There are times when life deals you a winning hand — you are young, smart, energetic, charming, reasonably hygienic and literate, etc., and you also have saved up enough to go to Europe for the summer to farm.

Right.  So things can be good.  You have a royal flush, you are kicking ass and taking names, you are peering out from behind your unstylish reflective professional-poker-style sunglasses and sizing up your truly unworthy opponents and counting up just how many gallon-sized margaritas and hot dates with gorgeous men in fast cars you can buy with your winnings.

But then life hands you a 2, a 4, a 6, a 9, and the deck’s instruction card.  With a pile of poop on top of it.  And if you’re like me, you grit your teeth and let your pride just RAGE, sister, high stress levels and general mental and emotional well-being be damned, as you let the betting soar higher and higher until you have given up one and a half kidneys and your mother and your last piece of chewing gum, just because you refuse to fold already.  No, you are in this for the long haul because you saw “Rudy” and “Hoosiers” and you know that QUITTING IS FOR LOSERS!  LOSERS!  QUITTING IS UNAMERICAN AND YOU SHOULD DO EVERYTHING YOU EVER TRY FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN EVEN IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL AND IT GIVES YOU STRESS ULCERS!  HELL, YOU SHOULD DO THE ENTIRE FARM WITH ONE LEG TIED BEHIND YOUR BACK AND WHILE INFECTED WITH CHRONIC S.A.R.S., SURVIVING ON ONLY WOLVERINES AND WILD BOARS YOU KILL IN THE FOREST WITH A STICK YOU WHITTLED DOWN TO A POINT WITH A LITTLE RED PLASTIC MCDONALD’S KNIFE AND HOLY CRAP WHY AM I YELLING?

<pause while Dani regains her shit>

Anyhow.  Just when you are staring at your cards and wondering if it’s time to just end it all with a nicely sharpened poker chip, there is that voice of reason (and on this trip, that voice usually belongs to Molly) that says, “Um, perhaps it’s time to leave???”  At which point you slap your hand down, toss back your whiskey and slap the lounge singer on the back and high five all the loose women watching your game and yell, “Hot diggity!  I’m going to effing Barcelona!  Later, suckers!”

Work ethics can be good and all, but quitting can be DIVINE. Schedules and budgets and plans be damned.

So.  To the point: we left Spain, as we have noted.  And now, the story of all that.

Alarm bells started ringing at the Spain farm when the first phrases out of Josep’s (the host’s) mouth were:

“Whenever you want to leave, you can.”
“It is not that clean; we live with the cows.”
“Do you think you can survive for three weeks here?”

But whatever.  We had been working really hard for a month and a half at that point and were still going strong.  “Survive”?  Hell!  We were BADASSES.

But then the alarm bells grew louder when we noted that, when Josep talked, he only addressed our chests or thighs.  Nice.  (I swear I am not exaggerating here.  On about our third day there, I turned to Molly and said, “You know, I mean, I really don’t want to accuse him of something nasty, but…”  “YES HE DOES.  HE MOST CERTAINLY STARES AT MY CHEST.  YOU TOO?” said Molly.)  EVERY DAMN TIME HE TALKED TO US.  HOLY GOD.  IT WAS REALLY DIRTY-FEELING.  AGH!  AAAAAGH!  AAAAAAAGH! <hyperventilates>  So OK, we’re badasses with pipes and skills and all, but come on.  We have dignity, too.

The alarm exploded when (a) Danielle was having homicidal urges towards Alex, our fellow WWOOFer, an 18-year-old snotty twig of a French boy who we fittingly dubbed “Frenchy” and (b) Molly was having homicidal urges toward whoever invented hay bales.

So here’s the deal with Frenchy: he didn’t want girls in his clubhouse.  Neither did Josep, actually.  We were actually excited to meet Frenchy when we got there…to have a sort of little brother or comrade in arms or whathaveyou.  We were our sweet little Midwestern selves…but to no avail.  City boy Frenchy had been there for two weeks before us, meaning that (despite the fact that we both could have dropped him like fourth-period Home-Ec.) he considered himself our de facto boss.  Furthermore, during his two weeks he had formed an unlikely yet strong bond with Josep.  I say “unlikely” because Frenchy was a rich kid from Paris with a father who was some sort of petroleum mogul…whereas Josep was an ape, except with slightly better motor skills (I’ll cover this later).

So they had this weird “father-son” thing going, where Frenchy would do his little weenie run after Josep EVERYWHERE JOSEP WENT, even when it wasn’t technically “work time.”  Now, this was all merely irritating and actually occasionally funny, and everything would have been fine, except Josep would only give the directions for our jobs in VERY hurried Spanish to Frenchy, who would understand but NOT TELL US unless we WRESTLED HIM TO THE GROUND, TOOK HIS LUNCH MONEY AND BEAT IT OUT OF HIM WITH A CATTLE PROD.  And then when we didn’t go help them, I felt all guilty and awful, but what the hell could I do?  So there goes Josep in a tractor, there goes Alex, skipping off into the distance, and there we are, running and yelling after them in broken Spanish, “HEY!!!  WHERE YA GOIN’?”  After a few days, Frenchy even started sneaking off to do the work without telling us what it was, so that we couldn’t ask, and then we would be the bad guys for not doing it.  I am not making this up.

