When a fresh-faced young person graduates from college these days, options are ... well, limited. There's moving back in with your parents -- hello curfew and tiny old bedroom. Then there's trying to make it work in a big city -- hello cockroaches and tiny little salaries (if you're lucky). Or you can try your hand at grad school -- hello student loans! Alternately, there's this thing called WWOOFing, which actually stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and sadly, has nothing to do with dogs. What WWOOF does is play matchmaker between volunteers who want to farm, garden, and otherwise work with the land, and those that need help farming, gardening, or working with the land.

WWOOF has access to farms in 43 countries where you volunteer in exchange for food and shelter. David Cumming over at Budget Travel interviewed one such WWOOFer, Zak Stern, a pharmacy school dropout, read on to see what he had to say about his experiences:

"I was 22 years old, wearing a white coat and tie, and paying $16,000 a semester to learn about benign prostate hyperplasia (enlarged prostate). Meanwhile, I felt like I knew so little about life. I decided that while my prostate was still small, I needed to live my life to the fullest. Since then, I've been traveling the world learning how to live off the fat of the land -- best decision of my life."

He talks about his experience on the farms, saying "I would wake up around 7am, eat some oatmeal in the barn, and then begin weeding and mulching rows of lacinato kale and rainbow chard," after breaking for lunch with the other volunteers, it was back to work for a few more hours. As far as the eats went: "We had a chocolate custard-like fruit called Sapote Negro, a milky lychee-like fruit called caimito, carambolas, guavas, avocados, exotic Asian greens, Romanesco broccoli, and so on and so on -- the rewards of working on a farm in a tropical climate," he says. "After dinner, I typically had just enough energy to read a few chapters in a book before wanting to crawl into my teepee and rest my bones." Though the work is demanding, it does afford lots of travel, as a typical stay with any farm starts at two weeks. Stern is off again this August to WWOOF some more, this time through Sweden to learn about sourdough bread, France for the cheese, and Italy for the wine. "I will hitchhike, camp, and couch surf my way from farm to farm," he said. "My budget is low and my time is unlimited."