Two years after graduating from college, Vermont native Paul Buttrick found himself with an English degree he couldn’t use in the down economy and stuck in a service job he didn’t enjoy. 

“It was a lot of boring work for not much reward. … I wanted to be young and adaptable and make more out of my experiences,” he said.

Buttrick found the experience he was looking for on Will and Jasper Forrester’s GreenMan Farm — a 1.75-acre plat in Dilworth, tilled and filled to the brim with nearly 100 beds of vegetables, several fruit trees and a small pack of farm animals.

“I feel more accomplished here than a lot of other things I’ve done,” Butterick said.

Buttrick and his friend Dillon Sturtevant, also a recent college grad, found their way to Vashon through a steadily growing international program called Worldwide Opportunities On Organic Farms, or simply WWOOF. Farms in the WWOOF registry offer travelers a place to sleep and meals in exchange for around 20 hours of work a week.

Neither Buttrick nor Sturtevant knew much about farming when they came to Vashon. Just weeks into their stay, though, they seemed to fit right in at GreenMan, shedding their shirts and getting dirty while performing daily tasks around the farm, doing odd jobs for neighbors in the evening and sleeping in a small cabin on the property at night. 

Taking a break from building a rope fence around a vegetable bed one sunny day earlier this month, the two explained why they decided to spend three months working on a Vashon farm for only room and board.

“It’s exciting. … It’s a new type of work in a new type of the country,” Sturevant said, adding that he’s always been interested in learning how to manage a small farm. “Not to farm as a vocation, but to learn how to grow my own food.”

And while some traveling workers — or WWOOFers — get stuck on large farms pulling weeds, he said, the Forresters have given them a true education in return for their work. Aside from being involved with almost every aspect of the farm, the two have constructed a hoop greenhouse and will soon begin work on an earthen oven. 

“Jasper spends a lot of time with us. … We know why we’re doing something; we’re not just doing it, which is important,” Sturtevant said.

Joining the young men during their break, Will Forrester brought out a photo album he has kept of the WWOOFers who have stayed at his farm over the past few years.

“They’re great. I can’t stop praising them,” he said as he flipped through the book, telling about each WWOOFer. One young man went on to start a community garden in Columbus, Ohio; a college student changed his major to study sustainable agriculture after staying at GreenMan, and a Scottish man returned home to begin growing all his own food.

“That’s what you do when you don’t have kids,” Forrester said. “You keep an album of your WWOOFers.”

WWOOF, originally called Working Weekends on Organic Farms, began in England in the 1970s as a way to give city dwellers short experiences working in the countryside. Today at least 50 countries have WWOOF organizations that provide listings of farms interested in temporary workers. A handful of Island farms participate, some taking on several at a time during the growing season.

“We are thrilled with this program,” said Joanne Jewell, who owns Plum Forest Farm with her husband Rob Peterson. The couple travelled the world when they were younger, Jewell said, and wanted to help others have similar experiences. In the last few years, they have hosted nearly 20 WWOOFers.

“We wanted to bring people from other counties here to have the exposure to other cultures and the adventure of it all while we’re at home,” she said. “It’s a really good way for them to connect to the U.S.”

At Plum Forest, WWOOFers work alongside the farm’s seasonal interns, but stay for just a few weeks and have less responsibility.

“They’re not as committed as the interns, but since they’re here for a shorter time, they often have a little more energy,” Jewell said. “They often give a burst of fresh air when they come, and it’s fun to have a new person.”

WWOOFing is a loose term, Buttrick admitted. Some have a genuine interest in farming and some simply want to travel. He said he and Stuevant seem to have the best of both worlds on Vashon. They’ve enjoying getting to know the Island and taking weekend trips to Seattle, and they’ve also reaffirmed their interest in sustainable farming by learning how farms play a role in Vashon’s community. They’ve even been welcomed into the Island’s young farming community by participating in a new program called Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training, or CRAFT, where young farmers, interns and even WWOOFers gather at a different farm each month to learn about what that farm is doing and work together on a project.

“(The country is) slowly moving toward more local and regional food production. … A lot of these farmers are ahead of the ball in some way,” Buttrick said. “I’m trying to get a jump on where I see the world needing to go in 10 to 20 years.”

While young people from around the world are participating in Vashon’s farming community through WWOOF, some from Vashon have used the program as an opportunity for their own travel and learning.

When Islander Christian Hasson heard about WWOOFing from his friend Dominick Wolczko, who WWOOFed in New Zealand, it sounded like exactly what he was looking for. 

The 2010 Vashon High School graduate spent several months at Western Washington University but soon decided college wasn’t right for him yet. He said he was drawn to WWOOFing because he’s always wanted to travel cheaply, cares deeply about the environment and is interested in sustainable farming. Ultimately he chose to WWOOF in New Zealand like Wolczko.

“I did a lot of research and realized it’s like paradise on earth,” he said.

Hasson feels he will be taking a risk when he begins a several month WWOOFing tour of New Zealand. But it’s a risk he believes will pay off in the end.

“It’s going to be good for me to learn how to live sustainably on my own. …. and I’ve been wanting to get out of America,” he said. “To finally be able to do that is a dream come true, to put life in my own hands.”