Moving On

New Pictures!

Here Tyler plays a traditional bag-throwing game for Derby day (Kentucky Derby!) in front of the Spannocchia Villa.

Riccio (the boss) and his band play for the Mayday celebration.

San Galgano monastery near Spannocchia. They claim to have the sword in the stone from the King Arthur story.

After cooking class, enjoying our handmade spinach ricotta ravioli.

A random beautiful church in Genova where we visited for the Slow Food event "Slow Fish." Summary of the trip: DON'T EAT FISH.

Yesterday we finished our last day of work at Spannocchia, and all the interns are leaving this coming Monday. It's a bittersweet departure (like most), I'm delighted with all the knowledge and skills I've gained, but disappointed I couldn't do more to improve the farm and make it more viable. My plans for the next few weeks are solid, then things get a bit vague again. First, I'm biking down to the Amalfi coast in southern Italy, which is about 450 km. It should take about 4-5 days, then I'm meeting some of the other interns from here and we're renting an apartment on the coast for a week. I've been working on my base tan, so I'm well prepared to sit on a beach for a while. We actually took a field trip to a much closer beach today and it was gorgeous. The water was the perfect temperature, actually a bit warmer than the pool here that they just opened (and the salt feels tremendously better than chlorine). After the week on the coast I'm biking a bit farther south to Calabria, where I'll be working on a farm with someone named Antonio. He sent me some pictures of him in his artichoke patch, and he looks quite friendly. I'm hoping to do more in the vegetable garden and learn a bit of wood frame construction. I'll be there for about three weeks, then probably take a brief trek south to Sicilia to see/climb Mt Etna, then back north. I'm looking for a dairy farm in the north to spend either my July or August, but it's too early to know how that will pan out.

There was a funny moment yesterday evening which I think captures the essence of my experience here and shows how my comfort level has changed. I was sitting on the top of the 12th century tower in the center of our villa playing ukulele and noticed that some of the piglets were rooting around outside their pen. I got Kate, another animal intern to help me put them back inside. She was already dressed for dinner, wearing a nice black skirt and shirt, I was barefoot in my boxers. A couple of the pigs were easy to round up, but one was being stubborn and kept running past the open gate without going inside. We trapped him in a corner and I grabbed his back legs. Pigs are very strong, and when you first grab them, they keep kicking their legs which makes your arms piston back and forth. I dragged him along the ground wheelbarrow-style and Kate helped me direct him back into his pen. It was quite a sight, one formally dressed and one hardly dressed intern wheeling a pig around in the evening light.

Farm Life

I wrote this one a while ago, too.

Life here is pretty incredible. The landscape is gorgeous, I get to work outside everyday, the food is gourmet, the people are fun. Here are some random pictures from all around: Florence, San Gimignano, train rides, the farm itself, another agroturismo we visited. A typical day for me goes something like this. Wake up at 7, have some breakfast, eggs or cereal, usually both. At 8 we meet outside by the wall to get our tasks for the morning. Until now, that has mostly been tending to the sheep and bringing them around to whichever pasture is the most lush. Sometimes I leave them in one place and go up to Pig hill to build fences or bring hay and straw around to all the animals. At 1 we have lunch prepared by the interns, some combination of leftovers from dinner the night before and newly crafted dishes. Lunch has been pretty spectacular, especially because I'm so hungry by 1. I like to have a cup of coffee before afternoon work starts. We work again from 2-5, bringing food around, milling grain, building, and feeding. Afternoons are more fun because the sun is out and I am less isolated by the sheep. At 5 sometimes I go for a run, play ukulele, go into town, or do whatever random stuff I need to before dinner. At 7 we have wine and chat with guests, then dinner at 7:30. