What is WWOOF? Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. It is a worldwide movement with organic farmers who promote a cultural and educational exchange and build a global community conscious of ecological farming and sustainability practices.

WWOOF started 50 years ago and has grown from a small group in the 1970s to a worldwide community of hundreds of thousands of people today.

As a WWOOFer, you will participate in the daily life of your host, help on the farm, learn about sustainability, experience a new culture, meet new people, and receive free room and board during your stay.

WWOOFers spend their days living with the host family and learning about agro-ecological and sustainable farming methods through first-hand experience, with no money exchanged between hosts and WWOOFers.

As a member of WWOOF UK, you will be able to contact host farms in the UK and arrange WWOOF stays anywhere from a day, a weekend to a year if you like. Membership is valid for one year from the day you join. You can find more info here: https://wwoof.net/

So, now you have an idea what WWOOFing means, don’t you?

I travelled to the farm called Berrington Hall near Shrewsbury with my son Lucas and our bunny Louige this past Easter holiday and stayed two weeks. Although the journey was about 5 hours long and with some delays, combination of bus/train/underground – we managed it well!

This was our third WWOOFing experience. We went with the intention of learning gardening and foraging skills, spending time outside and also taking a break from the online world.

There was a variety of jobs to do depending on our skills and what we enjoyed doing. We did some seed planting, weeding, watering plants, preparing compost, digging, harvesting, cooking, washing dishes and even willow coppicing.  Usually, two people got together and cooked dinner on a wood-burning stove.

Everything from the beautiful setting, the house members, and their pantry was great! I have never seen a pantry like that before! It was like a health food shop. I loved it!

The tasks set were not overwhelming, and we had time to exe

rcise every morning and go for walks in the abundant gardens. Also, we took a bus trip to a nearby town of Shrewsbury and borrowed bikes to cycle in the countryside.

Spending a day, a week or more on a farm will change the way you see food. Food becomes a reward, not just something that comes from a supermarket. You can see here how daily care for plants is essential for producing a quality, healthy and delicious product. You might more likely waste less and eat a greater variety of foods.

WWOOFing is a great opportunity for yourself, your partner or your children to have an adventurous and free holiday where you make great memories. We certainly did and already have booked another adventure at the end of this month.

I can highly recommend it to you too! If you want to get a digital detox, meet like-minded people and gain knowledge of organic gardening then why not try WWOOFing as your next holiday!

The post I love WWOOFing! appeared first on Lenka Pagan.

As you may already know, I grew up in the Czech Republic and every year my son Lucas (7) and I visit for our summer holiday. Usually we travel by plane, but this year we decided to travel by Czech coach – Regiojet by Student Agency.

We were a couple of hours late leaving London – after 1pm instead of 11am – due to a cycling event, arriving in Prague just after 10am, instead of 6.30am, the next morning, Monday 31 July.

The journey wasn’t too bad despite the long delay as we met some friendly people to chat with and each seat had a tablet fixed to the headrest in front with a good selection of movies, music and games. You could also get a free tea or coffee or buy some refreshments from the steward/ess on the couch. Lucas wasn’t the only child on the bus, there was another boy, also called Lukas, who was also 7! The two boys got along well.

Once we had arrived in Prague our first stop was an Italian Pizzeria, in Cerny Most, where we had a lovely vegan pizza. We took another bus journey, only 75 minutes this time, to my hometown, Novy Bydzov.

In the afternoon, we visited friends and relatives and in the evening, we visited an organic farm,  http://www.kralickovabiozelenina.cz/ where I bought some fresh  produce and booked horse riding for next day with a lovely lady Zuza, my friend and one of the hardest working woman on this organic farm.

The next morning, Tuesday 1 August 2017, was a beautiful sunny day so we went horse riding in the countryside. It was amazing and we’ll certainly do whenever we are back in my hometown from now on. I can highly recommend Zuza’s high-quality service – she is such a professional and a very friendly person.  

