Okanagan Girls.....hiking boots, headbands on top

Anna, clearly shovelling well from the look of the rock free trench

Hiding from the farmer to avoid any heavy lifting

Okanagan Angels?

We woke bright and early for our first day our willing workerness and were set loose on the squash field, we were told that we were to do 5 hours, Monday to Friday, and 2 and a half hours on Saturdays, which to be honest was quite a relief as we had learnt that the boys had to wake up a 6am and have been working 8-10 hour days, with very few days off. Our job was to weed the fields, and dig holes; it was blissful when looking back on it now. We spent 2 days in the the field, proudly digging our holes, laughing and joking and me playfully throwing soil at Anna. Well it wasn’t quite like that, I’m pretty sure Anna wasn’t really enjoying my soil flinging and it wasn’t exactly playful, it was accidental. Although I don’t really like to compare myself to a dog, my digging did somewhat resemble a mucky puppy flinging mud everywhere so as to dig a perfect hole for bone to be buried in, and Anna was just a victim of my mess, with flakes of soil being swept up into her mouth and up her nose.

Those two days really were wonderful, but I may just be suffering from a case of false nostalgic feelings? The next day we were taken away on the back of a truck, to a far, far land where the evil quad bike driving slave driver Craig controlled our work. In actual fact we were taken up the neighbouring hill, where Craig the beer-bellied farmer got us to help with the construction of the vineyard. Anyone who knows Anna and I, should fully well know we are not very strong, Craig, clearly did not know this, and set us and the Taiwanese girls about moving HEAVY pipes, in and out of 4 foot deep trenches and shovelling boulders. My shovel very quickly for taken from me, and I was told to use my hands as I ‘clearly wasn’t getting anywhere with it’. No longer were we finishing at 2, and no longer were we blissful, but surprisingly our moaning was quite minimal (lies) , especially as we are English, and moaning is what we do. We were never returned to the squash field, and although we felt we were being overworked we ended up having a great time.

A fellow English girl joined our troop of wwoofers, Emma. She had come from doing a study abroad in Edmonton, and being amongst North Americans for such a long time, who don’t quite get the loveable British sarcastic humour, she unleashed a reign of sarcastic snippets which made our working days much more amusing. It was either her being very funny, or the fact that we were breathing in industrial grade primer and glue but we became prone to laughing fits which prevented us from doing any job quickly and efficiently.

Being women of the 20^th century, we all felt we should keep up every effort to keep up with the boys, but in honest fact we A. could not be bothered, and B. even if we could be bothered, it wouldn’t matter because they are stronger than us. Wherever we rake and shovel, they rake and shovel better…this is a fact. If they are working behind us, the parts that we do are generally redone, jobs that require 1 boy, requires 3 girls, or even 4. We carry 2 pipes between 2 of us, the boys carry 4 alone. Our initial thoughts were, screw feminism, we want to go back to doing the girl jobs, send me to a kitchen to bake or sew or knit. But I have become quite strong (not as strong as the Taiwanese, who for such small girls could lift a crazy amount), and I now understand plumbing and irrigation systems for vineyards, I will go far in life and Emma even had a few drives of the insanely massive, clearly built for the manliest of men, monster truck. It was quite alarming, and we will probably still leave that to the boys… but empowering all the same.

The whole wwoofing experience ended with us slowly doing less and less work, with Anna doing no work as she was bed ridden with infected glands ( which the doctor informed her was a child illness, not usually found in 23 year old girls). The less work we did, the more enjoyable it became with our last days ending up in as a production of a Katy Perry Parody of California Girls; Okanagan Girls, coming to youtube soon.

Sneak Peak:

You can travel the world, but nothing comes close to the sleeping lady,
Once you irrigate with us you’ll be really pissed offffff

Okanagan Girls, we’re unforgettable,
Hiking Boots, headbands on top
Dirt-tanned skin, so hot will melt your lightsaber (ohhhhhhh)

Okanagan Girls we’re undeniable
English, French, German we’re so hot.
BC interior represent, now put your rakes up (ohhhhhhh)

A ticket to 'Osoossoausagesyoossooos' please?

We left Fernie about a week ago on a 11 hour greyhound towards Osoyoos…pronounced oh-SOY-oose, not ‘osoossoausagesyoossooo’ which is only met with confusion from greyhound ticket sellers, and results in you having to write your destination down so it can be understood what on earth your trying to say. Osoyoos is in the Okanagan valley, and is considered to be Canada’s answer to California, only about 300 km inland and, I can only assume this, a distinctly lower population of celebrities, probably zero.

The Okanagan is wine country, acres of rolling hills covered in orchards and vineyards, the perfect location to partake in a bit of wwoofing (willing workings on organic farms) after a long cold winter season. Anna, at first was not so keen, but I depicted a wonderful scene to her where we were merrily painting fences and picking grapes by day, and casually sipping wine at night, and on our days off we would cycle around vineyards, and row boats down rivers, all whilst lapping in the ‘Californian’-like sunshine, two weeks of such a relaxing lifestyle? How could she refuse?

We contacted two places, both told us to come along, but we chose Sleeping Lady Farm, named after the mountain shadowing the valley. Anna was quite happy with this decision, as in her mind, sleeping lady meant that a large part of us being here would mean she could BE a sleeping lady. Angie our host came to pick us up from the greyhound stop with 3 very small people, all under the age of six. Clearly taking advantage of the fact that she had grownups in the car, us, she took the opportunity to run a quick errand leaving us alone with the children, one of which burst into loud wails as soon as his mother left, with no amounts of our complementary remarks about his transformer trainers able to stifle his cries, exactly what we wanted to deal with after our long and sleepless greyhound journey.

On our way to the farm we learnt a bit about origins of the sleeping lady. Angie informed us that the mountains was named this because the ridge looked like a naked lady lying on her back asleep, with the highest peak being her nipple. Although the nipple part of this apparent sleeping lady is quite obvious, the rest of her isn’t… I saw no face, I saw no torso, and when I questioned where her legs were, I was told they were under a blanket, of course! Silly me. The rest of this ‘sleeping lady’ was just imagined up, because, the only distinguishable characteristic of the mountain was the breast part, and it was probably thought inappropriate to name it breast mountain, or nipple peak.

Once at the farm we were shown our new home for the next couple of weeks, a cosy little caravan for two, closely located to the outhouse, with its fly-away-expose-a-peeing-person-doors, and two other buildings which had a shower, other wwoofers rooms, a kitchen and a games room.

Three girls from Taiwan had also arrived earlier that day, Sarah, Jamie, and Vera, although it is questionable whether these are their real names. Together we had an explore around the farm, we cooed over the dogs, Anna, following the pug around with continued yells of ‘hello pug’ and petted the horses in the neighbouring farm. We quickly regretted the horse petting as the male, and somewhat aroused horse demonstrated the phrase ‘hung like a horse’ to us, lady horse seemed just as alarmed as we were, as whenever he came near her she would give him an aggressive bite. An added bit of wildlife was the dead ground hog, which I mistook first for a beaver, and then for a flying squirrel, and we have also been informed that there is a dead bear down the road if we fancied a gander. Ahhhh the Okanagan, dead animals, and horny horses, what a dream.

We spent the rest of our night meeting the other wwoofers, 4 guys, a German, a French, and 2 Québécois, and settled down for a good night sleep. Unfortunately we didn’t realise there was a heater in the caravan, and instead had to make do with a cold and shivery night’s sleep before our first day’s work.