Where to go next?

Before I left England, I planned my first three months or so of wwoofing and travelling. Not planned in a military knowing-exactly-where-I'm-going-to-be-every-day fashion, but having a rough idea of what farms I was going to and which province I was going to be in. At the end of July, it suddenly struck me that this meant I had no plans after the end of August (when I will be around Toronto), and I should probably make some.

Westwards is definitely beckoning, but I want to stop somewhere in the prairies (covering Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta) to get a bit of a feel for that area. So I sat down and read a *lot* of wwoofing profiles, trying to find the right farm.

I've realised that the type of farm I'm looking for is very different to when I first started. I've learnt a lot about the kind of work I enjoy, the type of lifestyle and hosts I want to stay with, and what it is I want to learn. Recently I read an amazing book called "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which talks a lot about food production and the problems with our current system. One of the people he uses as a case study for a good farm is owned by a guy called Joel Salatin, a very influential organic farmer in the states. He has a lot to say about animal rotation and pasture fed beef, and this has really been inspiring me over the past month. So when I found a farm in Saskatchewan who talked about using his principles of rotation on their farm, I decided this was the farm for me. In addition, they also do butchery, which is something I'm keen to learn more about. 

An email sent, a reply received and I'm booked in for 3 weeks. So that lands me in the middle of Canada til the end of September. Where then?

A quick look at the weather in the prairies indicated I should probably consider heading to BC in October if I didn't want to freeze. But BC is a big place, and about half of the wwoofing farms in Canada are located there. I was stumped - should I go north to near the Yukon border? Or west to the Gulf Islands? Or south to Nelson and the Okanagan valley?

I looked through some of the farms I'd bookmarked in BC for inspiration. I decided to save the Gulf Islands for later in the year as the weather is mildest around there, so it seems like a good place to winter. The Okanagan seems like a good spring/summer location, so perhaps somewhere to go next year. So how about the north? I looked at a map and things began to fall into place. There was a sale on train tickets at the time, so I'd decided to get the train to Saskatoon for my Saskatchewan farm. If I continue on train from there, it takes me via Edmonton, which is already a significantly amount further north than Vancouver. When I'd originally looked at going to northern BC, I'd not been sure as the cost of getting up there and back was quite high, but if I'm already part of the way, it makes sense to continue. 

Two farms had taken my fancy up there, both with strong vibes of self sufficiency. The first is located north of Prince George and Prince Rupert, and is almost completely self sufficient - vegetables, grains, milk and cheese, eggs, meat, fish... The guys is massively passionate about good food, and that matches well with my current priorities. In addition, it's relatively close to Haida Gwaii, which is a set of islands on the coast (significantly further north than the Gulf Islands). I'd found a farm there that is also focused on self sufficiency, but also does a lot of hunting and foraging, aspects I'm keen to learn a lot more about.

Two emails sent, two willing hosts, and now I'm booked up til mid November. Where I go after that.... well, we shall see!