Problems mounted.  One day I heard Josep and Frenchy talking about us (derogatorily, of course) in Spanish, and though I didn’t catch it all, I did definitely catch that they referred to Molly only as “la morena” (the brunette).  And it occurred to me that they never actually addressed us directly either.  After a bit of discussion and a day or two of observation, we became pretty sure that they didn’t know our names.

Frenchy started following me around during shit-scooping time, re-scraping the concrete after I finished it, just to be a little assface and show me that CLEARLY I wasn’t cleaning the shit well enough, that CLEARLY it needed to be BLEACHED AND SANDED AND BUFFED SO THAT IT WOULD BE SANITARY FOR THAT NIGHT, WHEN THE COWS WOULD SHIT ON IT AGAIN.  Furthermore, he complained about our supposed lack of cleaning skills to Josep, IN FRONT OF US.  Then they would have a hearty laugh.  Little frenchy tattletale bastard.

So one day I was lifting a particularly heavy hay bale up to Molly (a task that was difficult for Frenchy, the little turd), and Frenchy bodily brushed me aside and insisted on doing it.  “No, no, I will do,” he says, shoving his pointy and weenie little elbow in my face.  At which point I, in immature and petulant retaliation, decided I had had enough and let my bad “BOYS SUCK!” G.I. Jane side come out and I wanted to do it myself so I sort of maybe body-checked him aside.  Like, hard.  Oops.

Not coincidentally, this was also the moment that Frenchy hit puberty.

Of course, we tried to enjoy ourselves.  For example, in the grand tradition of the hoo-la game, we had a new game in Spain.  Mainly it involved going on long, high-pitched rants about the joys of being French.  To wit:

“Ooh!  Look at me!  I’m French!  I’m from France!  Lalala!  I like baguettes and brie and bordeaux!  Lalala!  Ooh!  Look at me!  My language sounds funny and I’m SOOOOO proud of it!  I like my political leaders to have very visible private lives!  Ooh!  Lalala!  Look at me!  I’m anti-Semitic!  And I hate immigration!  And my military is worthless!  Ooh!”

It wasn’t that REWARDING of a game or anything…

Anyhow.  Frenchy’s idol for the month of July had been Josep.  I earlier described Josep as an “ape,” but upon further discussion, we have decided that he reminded us more of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies; for one thing, Josep was a small, wiry fellow…and for another…well, do you remember that scene in LotR when Gollum captures a fish, beats it against a rock, then slobberingly chomps into it?  Well, that really is how Josep ate, and I’m not exaggerating here (OK, his food was usually dead when he got it, but bear with me).  Meals were profoundly uncomfortable because food would FLY when this man ate.  He did not take food; he snatched.  No, he SNATCHED.  All caps.  He STABBED.  He would take a piece of bread, grip it in his slimy little hands, tear it in two, and leave one now-appetizingly-smushed half in the basket for the rest of us to fight over (Frenchy usually snuck this piece off to his bedroom and slept with it, sighing dreamily all the while).  Josep would even put his face down to his plate to slurp up the dregs of the dressing/sauce/etc. when his food was gone.  I am still not making this up.

Josep also liked to just talk down to us…for example, he thought it was very funny that we wore work gloves; this made us “city girls.”  And furthermore, no matter what we were doing or how hard we were doing it, he would leer knowingly (in the direction of our breasts, of course) and say, “You are tired?  You are so tired now?”

I note here that this sort of thing NEVER happened over in the boys’ clubhouse.

OK, even typing this is giving me major stress issues.  Suffice it to say that one day — as Frenchy re-cleaned for AN HOUR after we had finished shit-scooping and then snuck away to do whatever — I was close to tears and bravely soldiering on as Molly and I unloaded a trailer of firewood.  Molly, sensing my discomfort and having nearly lost her shit herself that morning when she dropped a peanut M&M on the floor, thus rendering it likely-contaminated-with-cow-feces, said, “Um, we can go early, you know…”

Fortunately, Molly never saw “Rudy.”

So now we are in Barcelona and having the best time ever.  Sangria and paella for everyone!  Yes!  And those seemingly superfluous dresses we packed?  Aw, yeah.  We look good.

——————–

Anyhow.  The point here is this:

<enter sweeping chorus of violins>

It’s the people that make WWOOFing worth it.  It’s not the hefty pay, the oodles of easy men at our doorsteps, the glamour, or the workload.  It’s the people.

<chorus swells>

Sure, making horse fences and cutting lavender and shoveling cow shit are all lots of fun, but it’s your companions — your happy, tight-knit, temporary family of hosts (Anika still ROCKS), host family members, and co-WWOOFers that truly make it a memorable experience.  You can shovel shit anywhere, after all (well, I mean, maybe not ANYwhere…).

<add timpani and Mormon Tabernacle Choir>

But only friendly, flexible, colorful, open cohorts will allow you to one day look down from your old, creaky rocking chair and past your old, creaky knees to the expectant and rosy faces of your grandchildren and say with true, wistful nostalgia:

“Our farm in Spain was populated by dickheads.”

And you, my friend, will sincerely mean it.