Joséphine in Bremen // 1st Report

Hey, my name is Joséphine and you’re are now entering my first report regarding what happened the past four months.
First of all I must say that this is the first ever report made concerning the Ohlenhof farm project, so I feel like a whistleblower, finally revealing to the word the events that take place here.
Hoping not to get researched and tracked down by the CIA when this goes out, but I’ll do anything for you dear reader.
But anyway, I guess it is time to be serious.

I wish to start with a little recap, so you already know my name, I come from France, I am 21 years old and what am I doing here?
Or this could’ve been the question I would have asked myself not so long ago.
Let me explain myself in a better way. I’ve taken the decision of coming here and that was a choc for everybody I knew, even for me. First of all, I knew that I got accepted a tiny month before actually coming here. Of course, leaving your friends, lover, apartment, town, country in such a small amount of time was scary. But what was even more surprising is that I got accepted into a farm project when I actually never worked in a farm of any field related, and not just that. I am in fact, a boring normal city person who can’t craft anything with their hands, and pretty attached to my material comfort life.
Ok I know what you’re thinking, you want to know about the project and not read my personal therapy and I respect that. So, I’ll get to it (even though learning about me might have some advantages…. (like relating to my experience and eventually wanting to apply to this project…))

Alright, so the organization I am working with is called AfJ, they own multiple different projects in Bremen and the Ohlenhof Farm is one of them. The ground line for this project is: provide a safe place for kids and teach them some knowledges about nature and farm life.
How does it apply in real life? Well, it does in multiple ways.
First of all, there is two learning classes here directly inside of the farm. Several kids, mostly with learning disorders and ADHD spend the day learning some usual school knowledge but also wander around the place to feed the chickens or help with cleaning the horse’s stalls.
However, I don’t usually work with those kids because they have their own pedagogical team here to support them.

No, the kids with which I work the most are the “afternoon kids”. The ones that come to the “Nachmittags Angebote”, also known as the afternoon activities (not a literal translation).
There is a vast program throughout the week with the “Natur erlebnis Zeit”, the building group, family coffee, fire time… (everything you need to know and experience with fire, works better in Winter time though…)
So in most of the afternoons I get to spend some time with those kids, some are regulars, some only appear for one time, but we always have fun! We do various types of activities (that I will NOT exhaustively list here), from crafting rudimental instruments with nut’s shells to identifying mushrooms or going on a walk with the donkeys.

Oh yes, this is also something I didn’t mention yet, my non-human co-workers.
Because we work in a place called “farm”, it’s pretty obvious that some animals live along our sides here. I will (again) not list every single one of them here (you can find them all on this website https://tinyurl.com/yv6p8cc) but there are some donkeys, horses, chickens, sheep, rabbits and my personal favorite, the pigs.
I do also spend some good amount of time taking care of them and feeding them even though my job is mostly about spending some time with kids and planning activities for them.

I must admit that the beginning was kind of hard, especially because since I started working here, it’s been only WINTER, and so the number of kids coming to the farm was pretty low or even non-existent on some days.
It makes you question your utility in your job. Be prepared.
But, no, jokes aside, it’s a part of the journey for sure, but it’ll get better in spring or summer, or so I’ve been told, hoping they didn’t lie to me!

So yes, this is how life has been lately around here.
I do not regret any single day, somehow even in boredom always comes some joy (report thing turning me into a poet or something…)
I actually can’t wait for some warmer weather to see what it should look like for reel, what’s hidden under all that cold, rain and early nights.

I’ll keep you updated in some little time later.
Thanks for reading me!!
Hope to still be alive by then (CIA and all you know…)

Tschüssi 🙂