Weekend of Farming Off — YOFO Adventures

Only the brave attempt tandem kayaks. Not pictured: the gators.

Greetings YOFO adventure blog readers. There are new WOFOers in town. We’re usually the ones that house the YOFOers while they are not busy adventuring and are the farmers of the family (so you’ve probably heard of us as the not-so-restful-home-base of YOFO). Chuck is a construction project manager (aka Dawn’s Mini-Me) and Julia is a conservationist in central PA. (Editor’s note: volunteering at refuges is less work than helping around the farm, no joke!)

We were excited to join D&D in Homosassa, Florida for a long weekend in February. Since you know the original YOFOers, you won’t be surprised to hear a stay with them isn’t complete without physical exertion, exhaustion, damn good food, and more than a few dad jokes and life lessons. So we wanted to hop on here and share a couple of those life lessons (and maybe dad jokes) with you.

First, you check out the manatee. Next, the manatee checks you out.

Lesson 1: The Early Bird Really DOES Get the Worm

Oh. A manatee sandwich. (And they upheld the proud tradition…yep, manatee poo is the floater!)

D&D aren’t known for sleeping in, or at least Dean isn’t. So, on day 2 of our WOFO we trusted them with an early morning alarm and hopped on a boat as the sun rose and headed into the Three Sisters Springs to swim with manatees. Due to cold weather, the springs had been closed for the last several weeks to allow the manatees space to seek shelter in the warm springs water without human disruption. However, we were lucky enough to manage to fit our trip into the 12 hours that the temperatures rose enough to open the spot for swimming. We scrambled into wetsuits (skinny jean jumps needed!) and hopped into the water with snorkel gear on. After getting the hang of breathing in the snorkel gear (Julia) and not panicking about swimming with giant sea cows (Chuck) we had one of the most incredible experiences floating around the spring with roughly 100 manatees. They are such gentle creatures and we enjoyed sharing their water and learning about their lifestyle from D&D. Julia got to be in a manatee sandwich (picture above/right) and Chuck had the pleasure of being the subject of perusal from a very curious manatee. We are just glad they didn’t think his beard was worth eating!! We finished our swim just in time as they closed the springs after about 40 minutes in the water.

Had we not embraced the D&D lifestyle of getting up early for worth-it adventures, we would have missed the tiny window to swim the springs. So yeah, the early bird does get the worm, or an opportunity to swim with manatees. It also pays to have good friends to get up with you and lend you a wetsuit and a boat ride out, but more on that later.

Lesson 2: We Go Further Together

Jody was the boat captain with the mostest.

One of our favorite parts of the trip was seeing D&D in action in their volunteer positions at the National Wildlife Refuge and the friends and connections they’ve made. Dean and Dawn are some of the most magnetically awesome people we know and everywhere they go, they leave a trail of new friends, contributions to public land, and free food. Florida was no exception, and we so enjoyed getting to meet Jody, their maintenance supervisor and boat owner extraordinaire. Day one of WOFO involved a fishing trip to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, and thanks to Jody we caught over 30 fish and had more fun out on the water than we’ve had in a long time. Further, Jody drove us to the springs on our manatee day, lent us wetsuits to swim the springs, and welcomed us to his home for a dinner after a day of great fishing. The WOFO lesson here is simple, make friends wherever you go, because there are more adventures and further adventures with those friends.

Lesson 3: Make Time to FO

As we mentioned at the opening, this is our first-time joining D&D out on the road, and much overdue. We would be remiss if we did not share how important it is to make time for Fun Outdoors, or F**king Off ☺ depending on your interpretation of the acronym. We crossed off another bucket list adventure on our final day, heading over to Silver Springs State Park for a paddle down the river. This amazing state park was like kayaking in a fish tank, water was incredibly clear and there were so many members of the ecosystem to observe, fish, manatees, turtles, alligators, and birds. It was an amazing cap to our trip!

We’re often guilty of being the busiest members of the family between jobs, the farm, hobbies, and the like. This is largely self-imposed, and we often forget that if we can schedule our life to be busy, we can schedule it to not be, and spend time with our favorite public land volunteers, and best dad and step-mom in the biz. We waited too long for a WOFO, and now that we’ve made time to enjoy the D&D life, we can’t wait to schedule the next one, which will hopefully be this summer in Jackson, Wyoming.

Two last notes that were hard to fit in the lessons above:

We rebuilt that platform. For free. It’s what we like to do.

One, D&D are fabulous stewards of public lands. The work they do at National Wildlife Refuges across the country is vital, and benefits all of us as American citizens, and they do it for FREE. So next time you’re enjoying a public land space and see a volunteer walking around, keep in mind those folks work hard, and they do it because they love our public lands and our beautiful environment, and want to keep it that way. Public lands volunteers truly put their money where their mouth is.

Two, we were STOKED to see that their newish pup, Swinger, is living his best life on the road with D&D. Some backstory here: Swinger is a former foxhound for the Rose Tree Blue Mountain Hunt Club, a foxhunting club in PA that we are very active with. We take hounds that are retiring, or in Swinger’s case, aren’t cut out for hunting and transition them to living in a house and to their next life as a house pet. Swinger was our favorite hound that has come through our program, and D&D ended up as the perfect fit for him. So if you see D&D out on their adventures, be sure to give the black and tan hound at their side an extra pet from us.