Volunteering on farm for 3 weeks, choosing location

I suspect someone will come along soon and tell you that if you don't have an EU passport, what you're proposing to do violates the law, but I don't know anything about that, so I'll address the geographical side of the situation.

Peschici is on the Gargano Peninsula. The peninsula is beautiful, and I think I went through Peschici (20+ years ago) and thought it attractive. It does not, however, have a train station. You'd need first to get into Peschici from the farm (have you figured out how you would do that?), then take a bus to Rodi Garganico, which is 11 miles away, or a taxi. I don't know how frequent the bus service will be in May, and it's critical to understand that some bus lines have no service at all on Sundays and holidays. What days would you be free to make day-trips?

Piombino does have rail service.

Fondi has no train station. You'd need to take a bus Monte San Biagio, then get a train from there.

Persistent Googling will probably turn up schedules for the buses you need if they are running now. You can either Google "bus Fondi to Monte San Biagio" or start with Rome2Rio.com and drill down until you find the name of the bus company. You can look at train schedules on the Deutsche Bahn website. For fares, you'll need to go to Trenitalia. Trenitalia will insist that you use the Italian spellings for the city names (Venezia, Milano, Torino, Genova, Firenze, Roma, Napoli).

Edited to add: I'd also check weather stats, in case one of the areas seems like it might be unpleasantly hot for outdoor work.

NONE of these locations will look like America 🙂

The most logical location would be Fondi. It's the largest town. There's 1 bus a day to Gaeta, that takes 40 minutes, but allows you to connect via train to both Rome and Naples in about 2 hours. In the other direction, that acraven mentioned, you can head north to Grosetto.

I know this seems like an inexpensive way to travel, but...
Please realize you cannot work for payment, and lodging can be considered payment in kind.

Since May is so close have you already got your working visa, Elizabeth?

I doubt if we will hear from Eliz again. WWOOF is notorious for leading their participants to believe that work visas are not needed. Gives the participants some experience of being an illegal immigrant. Most don't get caught but don't say anything to the immigration officer that you are participating in a WWOOF program.

Elezabeth,

Read this before you commit.

Edit: this excerpt from a Wwoofers blog. Multiple can be found on the web.

"I've WWOOFed in Costa Rica (7 weeks one farm), Kansas (2 weeks one farm), Hawai'i (4 months one farm, 2 months another), and New Zealand (one week one farm).

You'll need to clarify with the host before hand on what meals or food they will be providing and the type of accommodation. Their listings can be out of date or misleading. For example, I had one host talk about these amazing open air structures, beautiful solar showers and the great community dinners on the land. I got there, it was one 50-something dude with an old rusted open-sided barn, buckets for a shower and no one else. I questioned him over our meal of bread and jam, which is when he informed me this was all he had until the food stamp card renewed, and he told me the listing statement was his vision for the land.

One farm offered no food, but they did drive us the 20km into town to buy at the weekly market. They did eventually share their coffee and bananas with us.
One provided all food and we made/eat meals together.
One provided just rice and beans. However, this farm was producing much fruit, vegetable, meat, milk and nut. We were welcome to whatever we didn't/couldn't sell at market.
One provided a good deal of food which they bought weekly on a Costco trip. Typically oats, fish/chicken, rice, beans, tortillas, cheese, whatever we requested really. They also treated us like servants and their ad was quite misleading, I felt feeding us well was to make us stay.
One provided no food but only required 10 hours of work a week for a bed in a shared bunk.
Clarify with the host what they are providing, also what type of cooking/storage facilities you have access. You'll be surprised how much you miss a fridge when it's a 12mile hitchhike into the closest town!

Other expenses could be rubber boots, hat to block the sun, gloves, coffee, chocolate, treats, entertainment(books, movie rentals), alcohol, tobacoo, internet cafe, laundrymat or personal toiletry items. Some farms don't allow smoking or drinking FYI. Boot are bulky, I'd recommend buying them after the flight."

Gerri, hate to ask but if you keep running into those horrid conditions why do you continue to participate? Sounds like it is just a hair short of slave labor. But I have also read similar reports for WWOOF, so I wonder why do people keep doing it when this info is widely available.

Frank,

It was an excerpt from a blog but when I copied it didn't end up boxed.

Def not my style of travel 😂😂😂

Sorry, I thought it was your personal experience. Highlight and hit the quote button.

I did, but it obviously didn't take. Have edited the other post.

Gerri, edit each line to put "> " at the beginning. Make sure there is one blank line between each line staring with "> " and any normal lines.

Then it looks like this

Thanks Chris.

Wow thanks for all the information everyone! I actually had looked into the work visa and I must have misunderstood that lodging counts as payment. Yes, some of the responses I've gotten are a little sketchy looking. It looks like each WWOOF site is quite different and some are better verified than others. I'm not a sleazy person and I'm not setting out to break the law (or be abducted)... so I will definitely rethink the idea.

Good for you for asking!