First Time Farming: Path to Farmerhood

It’s been quite an eventful summer this year. I quit my job, decided that I wanted to test out a passion that I’ve always had but never dared to experiment, farming. Try it out for a month and see whether this is just a ‘phase’ or if this passion was actually for real.

You might not know this, but I’ve always been fond of farm-management games from a very young age. You name it, harvest moon, Stardew valley, farmville, I’ve spent well over 100 hours on these games (each). I love waking up every day (in the game), seeing my plants grow bit by bit, optimising production out of limited farmland, buying seeds for crops that would yield me the most profit, etc. 

My fully automated Stardew Valley farm. With a giant crop. #farmerboss

So I thought-, why don’t I really try this for real.

I literally stumbled upon the WWOOF program when I was googling “how to become a farmer” (I know you must be thinking I’m crazy- but it’s better to have your quarter life crisis now at 23 than actually 25. Maybe?). It’s this network of organic farms who want people to come work on their farms in exchange for free food and shelter. I thought this was perfect for me, you can literally have this experience free of charge!

I picked a vegan vegetable farm in Sweden to go because of several logical reasons (may seem illogical to some but whatever it’s Nicha’s logic):

1. Stockholm was the furthest destination that TG flew to (I was running out of my free ticket quota so might as well max out my miles out of that free ticket. (Shout out to TG, mommy and daddy who have decided to stay with this company for so long for me to still enjoy this perk))
2. Swedes spoke english but still had their own culture. So I didn’t have to struggle going around but was still able to learn a new language/culture
3. I hated animals- I love to eat them but they’re too stinky to work/live with
4. I could lose weight by being vegan
5. Swedish guys are hott. (how cool would it be if I came back with a swedish farmer boyfriend named Axel or Anders?)

Pretty sure that #5 was the most important determining factor in this decision. Probably makes me sound like a rental wife too. But whatever, I’m candid and it’s true.

Example: A very hot swedish guy (Kygo)

So yeah, after that it was pretty simple. I got my VISA and flew out to Sweden to meet my farm host and their cat Gustav with the objective of finding my life passion.

Next posts to follow are about to get a lot more interesting, the shit I did, the people i’ve met, my journey towards becoming as brown as an indian. So please stay tuned.