Hinkley ranch trades food for work

HINKLEY • Jordan Rapley traveled nearly 2,000 miles from home to work at the Aquarius Ranch — for free.

Rapley and the Aquarius Ranch are members of World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting organic farms and workers around the world. The Aquarius Ranch and other farms that work with WWOOF give workers housing, food and farming experience in exchange for their labor.

Workers stay anywhere from one weeks to several months at the farms, but the Aquarius Ranch typically hosts them for two weeks, according to ranch owner Penny Harper. WWOOF operates worldwide and has brought people from around the world to the Aquarius Ranch. Rapley came to Hinkley from Minnedosa, Canada, where he works as a tree planter in a reforestation program. Rapley said his job is seasonal, and he uses WWOOF as a way to travel cheaply.

“We’ve had woofers — that’s how they refer to themselves — from Italy, Austria, Scotland, Ireland, Japan you name it,” Harper said. “They come for different reasons. Some woofers are on college break, some lost jobs and some are thinking about starting their own farms one day.”

Harper, who also works as a nurse, said she expanding the ranch and developing an organic food subscription service to service the Barstow area. She said the woofers allow her to continue to expand the ranch without having to hire a staff.

“I became more and more interested in health as I got older and wanted to be able to live somewhere I could grow my own food,” Harper said. “I got a lot of work done early on, but I realized I couldn’t do it all myself. Now the woofers help with the new projects like putting in new gates or working on the root cellar.”

Although the cold has slowed work at the ranch, there is still a lot to do during the winter, according to Harper.

The woofers are currently helping Harper prepare new garden beds and build a superadobe dome that will be used as a root cellar and seed bank. Superadobe construction utilizes bags and tubes filled with a mixture of sand and a small amount of concrete to form walls. Harper said she decided to build a superadobe building because it has a low-impact on the environment and will stay cool year round. The sand for the dome’s walls is left over from the hole dug for it’s foundation, and the bags used are biodegradable, according to Harper. She said the dome should be completed before the spring.

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(760) 256-4126 or dheldreth@desertdispatch.com