Mountain Family Friend's Farm in Italy

Sabbionara and Avio (on the right) from the mile high farm

September 25-October 3 without the world wide web:

Lucia

Ahhh, to hear Lucia’s voice again was delightful.  It sings, rolls, presses, and bounces.  We heard it first on the phone when we were a little lost going up the mountain to the farm.  I had been frustrated all day because I had left Lucia with questions about where she was going to pick us up, and I couldn’t get on line anywhere; so we didn’t know where she was going to look for us.  I didn’t want to inconvenience her. 

can you see the gully and the line that goes up from there? That's where the farm is.

From the top looking down at the place of the photo above

 

 I was dehydrated and tired by the time we got to the cableway where we left our packs and started up.  Les was spent like I’ve never seen him, but we both made it to the top where we met Franco (hired manager of the farm for 20 years from Czech Republic)

Franco

who gave Les a fresh t-shirt.  It was fantastic to see the place again, high on the side of a mountain in the Dolomites.  

Laura on the right

We met Laura, another WWOOFer from Juneau, Alaska (via Ohio), who has been here for 2+ weeks.   

Giacomo

 

Francesca ("Panina")

Margarita

 monsters at the end of our bed

We met the three kids: Giacomo, Francesca (we called Panina when she was 3 weeks old), and the new one, Margarita.  

 

Arga

 

Margarita and Pipo

 

We met the two dogs, whom I LOVE--Arga (a beautiful black shepherd mix who reminds me of Tarka) and sickly but very sweet Pipo--, the goose (Gustavo) and his two ducks that he bosses around all day; the hen and rooster and all the rabbits (Attila, the male).   

Gustavo

Attila

 

It was fantastic to see Renzo too--the farmer who invents competition climbing walls--; he looks exactly as I remember him.  He turns 60 this year and is still an adventurer/daredevil/hard working and happy go lucky guy.  I want to be like him.  

 

 

Right away, Lucia tried to catch Attila (AH ti la) by offering him a female bunny.  Lucia’s cooking is super good, with plenty of olive oil and hard grated cheese.  

 I belayed Giacomo as he tried to reduce his time on the climbing wall mounted on the south wall of this summer castle turned into a small family farm/retreat center.  

Renzo belayed me on the wall; it’s been years since I climbed.  Then he demonstrated the tight rope.  I tried and could only take two steps. The building’s walls are about 2 feet thick, and keep the inside cool no matter how hot it is outside.  They have no refrigerator; just a dark room for most supplies. The second floor has a huge wood floor room suitable for yoga or dance (I’ve been giving ballet lessons to Francesca, who has been very focused and ready for it—and Laura and I did some contact improvisation), with one end devoted to a bouldering wall and ceiling.   

 

There’s a room in which we put corn that we braided together to dry.  We have a mouse in our room that stole some chocolate but will not eat the poison we put out for it.  Laura has a scorpion in her room; but maybe it was a dead one that Franco put there for a joke—he put a dead dormouse on the concrete mixer for fun and we put it on a ladder with a little love note to Franco.

 

Our major work here has been processing wheat to collect the wheat berries.  Laura thinks of this as one of the most ancient work.  Les loves the specificity and repetition of it.  We twist or pound the heads until the seeds are released, then we take it into the wind and pour so that the chaff flies away.  

 

 I thought we could make our next million selling the chaff to throw at brides and grooms as they leave the church; or maybe I can put it in dancers’ hair to fly when they twirl.  A whole days work gleans only 4-5 cups of berries. Also, we collect delicious veggies from the garden, cook, walk the dogs, and today (9-30) we cleaned the rabbits’ cages.  Stinky!  It needed it.  This is the farm where I first learned to enjoy espresso.   

 

The final night, they fired up the pizza oven outside and made spectacular pies (the final one: pear, Gorgonzola, walnut, mozzarella, Parmesan).  Laura broke out some nice wine, Renzo opened the beer I brought, Renzo put on some folk and traditional USA music with Bruce Springsteen, and the stars fell around the Milky Way.  It was a lovely evening.

 

As we left, Lucia was making marmalade from a fruit that looks like a yellow apple and is hard like a beet.  It’s called cotognia; they were 40-90% full of worms, but to smell the boiling fruit at the end, I can imagine how delicious the jam will be.

Images I don’t want to forget:

1.     Ballet lessons for Francesca, with Margarita in and out of the lessons.

2.     Taking Les and the dogs to the huge cliff-sided gully where the spring is, and across it, the bridge made of little colorful planks.

3.     Les and Gustavo (goose) sharing a conversation back and forth; then Pipo (dog) and Gustavo at a distance from one another.

4.     The sound of Lucia’s voice when warning her children—calling each by name with long vowels, and her laugh that sounds like water falling.

5.     The lighthearted way we communicated with large gestures, and an occasional Czech to Italian, and English to Italian dictionary; sometimes with Lucia telling Renzo the story we just told her.

6.     Les singing the Can-Can as he pounded the heads of wheat.

7.     How Les looked as he arrived the first time he climbed the 2-hour path up to the mile-high farm.

8.     How much Franco teased Laura, and his gentle, playful, physical and verbal humor.

9.     The garlic mayonnaise that Namua made was named “Salsa de la Estrega” (“witch sauce”); it gave Lucia a stomachache.  Lucia can’t eat raw garlic.

10. Looking at the farmhouse from way below, following what I imagine to be the trail up with my eyes.

On our way out of town, we stayed in a hotel by the train station so we wouldn’t have to hike down so far in the early morning, got the best gelato, stopped in the post office to see for the last time if my package got here (no-Lucia will have to send it somewhere else where I will be), and enjoyed an evening at a place with 200 solar panels, surrounded by vineyards and cows and strolling through the streets and town cemetery.  We’ve been without Internet for a while.  I hope to catch up and get back on track.  Morocco is next—through Rome and Madrid.