Volunteering is something that a lot of people do to give back to their community. Sometimes it is more than that. Some volunteers go a very long way to help out others.
We have had people volunteer to help out on the farm. Some were travelling around the country and took part in a program called Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WOOF-ing) – trading room and board for farm labour.
We have had good and bad experiences with this, but for the most part it is a mutually beneficial arrangement. These helpers are travelling around enjoying our wonderful country, but they are also learning to farm or to speak English better.
They are meeting real people in their travels and learning what it really means to be Canadian. It also helps them financially, because they pay for the accommodations with the sweat of their brow.
Many of them come from places that are very urban. So to be out in the wilderness is something very new and sometimes scary. Like seeing a bear for the first time, as one of our woofers did.
Mind you, that might shake just about any of us.
Other volunteers who have come to the farm live locally. They come out to help for the day, usually for poultry butchering, where many hands make the work easier.
This kind of help is hard to repay, but some seem to love helping out and we are very thankful that they do.
But people are not the only volunteers. Sometimes a plant will show up in a garden for no apparent reason. No one has consciously planted it, yet it is there.
Sometimes it is seed from a previous season. Or just a naturalized plant that happens to be a vegetable.
When I gardened in Saskatchewan, dill was commonplace. It was often called dill weed for this reason. I would just leave it if it happened to come up within the rows I had planted.
Here in the Yukon, we have had other plants volunteer in our garden. I will often just let them grow as they want to and hope that, in some way, I will be able to gain a hardy Yukon
vegetable out of the deal.
For a few years, I had spinach that did just this. But for some reason it has stopped coming back. But if I let this year’s spinach go to seed, who knows? Maybe it will happen again.
This spring when I was checking the garden to see what had started to grow, I noticed a single plant growing in the swiss chard row.
Now, I had obtained a different variety of chard, and it happened to be planted there, but this didn’t seem to look much like chard. And, since it also didn’t look like any of the weeds we have, I left it.
When the chard emerged it became obvious that this was a completely different kind of plant, although I didn’t recognize it at all.
Allan, however, took one look and pronounced it a sunflower. I had never grown them before, and it was new to me.
Sunflowers don’t usually grow wild here in the Yukon, so this volunteer’s arrival is a mystery.
But, like most of our volunteers, it is welcome to stay.
