working on a horse ranch

Before I made my way up into the mountains I wanted to experience a different side of Canadian life. I was informed about workaway.info on a surf trip in Spain in 2016 from a fellow workaway who was looking after the hostel there. It works a little something like this: After you’ve payed your $34 USD a year you get access to a global community of people who are looking for workers. The agreement is they offer you food and board and they get the benefit of whatever skills you have to offer – done deal. You can do this pretty much anywhere in the world. This could range from building work on someones house, looking after their kids to working on a farm, a hostel, a yoga camp, a dog rescue centre or in my case a Horse Ranch.

I was lucky enough through my cousins to have grown up spending many of my summers at riding schools in the UK. Mucking out stables, grooming horses and playing around in the hay in exchange for the odd free riding lesson.

That stayed with me into my teens, but drifted away the older I got. However through my adult years and whenever I got the chance (usually holidays) I took the chance to go riding.

Before I left the UK in 2017 I went back to one of my local riding stables and volunteered as a children’s riding assistant for a couple months to brush up on my very rusty horse handling & riding skills.

Working on a horse ranch combined many of the key elements which I identify as my ‘personal key success factors’ or core values. Namely being outdoors in nature, working with my hands and stimulating my mind. In this case I was not only working with the horses, I was also landscape gardening and helping build new horse stables with a team of other workaways/paid staff/contractors.

Normally hosts are after workers who will stay for a month or longer. I got lucky and was accepted for 2 weeks @bark2ranch. For me a perfect length of time to get a different angle on Canada and get back to some childhood roots before starting work up in the mountains.

have you used workaway.info before. Do you have any tips or advice for others?