Sub-tropical Organic Farm Workaway
Two weeks in a warm humid climate with a friendly Georgian family.
After several weeks travelling across Turkey, we knew that we wanted to get ourselves to a workaway early on in Georgia. We wanted to do this to spend some time settled in one place and to spend less money. However, a big reason was to get a good introduction to a country we had we had been looking forward to visiting for months. Immersing ourselves in the daily life and culture would be a great way to kick off further explorations in Georgia. We were so lucky to have found this workaway because it was really exactly what we had been looking for. We were welcomed into the family home at Odashi Farm and immediately felt like we were part of the family - spending working hours, meals, and evenings together.
The Project
For anyone interested in getting into agriculture, Sali and Ika are amazing to chat with. In the last 5 years they have worked hard, taught themselves how to run a vegetable farm, and built their project from the ground up. While we were there two other volunteers were there as well - German girls studying organic agriculture. This led to many interesting discussions.
Odashi Farm is the first and only community supported agriculture (CSA) project in Georgia. This was the first time we had come across the term “CSA”, so it was a new concept for us. CSA projects directly connect farmers and consumers and both share the risk that comes along with agriculture. Customers commit to ordering weekly boxes of in season produce from the farm, so the year’s crop is sold in advance. This gives Sali and Ika the support and financial stability of being able to rely upon selling their produce directly to consumers as it ripens throughout the season. The idea is that the community of customers value what Odashi farm has to offer and they understand that the products they receive will depend upon what's been harvested that week. Each week's food box contains approximately 5kg of produce, but some weeks they will receive less and other weeks they may receive more, depending on what's ripe. The customers should value the fact that they are supporting a local family, that the produce is local and organic, and subsequently understand that not all products are perfect (as we’ve become used to in groceries stores). Sali is very active on Facebook and Instagram, so check out their pages if you're interested!
The family of Odashi farm includes Sali and Ika as well as Sali’s mother Tina, step father Mika, cousin Batuma, and their 9 month old baby Lily. The farm is also home to many many dogs (Gigi, Ronny, Vivi, Dobby and others), two pigs (that live a wonderful life and get to eat all kinds of delicious leftovers), two cats (Florence and Blaze), and many chickens.
The village is also full of animals that are free to roam as they like. There are cows, goats, geese, and pigs that wander and graze throughout the day - presumably returning to wherever they belong in the evening.
Mika was a particularly kind and fun person that we got to know - always making jokes and happy to communicate despite a language barrier. He speaks limited English and mostly spoke to us in Georgian - peppered with words in English. Which allowed for lots of gestures and fun conversations. He had a lot of patience to try and help us learn some Georgian words, unfortunately we’re still not very good at all.
Work
The climate in this region is very hot and humid during the summer months. We had to adapt ourselves and the day in order to cope with the heat. Our working days were varied and depended on whatever Sali and Ika needed to get done. Most morning we would get up early and leave to the fields at 5:30am with Ika, Mika, and Batuma. This was ideal as it allowed four or five hours in the field before the worst of the heat set in. We would then return to the house to relax and nap during the afternoon, before heading back to the field for an evening shift.
Ika and Sali have a group of local women who help them out on the farm from time to time. We only spent one day working in the field with the women, but that was a lovely experience. They meet up around 8am after they've milked their cows and we load up into Ika’s van to drive to the fields. One of the ladies is 80 years old and she is still able to work in the heat: weeding, pruning and harvesting vegetables! Ika told us that when she first started coming with the group, she would arrive in nice clothes and then change into work clothes. They discovered that this was because her family was worried and didn’t want her to be doing farm work! She would tell her family she was going into town and the nice clothes were part of the charade. With the ladies, we had a picnic style lunch in the field (which Ika told us is a very typical Georgian type of meal) of bread, homemade cheese, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and meat.
One of the village ladies is named is Mariko. This is the Georgian equivalent of Mary (as is Maria in Spanish, Marie in french, Mariam in Arabic etc). As is Mary's habit when visiting places with a different iteration of her name, she clarified that actually her name is Mariko and that they have the same name.
Mika gave Mary the nickname of “Clean Mariko” as she was often trying to do the dishes as much as possible to try to contribute in the kitchen. To this, Mary decided to give Scott the nickname of “Dirty Scott” which Mika also thought was hilarious. The name is fitting because we were often quite dirty from working and sweating in the field, and Scott got especially dirty and full of grease after trying to fix Ika’s tractor.
The farmers market and produce delivery day is Sunday, so we spent two Saturdays assisting with packing the produce boxes. This included weighing and organising vegetables into bags and crates that could be packed into the van. The first week we helped make up 155 boxes with approximately 5kg of vegetables (and 152 boxes the week after). This task was fun and up-beat, often done to music with Batuma.
Other tasks we did on the farm included weeding, sowing seeds, pruning vegetables, harvesting vegetables, helping Sali with canning, Scott trying to fix the tractor, and other miscellaneous tasks.
Free Time
Our free time was spent mostly relaxing around the farm. Trying to stay cool, napping, reading and taking walks around the village according to our work schedule. We spent a lot of time socializing with the family, Scott cuddling his favourite kitten, chasing dogs and cats out of the house, and playing with/distracting Lily so that Sali could have some time with her hands free. We also found a stream in a ravine and went there a few times to relax and bathe in the cool refreshing water.
One Thursday evening, the family took us and the two German girls on an evening excursion to he Black Sea. We drove down in the evening in their van and went for a beautiful swim in the ocean. It was Lily’s first time in the Sea and she loved it! It was our second time in the Black Sea and it was amazing swimming around in the light waves. The water of the Black sea is much less salty than the Mediterranean, and we felt surprisingly clean afterwards (not itchy like we usually do after saltwater swimming). After a good swim we came out onto the magnetic black sand beach and enjoyed a delicious picnic on the sand with the sun setting before us. We were even treated to the German girls singing a traditional Georgian song.
We tried to do a hike one day, however it was hot and humid (as expected) and the trail we tried to follow was extremely overgrown and eventually disappeared, forcing us to turn back. Unfortunately upon return to the house, Scott noticed a tick on his hip! We pulled that one out successfully before finding two more ticks on his body! Luckily Mary was spared, likely because she didn't go as far out into the scrubby brush as Scott did. This was our first time finding ticks on ourselves and caused quite the surprise!
Another thing that we did to entertain ourselves was to make apple crumble in the air fryer. This was a surprisingly quick and easy process with a shorter cooking time than in an oven. The result was delicious, particularly with fresh apple straight off the tree.
Meal times were mostly social with the family or parts of the family. Sali and Tina's cooking is absolutely phenomenal. We ate a huge amount of fresh fruit and vegetables every day and had a great introduction to Georgian cuisine. Some dishes we tried: typical short (like spaghetti but 2 cm long) Georgian pasta with delicious homemade cheese, badrijani (fried eggplant with basil and walnut sauce or stewed with other vegetables), lobio (Georgian for “bean”, both a red bean stew and a green bean salad type dish were called the same thing), egg and tomato dish, Georgian bread, khachapuri (cheese bread), lobiani (red bean pastry), and many salads with freshly picked vegetables and basil.
To Be Continued…
After moving around regularly in the later stages of our time in Turkey and not doing much of the typical tourist activities while on our workaway, we're headed to Georgia’s Greater Caucasus Mountains. This should bring cooler temperatures and opportunities to get our hiking boots back on. Tune into our next update to see what we get up to!
Can't believe you didn't steal their cat. He's so precious 😭