Life on the Farm, Yukon-style

One of the things I wanted to get out of this trip was to experience living in as self-sufficient a way as possible, by working as a volunteer on organic farms listed by the WWOOF organisation.

The farm in the Yukon (just outside Dawson City) was pretty remote: you park the car on the side of the road, honk the horn repeatedly, and wait. Eventually John (the farmer) appears on the opposite bank of the Klondike river, and paddles his canoe over to fetch you. Once back on the other side, you walk for 100m or so across what turns out to be a large island, where there is another canoe. This you paddle across the river and up a creek until you reach the farm.

Home while on the farm was the WOOFer cabin that looks out on the creek, very picturesque and very basic - no electricity or running water here! The only shower was a 'solar shower' - a black plastic box with a shower attachment that you filled in the morning and left in the greenhouse all day to heat up. You then hung this from a pole out in the field in the evening and showered 'al fresco'. Lovely view of the surrounding hills, but the insects (and the fear of running out of water) made showering a very quick affair.

The main farmhouse cabin had a hand pump over the sink for water, and a small amount of electricity from a battery that is charged by a solar panel. The water comes from a well dug into the cellar - one of my first jobs was to get into the well and dig it out some more, since the water level had fallen to record lows. Other duties included:

 •  pollinating cucumbers and courgettes with a paintbrush
 •  trimming the suckers from tomato plants
 •  using the chainsaw and axe to chop firewood
 •  lots of weeding
 •  picking strawberries
 •  collecting chicken eggs
 •  collecting chicken shit (for the 'chickenshit tea' fertiliser)
 •  rotorvating (sp?) the soil
 •  mulching with compost
 •  learning about the bear protection measures (i.e. firing some guns)
 •  learning about grafting fruit varieties onto root stock
 •  baking bread
 •  feeding and walking the dogs
 •  doing lots of washing up

I did lots of washing up as Keira - one of the other WWOOFers on the farm - was a vegetarian chef, so we let her do most of the cooking. I can honestly say that food has never tasted so good - freshly picked organic veg and eggs, cooked by somebody who knows what they're doing when it comes to spices and herbs... Delicious.

The brassica vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower etc.) were massive, since there are no real insect pests to speak of up here. There was also something growing here called a 'Romanesque' which I've never seen before - like a fractal broccoli. The soil is rubbish though and sits about three feet above permafrost, which doesn't help. It has taken John many years to get the soil to the quality it is now.

The greenhouses were full of beans, tomatoes, corn, melon, basil, courgettes, peppers, pumpkins etc. The organic pest control in the greenhouse was provided by a few praying mantis', who were proving very effective.

The dogs were great too - they're pets, but they're also working dogs in that their main function is as a very effective bear detection and deterrent system. They weren't terribly obedient though - they were fond of chasing squirrels, and this once meant that I lost two dogs completely while out walking them. The concern wasn't so much that they wouldn't return, but that they would return covered in porcupine quills, which are barbed and a nightmare to remove apparently. Luckily they returned after about four hours intact and without quills.

The creek was pretty quiet most of the time, but in the evening we could see the local beaver doing his rounds - beavers are significantly larger than I'd previously thought.

I learned a huge amount about keeping poultry and growing veg here, as well as how many extra considerations there are when farming in a very cold remote climate. Even in mid-August the temperature at night dropped to -5 on a couple of occasions, the outside plants all needed covering at night, and the greenhouses had their own wood stoves. Also, you couldn't water the plants with water directly from the creek, since it was too cold and would kill them - instead you had to fill all the buckets you could find in the greenhouses, and wait a day or so for the water to heat up.

In total I spent over two weeks on the farm, and loved every second of it.

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