Workaway: The Horse Ranches, Part 1

Apologies for the post coming later in the day.

We did a lot of research trying to figure out how to make money on the road or how to cut costs so that we could be more mobile. One of the suggestions from the Glitz and Glammers was Workaway. You exchange volunteer work for room and board. There were plenty of farms on Workaway, so that meant a place to park, electricity, water and even groceries and meals. And of course this also meant that our daughter would be able to see where food comes from; too many young people (even adults) believe it comes from a grocery store.



Workaway sounds great, doesn't it? What could go wrong?

Our first Workaway was on a horse ranch. We planned to stay for a month before heading back to Winnipeg for a month to say 'goodbye' to everyone. The ranch sounded good; reviews were a little mixed, but even people saying it was difficult said they would do it again. Mostly it revolved around volunteers working much longer than promised and the owner being unavailable for a ride to town or the beach. Well, we had our own house and our own vehicle, so we weren't really worried about being overworked or being stuck; the ad said 4-5 hours five days per week and that is the agreement we would stick to.

Well that's a heck of a lot prettier than Winnipeg.

We had a fairly warm welcome as it was Canada Day. We parked the trailer then spent much of the day in town for the celebrations. The fireworks display was small but nice. The next day we met the other volunteers. As it turned out, we were the only Canadians. Four were from France and one was from Germany. There was one couple (France) and three girls in their late teens to early twenties. The French couple were continuing their journey on the 3rd, so everyone got together for a bonfire.

And free guitar lessons for a 3-year-old.

So the next day we started to work. Lyndsay cooked and ran phone lines. I spent much of the day sorting reclaimed wood and removing nails. But what would our story be without a little bit of drama?

The owner was on a trail ride with some customers and wasn't paying attention to her volunteers. They tried to get her to stop momentarily as a skittish young horse had fallen behind. The owner had refused and told them to keep up. The German girl - Dalija (pronounced: dal-ee-ya) - was knocked down by the skittish horse and injured her knee.

The french girls got her back to the ranch house. Instead of leaving that day, the French couple took Dalija to the hospital. The french girls and the owner began arguing with each other in front of waiting customers. Thankfully, Lyndsay is good with people and was able to calm everyone down.

The French couple and Dalija came back that night. Unfortunately, this was deep rural Canada; the nearest hospital didn't scan her knee or anything, they just poked at it a little bit and told her to stay off of it for two weeks. They gave her crutches, showed her how to use them and sent her on her way.

That cost $1000, just FYI. Had she been Canadian, that's what the government would have been charged for a pair of crutches and poking her knee.

It was a rough start, but we tried to keep a positive attitude. Lyndsay largely continued to cook and run phone lines while I continued with cleaning wood, mechanical maintenance, pulling weeds and a little bit of minor renovations on the owner's house down the road.

Giddyup!

Only three at the time, Aurora still began learning about how to feed the horses and brushing them as best she was able to do and understand. She loved it. Despite the drama, we felt good about being on the ranch.

Soft horsey, warm horsey, great big beast of burden...

It quickly became apparent that the owner wasn't exactly what you would call 'mentally organized'. Lyndsay was quickly working 10-12 hour days cooking the meals and answering phones and e-mails. There were few ways to get out of it, too, as doing so would mean there was no one to help the customers get sorted. More than once, customers that had booked weeks or months prior showed up having already paid online, and the owner had no idea they were coming.

We had been promised pony rides daily for Aurora. Even though we worked hard, they didn't materialize for several days and they only did so because the French girls offered her one while customers were there for the rides and the pony was ready.

Despite the bad... look at that smile! That was one of the best days we ever had.

Lyndsay's work became tiring not so much due to the amount of time it took up, but because the owner was always hovering over her shoulder trying to correct her for doing things that she'd told Lyndsay to do. "Look at the other e-mails and figure it out. You did this wrong. Even though I did it wrong in this e-mail you should have known it was wrong and done it right." I'm not making that up. Paraphrasing only slightly.

It rapidly became apparent that my work was largely pointless. I found out from a guy that the owner occasionally hires that the house I was renovating was completely rotted out with no way of saving it. The owner thought she could use wood she reclaimed from the dump and volunteer labour to get it into saleable condition; there was no way that was going to happen. I continued working for a few hours per day as well as I could, but much of what the owner was asking of me made no sense or was so pointless that it was outright depressing to attempt to do it.

While this was going on, the owner of the ranch made an admission to Lyndsay while looking through Workaway volunteer applications. She had just turned down two men with a lot of experience that would have been perfect for the ranch. She explained that when it came to working with the horses, she would only take young girls from other countries that needed to be picked up from the airport and rely on her for transportation in order to be certain they would work for the whole day. The French girls were working 10 hours per day and the horses were clearly being abused.

We decided to leave. Going back to Winnipeg and an RV park would have been a major loss of money, so we made arrangements with another horse ranch about 150 kilometres away.

The girls had come to rely on us (mostly Lyndsay) to help keep things calm and functioning on the ranch. They were set to return to France soon, so we held out until the weekend they would be leaving so that they wouldn't be left alone long. There was also the question of what would happen to Dalija.

The owner had kept making her work through the injury. She at least knew to give her simple jobs like scraping weeds from her gravel driveway from a chair; in +35 in the blazing sun. We ended up doing a lot to help Dalija - like setting up shade for her. With no way off the ranch and the other girls leaving, she would have been alone with an owner that was clearly taking advantage of people.

After phone calls with Dalija's parents, we took Dalija with us when we left. Now we had an 18-year-old German daughter with a knee injury in our little RV.

On the road again (image reversed).

To be continued...