cheese, and, of course, the wild rice. Corey used the other half of the wild rice in a rice salad. Pressed for time (dinner is at 6 sharp--I felt a little bit like we were in Top Chef or something), Corey had the ingenious idea to make lettuce wraps with the wild rice salad, instead of doing two salads altogether. Somewhere in there, Corey also found time to make an apple crisp using muesli for the "crisp." Everything turned out splendidly. They were intrigued by the wraps, and there was only a couple slices of pizza left!