On a Friday evening three of us took the train down from London with our work clothes and sleeping bags and spent a blissful weekend in wonderful countryside, working hard at clearing brambles and unblocking ditches, listening to birds, watching the sunset, and chatting with the students at meal times. The high point was a fabulous strawberries-and-cream tea in the barn with pigeons cooing aloft. Magic!

The farmers were pleased with our efforts and said Yes, you can come again if you like. Michael Allaby wrote an article entitled 'Coppard's Land Army', and this brought both would-be WWOOFers and invitations from Hosts to help on their land. It also led to a request for an interview with Portobello-based SEED magazine run by Ken Sams (father of Craig Sams who is currently Chairman of the Soil Association). SEED was a delightfully quirky and informative 'alternative' magazine. Not only did I end up writing the WWOOF article myself (subtitled 'Rent-a-Serf'), I became SEED's secretary for the next year and acquired more organic education and farm contacts.

So WWOOF was a success: I was getting into the countryside, and more and more people were enjoying their WWOOF experiences and learning organic skills. As with organic folk everywhere, they turned out to be really interesting, lovely and fun people. A year and a half later, however, my leisurely Sunday mornings reading the newspaper had vanished. Unable to see how the workload could be shared, both desk and I were groaning under the weight of all that admin! It so happened that I had read of the Japan Kibbutz Association and decided this would be the way to see something of the Far East, a longstanding ambition. So we all assembled to consider how WWOOF might continue. Four members agreed to take over the various tasks - and I went off on my travels (the second best thing I did for WWOOF!)

The take-over went remarkably smoothly and WWOOF continued to grow. The big surprise for me, arriving at Dick Roberts' farm in New Zealand a year later, was meeting three WWOOFers from England who had followed up Dick's invitation in WWOOF News and beaten me to it! Two of them were Rob and Sue Lea, who went on to form New Zealand WWOOF, the world's second WWOOF. From then on, individuals from other countries who had enjoyed WWOOFing in the UK would take the idea back home and, with a little help from UK WWOOF, set up a national WWOOF, each quite distinct from its brethren as all are autonomous and tailored to suit local needs.

There is even an internet WWOOF (called WWOOF Independents) to look after those hosts with no national organisation of their own. WWOOF had expanded considerably by the time I returned to England and joined the team of organisers - a page-long list by this time. So many excellent people contributed their efforts and inspiration, and interesting articles and glowing reports of WWOOF visits filled the pages of the newsletter.

Growth was organic: whenever a job became too much for one organiser the work was divided into two and someone suitable would turn up offering to help. Most organisers were unpaid but eventually increasing workloads led to payment for the heavier jobs, Newsletter Editor and Main Office among them. Two stalwarts who ran Main Office for many years were Don and Maureen Pynches, eventually succeeded by their neighbour/assistant, the Herculean Fran Whittle, who held the fort until recently. The 'government' of UK WWOOF has evolved yet further since those early days in order to cope with the increased complexity - improvement and flexibility being the watchwords.