We’re squatters in our own apartment

We moved last weekend, but not into another apartment like we usually do. Instead, we moved into a 10x10x10 storage unit in Van Nuys.

The Last Box

Finishing up with the furniture

We hired  A Better Way To Move, who sent Paco and Tito at 8 a.m. on Sunday ready to haul our furniture and 30 boxes into their truck. After scanning the apartment to see what was involved in the move, Paco said to us, “don’t worry, we’ll handle all of this – go and enjoy a cup of coffee.” My kind of mover! After 2 hours had passed, they had our entire apartment in their truck.

Upon arriving to Van Nuys, I looked again at the storage unit we’d rented and doubted that all of it would fit. You always end up with more boxes than anticipated! But, with a mover like Paco, you’d be amazed how much you can fit into a tiny space. Paco played tetris with our furniture for 2 hours and in the end, the truck was empty and we had room to spare in our storage space. At one point, I’d gone to our storage unit to get a status update and our sofa was in the middle of the hallway. When I went back five minutes later, it was in the unit on its side, four feet off the ground and piled on top of a couple of boxes. “Paco, did Devon help you with that?” “No, I did that,” he said. “All it takes is a lot of leg muscle and a little body mechanics.” Well, no amount of my body mechanics and leg muscle could do that, so color me impressed.

By 2:00 Devon and I were back at our empty apartment. “But where are you guys going to sleep,” you may ask. “Well, in our apartment of course!” See, we’ve set up our inflatable mattress in the bedroom, kept one fry pan, one pot, 2 cups and our flatware in the kitchen and two towels in the bathroom. Oh, and some clothes.

Since we have limited utensils for basic stuff, we’re having to get creative. I flip my fried egg with a paper plate, mix my scrambled eggs in a plastic cup and cut tomatoes with a dull butter knife. Man I miss my Wuesthof knives and my spatula. Now, as we walk about in our echoing rooms we’re feeling a little bit like squatters in our own apartment. We paid rent, really we did.

This Sunday, the 18th though, we say good bye to our beautiful one bedroom and begin living out of two 60 litre backpacks. Maybe Paco will come by and help us pack. I could sure use his tetris skills.

So what, you wake up one day and say, “Hey honey, let’s be farmers?”

Something I’m asked a lot is how our trip came about because, as many of our friends now, I am definitely not a farm girl. So, this is the story:

A few months ago, I was advised that having international experience would be valuable for my career and overall life skills. Although I lived in Nicaragua, I could always have more abroad experiences. I went home that night and started researching abroad opportunities. After deciding that, yes, living abroad was an awesome idea,  I turned to Devon and said, “hey, what do you think about living abroad for a while?” Without hesitation, my amazing husband said, “I love the idea!”

From that simple question blossomed the idea to work on farms in Europe – it combines ideal destinations and learning about our passion, food! It also ensures that we’ll have an authentic experience while contributing to something to the “greater good,” which was important to us both.

But how were we going to do this? With Devon’s magic ability to find the best of everything online, we landed on a great web site that posted volunteer opportunities on organic farms all over the world. We just had to pay a one time $35 membership fee and we’d have access to opportunities worldwide for a year. This magical web site is helpx.net. We considered WWOOF, which is almost the same thing, but HelpX was better for our needs, multiple countries.

We decided to start looking in Italy (oh yes, Halbe has been obsessed with Tuscany since seeing Under the Tuscan Sun) and the UK (Devon wanted to visit his namesake, Devon, England). That blossomed into visiting France  and Ireland as well and voila, we had our four countries!

If you’re curious where we’re going the itinerary is:

UK (Wales and Devon) – one produce farm and one goat cheese farm (we get to feed baby goats!)
Ireland (Dublin and Cork) – one goat farm (commercial)
France (Paris, Caen and Bordeaux) – an apple cider farm and a merlot winery
Italy (Tuscany) – a smallholding (a farm under 50 acres) producing wine and olive oil.

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