I Speak So Good at Languages.

Buona Pasqua! After three weeks of school we were given two weeks off to celebrate Easter (thank you religious holidays in Italy). Myself and two friends, Emily and Suzie, decided to spend part of it wwoofing, both to improve our Italian language skills and be kind to our budgets. A week ago we left Parma to join two young families at their isolated farm an hour from Bologna, and we are now very glad we came, and very ready for a break.

Over the past four days we have helped with a number of tasks, some of which were backbreaking and others quite lovely. One day we took down a fence that was not only partially covered in barbed wire, but bordered a steep, raspberry-brambled slope (backbreaking). Another day, in the late-afternoon sun, we gathered wildflowers to dry for tea (lovely). Today we helped plant a vineyard. Sounds romantic, I know, but did large amounts of mud, manure, and rain ever factor into your vision of Italian wine production? My jeans and gumboots can attest to the fact that cow poop is in fact a very important part of the process.

On our very first day, Emily and Suzie generously allowed me the opportunity to stay back at the house and help two of our hosts make bread, pizza, cookies, and cakes in their wood-burning oven. Not only was it all organic, but the flour was freshly ground from grains they grew themselves. The honey we put on the bread? From their bees. The jam on our morning toast? From red-currants picked on the property. This work, in addition to the orchard, garden, animals, chestnut forest, and plans for cereal/legume/vine cultivation, amounts to a truly astonishing amount of labour for these farmers; I finished each day utterly exhausted, famished, and wondering how they manage to live this as a full-time life.

Aside from my general appreciation for small-producers, my language skills have also been growing. I am not even close to successfully carrying on a conversation, but some of my second-language nerves have been calmed and I’m bolder in my attempts to communicate. What comes out of my mouth is often neither English nor Italian, but sometimes it manages to be the latter and therefore I feel somewhat better about myself. I can string together basic sentences and understand what is being said to me, so long as I’m spoken to as if I'm a voice-activated telephone directory.

The learning process is not without its constant failures, of course. The other day, while looking at the shelf of cookbooks, Suzie and I accidentally translated a book called “Il Cucchiaio Verde” as “The Green Cook.” That evening I said “Sono cucchiaio,” to my hosts, in an attempt to explain that I had cooked for treeplanters. Later in Bologna, we discovered that cucchiaio does not mean cook, but spoon. I had told them “I am spoon.” Because all nouns in Italian are gendered and I had lazily dropped the definite article, what I had really said was “I am male spoon,” followed by “por albero” in a failed attempt to relay the concept of a treeplanter. So there you have it:

“I am male spoon for tree.”

Improved communication skills indeed.


The Farm, by Emily.




Emily's awesome shot of the preserves pantry.











Gumboots, muddy gumboots.

Capra

I really don't know where to begin. It feels as though I've been away from home for several months, and it's actually been a week and a half.

I'll start with the farm, because that's freshest in my mind. Once I digest everything I ate at the Cheese Festival, I'll talk about that (but it could be several weeks until you hear anything).

I arrived at Podere Le Fornaci on the 22nd, a beautiful sunny day. The farm is is just a few kilometres from the town Greve in Chianti in the heart of Tuscany. Too many people have written flowery descriptions of this area, so I will keep it simple. The cliches are entirely true; the landscape consists of rolling hills, vineyards thick with dark purple grapes, and ancient nonas hanging out of shuttered stone windows. In other words, if you live in an area with stairmaster-like inclines and drink lots of wine, you'll live to be 101.

Podere Le Fornaci is found at the end of a long driveway with two very old stone houses sitting across from one another at the bottom of a hill. A flat yard to one side is filled with trees, chickens, dogs, and the trailer where the WWOOFers sleep. The other side rises steeply up to the goat stables, and of course the goats! Behind this hill, and on just about every other surrounding ridge, are vineyards full of grapes being harvested this week. My hosts are Gabriele and Elisa, two hard-working people who I've felt comfortable with from the start.

The big house and yard are a charming, organized chaos. For example, the stairs leading to the second floor of the big house are partially blocked by a pile of giant squash, and it's easy to trip over toys, brooms, cats and/or children when stepping out the front door.

When I first arrived we were greeted by a mass of people, speaking Italian of course, and I was ushered upstairs to have lunch and meet even more people. I then sat, overwhelmed, in a hammock for the rest of the day and watched people come and go, not sure of who belonged where and to whom. I have now somewhat made sense of it all, and actually enjoy the steady flow of friendly people. Of course there are still many quiet times, like right now, when I get to listen to 3 1/2 year-old Priscilla rrrroll her R's and talk in a language which I don't yet understand.

I think I will save my goat-herding stories for later, and instead, believe it or not, focus on the food. Every morning I have granola with goat's milk for breakfast; I had never tried goat's milk before and always thought it would be sour, since fresh goat's cheese is so tart. In reality it is light and creamy and wonderful. Lunch is usually the biggest meal of the day, when we sit down and eat in a group of at least four. Today we had a traditional Tuscan stew called Ribollati made with vegetables, white beans, and day old bread (which is crumbled and cooked into it). It was incredibly hearty and filling, and we ate it with zucchini and rice fritters, the usual platter of goat's cheese, and finished off with a sweet to which I am now totally addicted made from chickpea flour, ground nuts and butter. Elisa caters from her home and so is sometimes away serving at parties in the evening, in which case whomever is at home gathers and makes dinner together. Last night we ate a zucchini frittata and salad.

Absolutely everything we eat is organic, the bread and cheese are made here, and the eggs, fruit, and veggies also come from this farm or other local organic ones. The quality of the food, as well as the appetite I have gained from doing physical labour, make the meals the most satisfying ones I have ever eaten. It seems that almost every meal gets a healthy drizzle of olive oil, and while this isn't a new discovery by any means, I assure you that fresh goat's cheese crumbled onto just about anything is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I have now worked for four days, starting at 8:00 am and finishing around 1:00 pm. I get the afternoon off and usually walk into town to get some more exercise and enjoy the fresh air. I've also had a really nice time getting to know Margaret, the other WWOOFer here with me at the moment. She's from New Zealand, 62 years old, and is an incredibly humble adventurer. She's spent the last year and a half travelling around, working on farms, and teaching in various countries. She plans on staying in Italy well into the new year, then heading to Greece and finding some farms there.

That about does it for now. Time to start reading and scratching the many bug bites I've accumulated. Tomorrow I herd the goats alone for the first time, so keep posted for many hilarious or tragic stories ahead.

Ciao for now friends.