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Comment by reustle | Hacker News Reader

I've been traveling around the world working 20-40 hours a week on my side projects (startups) for extremely little money. I actually haven't spent a dime in the last 1.5 months.

How do I do it? I spend an additional 10-15 hours working wherever I'm living in exchange for a room and all of my food. It's called WWOOFing, you've probably heard of it. The nice thing is, I get to focus on whatever it is I want without worrying about bills. Sure, it's not for everyone, but I couldn't be happier with how I get to spend my time.

I'm in the middle of brewing up a blog post about this, so feel free to get in touch if you're interested in more about this.

PS: Here is where I currently am (Norway): http://www.flickr.com/photos/reustle/9465059825/lightbox/

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WWOOFing sounds like a lot of fun! Wish I had done that instead of go to graduate school and accrue debt. Now I'm stuck paying that off, and when that's done my wife and I want to start a family. Maybe our children can WWOOF if that's still a thing when they're of age...

"Maybe our children can WWOOF if that's still a thing when they're of age"

WWOOF is a marketing term / organization for what amounts to being an intern on an organic / permaculture farm.

I've done some fun genealogy and per census records going back centuries young people have done this kind of thing, so as long as organic / permaculture farms still exist, our kids will be able to intern if mutually acceptable.

Beyond peasant labor there's an implied educational aspect where most WWOOFers want to run their own farm some day and are touring around learning how. If you're not learning anything new anymore, its time to move to the next farm. Unless you got a masters in Ag Sci its probably not a fair comparison.

In the ancient apprenticeship structure, its basically being a journeyman in the field of organic farming.

I've read a lot about it from having a goal of redesigning my backyard according to permaculture guidelines, although not having the time/weather/money combination optimized to really accomplish anything. One of my neighbors has an excellent permaculture designed backyard, which is both appealing to the eye and interesting to think about.

I would just like to note that not all WWOOFing spots are organic farms. Where I'm currently living, we have a sawmill, some fields that get cut and bailed by someone else, and some sheep that are starting to find their way back from the mountains for the winter.

Ah thats interesting, I thought they were all O.farms or similar. The original argument still stands that even if WWOOF went PPOOF and disappeared, they'd still be interns at the sawmill... although it would probably be harder / less efficient to match up the interns with the opportunities.

There's probably a startup idea involving WWOOF as a template for other fields of endeavor. Probably not hyperregulated field like becoming a surgeon, but maybe something a little less regulated like a tree-surgeon or something in tech. A formalized online group to help "guide" the internship process in tech or maybe media?

http://helpx.net fills that gap

interesting, never heard of WWOOFing before.

But doesn't it completely alienate you from your surroundings? It sounds like you are changing places a lot. And I don't know about you, but my friends are the one constant in my life I'm really relying on.

I explore the local areas a lot (hiking, biking) and try to meet new people. WWOOFing time tends to be bunched in to a few months, for example I'm on this farm in Norway for 2 months, so you start to settle in a bit which is nice when you want to focus on code.

I would love to do something like this. Looking forward to the blog post!

love it, class picture....awe inspiring!!

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