Here is Farm #5 on my WWOOFing trip, and my favorite of all the places that I've been. It's a farm that grows and sells citrus fruits and olives, located just outside of Villaputzu--a small town on the southeast coast of Sardinia. Sardinia is an Italian island located in the Mediterranean Sea, south of Corsica.

That's the house in which I stayed, along with two other WWOOFers, the host, and his huge Rottweiler. The orange farm itself is located a few miles away from the house.

My host was a cool dude, his name was Piero and he liked his chocolate dark and his metal heavy. Pretty interesting guy, and he was always happy to talk to me about Sardinian and Italian culture. And when we went to a coffee bar and I ordered a capuccino at 4:00 in the afternoon, he totally called me out for being a tourist. Apparently Italians only drink that stuff in the morning. Good to know!

I was blown away by how damn beautiful this island was. The weather was perfect and sunny and not rainy at all. Which was enjoyable (since England and northern France were dank), but also worrying because there hadn't been rain on the island in a long time.

Work was mostly, as you might have guessed, harvesting oranges. It was pretty straightforward and relaxed. And we could eat as many oranges as we wanted. Nothing beats a fresh, juicy orange that was still chilled from the night before.

Harvesting was always a pretty social event. Piero would invite his friends and family to come and help out. They would all be speaking Italian, of course, and honestly I didn't really (try to) learn much during my stay. I got some basics down, of course, but not much beyond that. I'm just glad my host spoke English.

When we didn't need to harvest, some days we would work on other things, like cleaning mirto berries, which they make a strong, fruity alcohol with. Or separating wheat from barley.

On those days we would usually work at Piero's mother's house, just a 5 minute drive from his house.


Lunch was usually something quick and filling, like a pasta or something. One of the other WWOOFers was from Tuscany, and she was great at cooking, in addition to being a very pleasant person.

More photos in the next post!