We also tested that Yoga can be done anywhere and tried some poses on the horses!

After horse riding we went on another journey – over 3 hours this time by train, to the recreational area Dolce, http://www.kemp-dolce.cz/ where we’d hired a tent. It’s located in the quiet countryside, in the foothills of the Giant Mountains (Krkonose), 4km from the town of Trutnov.

There was no air conditioning on the train – it was about 37C – not the best weather for travelling and too hot for us!  To pass the time Lucas did some more yoga poses.

The first thing we did after arriving at the camp, was to change into our swimsuits and jump into the lake. Afterwards we had dinner in the camp restaurant.

The next day, Wednesday,  we had a simple breakfast of organic apple and mango puree (a kind of baby food) with bananas. All the foods mentioned here and more you can see pictured on my FB page, the link is provided at the end of this article.

We then went to catch a bus to go on our first trip to Adrspach-Teplice Rocks, which was about an hour away. Unfortunately, there were not many buses running during the summer holidays, so we ended up walking 2km to the nearest village, Volanov, and waited for a bus there. During the walk we stopped and took a few pictures of the lovely countryside.

Due to the bad bus connections, we decided to postpone our trip to the rocks for another day and explore the nearest town Trutnov instead.  And did a bit of shopping too.

After we bought our favourite unhealthy vegan treat, strawberry ice cream. We always have this every summer when visiting back home and it is probably the nation’s the most favourite ice cream as well.

We also stocked up on healthy and organic foods at Mates in Trutnov and my other favourite store DM, where you can find organic, vegan, natural non-perishable foods and toiletries. I so love this store as it reminds me kind of a mini Waitrose, my other favourite store in the UK.

Here you can see our organic (bio) breakfast to which we added some fruits such as banana and blueberries.

We were given some freshly picked blueberries by our new camp neighbours, Lenka (yes, the same name as mine ) and her family picked from the nearby forest.

Our first organic dinner at the camp was pasta with tomato ketchup and soya sausage. We ate outside of the tent. It was so lovely that we ate every meal like this. 

If we’d had a car then we would have been able to do a bigger shop and get more fresh produce, but unfortunately there were no local shops. The camp was about 4km away from the nearest town, so we had to go with the flow, buy what I could carry and make the best of the weather and accommodation. I think for our first time glamping, we didn’t do too bad! 

In the evening we met some more friendly neighbours in the camp and stayed up late chatting.

On Thursday we wanted to try again to go on a trip to the Rocks, but we ended up staying in the camp as we were quite tired from all the walking and travelling of the previous few days. 

Since it was very hot, even in the morning, we went swimming in the lake with our new neighbours.  Here you can see our simple lunch of wholemeal bread with mushroom pate with cucumbers.

We had rain on Thursday afternoon for a couple of hours so we all had a nap or at least tried to.  In the evening, we went for a walk to explore the other side of our camp.

Below is a photo of Lenka, my neighbour and new friend, with her two daughters, doing some chair yoga at the camp’s playground. 

We also found a mushroom which ended up in our dinner later that day – vegetable spelt risotto with soya sausage. 

On Friday we had an early start as we really wanted to go the Rocks this time, but you would not believe it –  we never got there! We even took a taxi to the town this time, as there were no buses. And guess what! The taxi was about 15 minutes late so we missed the train!

So, what to do now? We quickly came up with another plan, thanks to the lady working in the train station, and took the next train to a completely different direction, Ceska Skalice which was about 45 minutes train journey away and about 2km of forest walk to Ratiborice, the place where our national writer of the most beautiful and popular childrens books spent her childhood.

What we found along the way! A little deer, a little snake, a black beetle and even a green dragonfly, the colour of which I have never seen before. I also did a little yoga in the forest.

Finally, we arrived in Ratiborice where we stopped for a refreshing home-made lemonade before continuing on our journey. We visited the famous statue in Babiccino udoli in Ratiborice of the writer Bozena Nemcova. 

