I’ve Been Adopted… or Abducted

My new farm is an apple orchard is run by Claire and Brian, a couple in their fifties, along with Dylan, their ten-year-old son. This is the type of struggling organic farm I expected to find more often when I first started WWOOFing. To supplement their farm income, Claire works as a midwife and Brian picks up carpentry jobs whenever he can. Brian also makes deliveries for the local Montana Growers Cooperative once or twice a week, but these side gigs aren’t making anyone rich. Claire and Brian both work long days to scrape by and make ends meet, and WWOOFers are the only other support they get.

For me, this means long work days—and lots of them. My last two farms each required four to five hour work days five days a week. Here, I work anywhere from eight to twelve hours every single day.

To be fair, we rarely reach the twelve hour mark, and Claire and Brian have had no problem with me cutting my workdays short every now and then so I can meet up with friends from my last farm up the road. On the day I arrived, I asked Brian what kind of schedule was expected of me and he told me they don’t hold their volunteers to schedules, adding that as long as he feels I’m regularly putting in good work he’ll be happy. They both thank me often for working so hard, so I feel I’m fulfilling their expectations.

The long days are definitely taking their toll on me; my energy drains fast and I feel worn out and exhausted all the time. I don’t doubt they’d be okay with me working less, but it’s hard to stop when I know they really need the help. For example, when apples start to fall off a tree, that tree needs to be picked fast to avoid losing the fruit (apples that hit the ground are unsalable because the fall causes them to bruise and spoil easily). Losing that crop means a lost profit for an already tight budget, so when Claire needs to spend the day making apple butter for the farmer’s market and Brian has to put in a few hours moving irrigation pipes, I find it difficult to stop working instead of picking that tree.

By the way, it’s a heck of a lot of work to pick an apple tree.


It helps that Brian and Claire are so appreciative, and they do take good care of me here. This is the first farm where I really feel I’m part of the family. We eat all our meals together, take bike rides together, watch movies together and spend most of our evenings just hanging out together in the house or playing games. They even took me to the Western Montana Fair so I could see Dylan’s award-winning 4-H chicken—paid my admission and insisted on treating me to a big plate of sweet potato fries, and Dylan was really excited to show me his prize bird and blue ribbon. I did happen to notice that every single animal in the room had a blue ribbon on its cage, but I decided to keep that to myself.

It didn’t take long for me to fall into the routine at this place, and more than once I’ve caught myself about to call Claire “mom” or fight over Legos with Dylan like I once did with my brothers. That’s pretty cool to me, especially considering that at my last farm it was awkward just walking into the house for the food I was working for.

Then again, I have considered the possibility that Claire and Brian are employing some complicated brainwashing tactics to gradually convince me that they really are my parents so that I feel obliged to give them free labor for the rest of my life. Although I haven’t found any evidence yet, I have a sinking suspicion they may be part of some freaky apple-worshiping cult. I also think they may be after my hair.

Just to be safe, I keep a secret stash of my mom’s famous pumpkin cookies in the tipi. That taste is a jolt back to my childhood their mind control techniques can’t even begin to compete against. Yeah, I’m that clever. One step ahead, all the time.

Being a WWOOFer, you learn to be prepared for situations like this. There are a lot of weirdos out there.

Cookies of the Gods

On my last day at Glacier, I made the long, lonely trek to the far northwest portion of the park, which led me through the North Fork town of Polebridge. To get there, you have to drive down a long unpaved road that leads you far away from any sign of civilization. I had heard of Polebridge from a few Montana friends who all just grin when they hear the town’s name, as if it were some inside secret that made everyone happy, so I was curious to check it out. Also, Anna was very insistent that the ride was worth the cookies I’d find there—and even more insistent that it would be wise for me to bring some back to her.

To call Polebridge a town is something of an overstatement. The main strip consists of a gravel lot with two buildings: the Northern Lights Saloon and the Polebridge Mercantile (also known as the Polebridge Bakery). Drive a few miles up the road and you’ll find the funky Polebridge hostel with a lawn full of tipis. The saloon was closed when I arrived, but I scoped out the Mercantile and found myself rummaging through shelves of food, housewares, t-shirts, wine, crafts, antiques and some of the most mouth-watering baked goods I’ve ever seen. Yeah, Anna was dead-on about the cookies.

The place definitely had character. I’m sorry to say it, but you really need to visit it yourself to understand. I enjoyed spending some time on the Merc’s porch watching hippies and old timers come and go. It would have been easy to spend the whole day doing so, but I had hiking to do.

My campsite that night was at Bowman Lake, another long stretch down another unpaved road, this one very windy and narrow. The trip was totally worth it. Even though this campground filled up, too, it was much more spacious and much less crowded than those at the center of the park. Far less tourists make the rough trek up here, and that left a huge blue lake all to myself and a handful of kayakers. I considered staying a second night, but I was actually getting a little tired of hiking around mountains and lakes every day. They were starting to seem less than incredible. Also, I needed to find a farm.


When I emerged from the mountains the next day, I stopped at a library in Columbia Falls to get online. Still no word from the farm I was seeking. I had been holding out for an organic apple orchard in Arlee, Montana, but was tired of sending emails and leaving phone messages with no response. I kicked myself for waiting so long and for putting all my eggs in one basket when I had no place to stay, then spent a couple hours at the library calling and emailing other farms in Montana. I figured that if I didn’t hear from any in the next day or so, then I’d start sending messages to farms in other states. That was my original plan—to keep moving and see new regions with every change—but I didn’t feel I was done with Montana yet.

I knew there was free camping at the reservoir near my last farm, so I decided that was as good a place as any to stay until I found my next host. I enjoyed two days of swimming and lounging by the water, often watching lightning in the distance, before I found an available farm—and it turned out to be the apple orchard I originally wanted! They called me at ten o’clock Saturday morning and by noon I was moving into a tipi on their property. An hour later, I was thinning apple trees.

Yep, I live in a tipi now. How cool is that?

Incidentally, Anna was ecstatic when I gave her a bag of Polebridge cookies. Watching someone eat those cookies is like watching someone become brainwashed with pleasure. I think she’s in my debt now. Wondering if I can get a car wash out of it…