About mid-July, a man named Phil shows up at our farm and wants to do a little unpaid work. He has a job he loves in a major city, but when he has time off he can't wait to get his hands in the dirt.

I used to find such behavior odd. One of my early horticultural jobs was at a fancy nursery where I earned little more than minimum wage. Customers would pull up in BMWs and eye me with envy as I pulled weeds. "I wish I had your job," they'd say.

Now I better understand the drop-ins who turn up and beg for something to do. Farming is not fun if done under pressure or harsh working conditions. But many find it the perfect respite from a complicated life lived mainly indoors. At the end of a day's weeding your simple accomplishment is spread out before you: green plants surrounded by brown soil, relieved of competition. After thinning peaches on a tree, you can feel the branches lift, spared a burden that has threatened to break them.

Last year a couple from London contentedly cleaned up our broccoli beds, with their kids joining in. Another family pitched a tent and went at it for most of a week -- and they were farmers! Even on vacation, they had to grow plants.

We've never asked people to volunteer, equipped as we are with a regular crew, their pay comparable to what I made at that nursery long ago. But an offer of help can be welcome. Many such visitors are young farmers-to-be, eager to learn from our decades of experience. Susan, on the other hand, a neighbor and friend who is also close to us in age, works one day a week with us to learn how to fill her large yard with vegetables. A professional carpenter, she's a big asset, turning her love of handwork to new skills.

Many opportunities exist for such stress-relieving activities. Ask gardening neighbors if they'd like a hand. Some of my best days have been spent weeding with my visiting sisters Eloise and Anne, or my friends Odessa and Joyce -- a wonderful way to talk and catch up.

Consider joining a community-supported agriculture program (CSA), through which farms sell shares of their produce. Some CSAs encourage members to help in the fields.

If a farming vacation appeals to you, you'll find plenty of them, often expensive, on the Web. If you're on a budget, check out the international network called WWOOF, or World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (http:/ / www.wwoof.org). Each nation has its own WWOOF, through which you can volunteer at farms in exchange for room and board. Less known here than abroad, its name has reached verb status, and you can actually wwoof your way around the world. Not a bad way to see it either, from the ground up.

Damrosch is a freelance writer and the author of "The Garden Primer."