Instead of hopping from bar to bar and hostel to hostel during her summer in Europe, Rachel Kichler worked on various farms throughout the continent.

PLAY wanted to know why Kichler, a Communication junior, would voluntarily spend her precious vacation plowing through manure.

PLAY: What exactly did you do this summer?

Rachel Kichler: I was working on organic farms in Portugal, Ireland and Spain.

PLAY: Why did you decide do to that?

RK: I just wanted to do something that was completely different from anything I’d done before. It was a cheap way to travel and to really get to know a place in a way that you wouldn’t if you were just traveling and staying in hostels.

PLAY: How did you go about contacting the farmers?

RK: There’s this organization called World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and you have to pay to be a member. But then I found this Web site called helpx.net. A lot of the WWOOF posts are also listed on this Web site, and I just sent out mass e-mails to people all over the place. I didn’t know where I was going to be or when I was going to be anywhere, but then people responded and the trip just kind of shaped itself.

PLAY: Did you have any crazy experiences on the trip?

RK: (Laughs.) I had so many. We were really living bare bones on this trip so on the weekends we didn’t really have money to stay in a hostel, let alone in a hotel. So we would bum around and sleep in a field somewhere and get up the next day and just start going again.

PLAY: Who did you go with?

RK: I went with my ex-boyfriend.

PLAY: Did you stay in rural areas or near cities?

RK: In Ireland and Portugal we were in more rural areas, and then in Spain we were actually staying in an apartment in Balaguer, which is a smaller city in Catalonia.

PLAY: Did you find some people who spoke English there?

RK: Yeah, and actually the man we were staying with was a school teacher and he was fascinated by learning all different kinds of languages. He had not only helpers, but he was part of this thing called the Hospitality Club where different people would come and stay at his house. He had this chart in his living room that had about fifty different languages, and then a bunch of different phrases, so it was a grid of every language with all these different phrases translated by people who had stayed with him.

PLAY: What would a typical day be like on a farm?

RK: Well, in Ireland we were working for a German commercial farmer. We were mostly bagging and cutting lettuce and bundling scallions, because those were his two main crops. Since he was the only commercial farmer – and I think the fact that he was German, too – it was very rigid and everything had to be a certain way. We worked the longest in Ireland – we would get up at about 6:30 in the morning; we’d be out there by seven; have a little break around lunch.

PLAY: Did you get paid?

RK: No, we didn’t. He actually said he was going to give us a little pocket money for doing the work, so we didn’t mind working so long. And after lunch we would work again for a few hours, so we were probably working, I don’t know, ten hours a day.

PLAY: I think that’s called slavery.

RK: (Laughs.) I know. So Ireland was probably my least favorite place because we worked the most. Then we went to Portugal and we were working for this guy named Shyam (pronounced Shom), who lived with his wife and five kids who were in and out. They all had these names that were given to them by an Indian guru who they had pictures of all over their house.

PLAY: What were their names?

RK: Shyam, Swat, Vido, Eda and Sudesh.

PLAY: So were they Portugese or Indian?

RK: No, no, no. They were British.

PLAY: But they were named by an Indian guru?

RK: Well, they weren’t born with these names. But then once they began to study under this guru he gave them new names. We didn’t even know what their names were before.

PLAY: Did you learn any epic life lessons?

RK: I learned so much about simplicity and really sustaining yourself. It was a huge culture shock coming back because we were making all these meals that were fresh from the farm, and these people make their own bread. Then I come back and my sister is doing a low-carb diet.