Further on we visited a water mill which had the original furniture and household items that would have been used in her lifetime. Our next and last stop was Ratiborice castle before getting a lift back to our camp. 

When we got back we had our last simple dinner at the camp – organic wholemeal pasta with ketchup and carrots (pictured), which we got from our neighbour Lenka’s garden. By the way, Lucas did the little flower arrangement on the table. 

Saturday morning we are saying goodbye to our friend Lenka and her family as they were going home, as was our other neighbour Misa and her family.  We all had a wonderful time and promised to stay in touch and hopefully meet again next year. 

Then we went for another adventure, which was amazing! I will share it with you next week

Please click here  to view the rest of the pictures from our holiday.

Next week: Our Summer Holiday in the Czech Republic – Part 2.

The post Our Summer Holiday in the Czech Republic – Part 1. appeared first on Lenka Pagan.

 
Pesticides and their impact on our health

If you’ve read my story, you will know that I used to live on an unhealthy diet, and unfortunately I paid a high price – I became very ill and nearly lost my life. It was whilst I was in hospital that I promised myself that I’d better look after my health from now on and that I never wanted to end up ill again… that was over 13 years ago and I have kept my promise.

Feeding our body with healthy foods is an important factor in leading a healthy life. However, many people are still confused as to what ‘healthy’ food is.

When it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables, they are not only tasty but also packed with live enzymes, vitamins, minerals and fibre to nourish your body. They are essential to our health as they strengthen our immune system thus protecting us against many diseases.

Unfortunately, they can also contain toxins such as herbicides, pesticides or fungicides that are harmful to our health. Our internal organs, such as our liver must work harder to expel those toxins.

Pesticides are bad for your nervous system and can increase the risk of cancer and chronic diseases. Even at low doses, there is an increased risk of becoming overweight and obese. This is due to the hormone disruptors which affect our natural weight-loss chemistry. Pesticides also interfere with the body’s metabolism of vitamin D – they prevent the body from absorbing it properly.

Every year, hundreds of tonnes of toxic pesticides are used in our streets, parks, schools and the open spaces of our towns and cities.

I wanted to know what UK supermarkets were doing about pesticide problems. After a little research, I found this from the Pesticide Action Network UK website:

What we found

Our assessment clearly shows three companies doing the most to address different issues of concern on pesticide use and contamination of food: The Co-operative; Marks & Spencer; and Sainsbury’s. At the other end, Aldi, Lidl and Morrison’s appear to be doing nothing. In the middle, Asda, Somerfield, Tesco and Waitrose are making some efforts but could go a lot further, particularly on removing specific hazardous pesticides from use and reducing residues in their food.

You can read more here http://www.pan-uk.org/supermarkets/what-are-uk-supermarkets-doing-about-pesticide-problems

A newly published American study found that those exposed to pesticides are more likely to develop food allergies. Dr Elina Jeschow, author of this scientific study, also claims that food allergies and environmental allergies are increasing significantly.

“Our research shows that high levels of dichlorophenol-containing pesticides can possibly weaken food tolerance in some people, causing food allergy”. Dr. Jeschow

Dichlorophenol is a chemical used in pesticides and weed killers and is present in chlorinated tap water.

So, choose to filter your water! I use bamboo charcoal filters and even use filtered water for cooking.

It is scary what pesticides can do, isn’t it? But don’t worry, there is always a solution to every issue. To minimise your exposure to those toxins, choose to consume a pesticide-free food – organic food.

Eating organic foods is not a luxury – it is how our ancestors used to eat until profit became more important and big business. Harmful pesticides were introduced to increase the profits of these large companies.

Recent research has suggested that the chemicals used in pesticides can even harm the healthy development of children.

Organic food is better for your health and our environment. Choose organic to ensure that your children have a healthier future and help to save our planet!

Next week: I’ll share the top 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables…

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