Wwoofers Again

We have spent the past week WWOOFing for a completely crazy woman. We decided that it would be very beneficial to us to have a home, as it were, for a little while, so we could have some time to clean out the car, organize our things, and prepare for our departure. (I absolutely HATE feeling stressed and frazzled and unprepared when I’m leaving a place, and so wanted our last week here to feel CALM.)

Simone Finch, our new WWOOFing “hostess” (though I can’t really call her that) is probably 55 or 60 and lives alone on a huge farm. She breeds and trains horses as her main source of income, and has a little company called Sirroco Lodge. In addition to having about 14 horses of her own, she has a goat, two dogs, and a few cows.

We were a little unsure about ole Simone from the start. She had called us in response to an email we had sent her, but seemed to be in a big hurry on the phone. She said she’d love to have us, we accepted, and then she said she had to run, but she’d call us back “later” with some directions and details. Well, that call never came, so we finally called her again, a day before our supposed arrival, wanting to know what time we should come. “Oh, I have nothing going on here tomorrow. I’ll be here all day,” she said. “Come whenever you like.” Great, we said. We’ll be there around noon.

Well, we arrived around 12:40 PM, which I reckon still counts as “around noon”, but Simone was nowhere to be found. We found the house, we thought, a large barn-like structure with aluminum siding, and could hear rock music blaring from inside, but we couldn’t get anyone to respond to our knocks. Finally, we called her cell. “Oh, I had to run into town,” she said. “I’ll be there in 20 minutes”. So we sat in our car and waited. For over an hour. We were starting to feel, well, slightly unwanted.

Simone finally pulled up in a silver pick-up truck, decorated with a yellow smiley face bumper sticker, and one that said, “If there are no horses in heaven, I’m not going!” Our hostess emerged, all smiles and energy. “Well, I waited AND waited for you guys, but I finally gave up and went into town.” Oh, so you waited for…thirty minutes? And now you’re going to make us feel guilty about being a little bit late even when you said come WHENEVER!? “But nevermind,” she said. “Let’s go in and have a cuppa!” (“Cuppa” is an incredibly irritating Kiwi favorite phrase that means a cup of coffee or of tea. I thought it was just a colloquial thing, but I actually heard a newscaster use it in a story on the local news the other day.)

Simone is a fairly tall woman with stick thin legs and large bosoms. She has short hair that’s been dyed an unnatural red, and her face is lined with deep wrinkles that suggest a past (or current?) life as a smoker. Her home is essentially a barn that’s been converted into a single woman’s loft. The ceilings are quite tall, and the living area, though fairly small, is sort of one big room, so you get the effect of having lots of space. Simone’s been living here about three years, but it’s clear the place is a work in progress – there is no paint on the walls. The place is decorated with – what else? – photos and paintings and figurines of horses, as well as piece of aboriginal art collected during trips to Australia, and stacks and stacks of miscellaneous papers.

Within our first ten minutes in her home, Simone had informed us that she was dating a married man. “He just needs to figure out what he wants, you know?” she asked us. “Men!” I said, trying to be polite. She went on to tell us about Thursday nights at the local pub – the big night out! – as well as her boat, which she would take us out on, if we were lucky.

She asked us how long we wanted to stay, and after re-stating what was written in our initial email to her – one week – she seemed very disappointed. “Just a week?!” Good grief, I thought. She didn’t even read our email.

That afternoon, during a small break in the rain, she took us out for a ride around her property, introducing us to all the animals. Then, we went down to the stables and saddled up one of her ponies. During his stint in the Swedish Army, Bjorn rode the show horses that marched in the parades, and generally took care of the horses, tidying their stables and whatnot. When she had initially called us, she’d asked about our riding experience. Bjorn explained that he was a pretty confident rider, though perhaps a little rough, and that I essentially had no experience at all. No problem, she’d assured us. But it appeared that her plan for Bjorn and I was for Bjorn to break in this pony and for me to stand and watch.

Of course, Bjorn’s being a confident rider says nothing of his ability to break in a previously un-ridden horse, and Simone was not impressed with Bjorn that first day. My feelings were terribly hurt, standing there watching her order Bjorn around – take the horse this way! No, not THIS way, THAT way! STRAIGHT! The poor pony, of course, hadn’t been sat upon in weeks, didn’t remember what any of the commands were, and generally did not want Bjorn riding on him. “This isn’t going to work,” Simone said. “You just don’t have enough experience. The horse might as well have a child up there on him.” I wanted to cry for Bjorn. Thank God it was Bjorn up there and not me, or I probably would’ve cried. Bjorn, luckily, is a bit more thick skinned, and lets stuff like this roll off of him a bit better than I do.

When we were done with that, we were shown to our “accommodation”, an old caravan parked behind the house. Upon inspection, we found the caravan doable, though it was clear that Simone had gone to no trouble to prepare it for us. There were no sheets or blankets on the bed, and there were several empty cans of some nasty Bourbon and Coke mixed drink laying on the counter, one with a cigarette butt sitting on top. When we asked for sheets, Simone seemed slightly agitated, poked around the house a bit, then returned with a set of red sheets – two fitted sheets, we found out, when we tried to put them on the bed. And no blankets. We decided not even to bother asking for those and just got our sleeping bags out of the car.

We sat in the damp and dusty caravan, and I felt terribly uncomfortable with the whole situation. She didn’t appear to take her hosting responsibilities very seriously, she had been mean to Bjorn, and she had asked me my name four times already. Well, it’s only for a week, we reasoned.

Simone did fix us dinner that night and showed us some pictures of her boat, and generally made us feel slightly more wanted and welcome in her home. Before we went to bed, she reminded us that the next night was karoke night at the pub!