WWOOF'ing It

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a very strange feeling to have one of your kids so far away from you. Well, let’s be honest. It’s a strange feeling to have your kids out of your sight at all. But I’m talking far, far away. Like, another country type of far away.  

On Monday, Braedon flew to Ireland. Not with a group, or even with a companion. Just completely by himself. It was part of his graduation gift, going to Ireland and beyond. He will spend two weeks Wwoof’ing in Ireland, and then head to France before he catches a plane to Spain to see his best-friend-since-childhood who is now in the Navy and stationed there as a medic in a hospital on a Marine base.  

Oh, what is Wwoof’ing? Let me explain. It stands for World Wide Organization of Organic Farming. So let me back up a little.  

The first time we had ever heard of Wwoof’ing was right here on Idle Acres Farm. It’s a unique type of internship, where a farm owner hosts folks from anywhere in the world to stay on the farm and learn a trade. The Wwoofers don’t get paid; however, they stay on the farm for free, have meals provided to them, and learn beautiful things about the way our planet works in an agricultural sense. It’s not about free labor. It’s the furthest thing from it. It is a farm owner’s chance to share with others the thing about the world they love the most. It’s their chance to prove to others that they are doing something to change the world and that they want to help others to do the same. Some of the Wwoofers that Idle Acres has hosted in the past have remained friends of the family for many years now, and though they have gone on to do magnificent things in the world both personally and professionally, the connection they have to this farm and to us as individuals remains.  

Now, backtracking a little. A couple years ago, after I graduated from Kennesaw State’s MAPW program, I said to my wife, “I owe you guys more than I could ever repay. But I’ll try. Pick a vacation destination and we will go there.”  

With extreme naivety, I expected her to say the Gulf side of Florida or maybe skiing in Colorado. But there was no hesitation. “Ireland,” she said. And I said, “That far away, eh?” I was thinking about a really long flight when I hate flying. I was thinking about the expense of it, and I was thinking about how I was going to handle driving on the wrong side off the friggin’ road. But then we started planning it and I thought, “Hey, I could play golf on a course that is over 100 years old!” “Hey, we could see the Cliffs of Moher!” So I did… both of those.  

But those aren’t the things that I remember most. What sticks with me is our family being wholly together in what is quite possibly the most beautiful country in the world. For 10 days, not one smile faded, even when the Guinness flowed probably a little too heavily. For 10 days, there was bliss, there was magic, there were the Aran Islands and churches 2000 years old. We knelt at their weather-beaten altars. You can’t stand there and not do it. The power is just that real. There were sunsets behind castles and pubs spilling music. There were brutal games of Frisbee and nights under stars that seemed so close it was as if you could actually hold the handle of The Big Dipper. There were bike rides and kayaks and buskers singing in Gaelic. There was Saint Brigid’s well where I left a photograph of my late father in the hopes that Saint Brigid would bless his everlasting soul not in the holy sense, but simply because I felt her power and the blessings of her water. I touched the water in her well and, with a rosary in hand, crossed myself. I’m not even Catholic, but religion has no place in the waters of a saint. It’s just a silly title that we hang on things.  

And that is where Breadon is now. After that trip, someone in the family got the idea that he should go Wwoofing in Ireland when he graduated. I don’t remember who, but it doesn’t matter. He is in Ireland learning Irish gardening and standing on the grounds of the holiest of the holies. But more importantly, he is out there, at 18, and he is living. He is living his life one passport stamp at a time, and were it not for my pride in – and love for – him, I’d be raging with jealousy.  

But I never thought of the connection between what he is doing right now in Ireland and what occurs at Idle Acres Farm until I sat down to write this. I had just planned on writing about him in Ireland and explaining what Wwoofing was. It never occurred to me that, because of these 13 random acres in TheMiddleOfNowhere, North Carolina, our son is out there experiencing the world in a way he wouldn’t otherwise have. In a way his mother and I never have. In a way that I and so many others have only dreamed about. And here we are, sitting right in the very spot where it all began while he is there in Ireland. How did it happen that these 13 acres have spread so far, across continents and oceans and centuries of emotional history?  

There is no answer to that.  

But I will say this. God bless you Braedon Craig for not being afraid to live a little. I’ve been learning from you every day for eleven years now, and you always find a way to amaze me yet again. Soak in Ireland for be, bub. I wish I was there with you, but I’d just hold you back. You’re pretty amazing all on your own. I’ll just sit here on the farm where the ideas began and feel as close to you as maritime will allow, hoping the connections between land and dreams never fade.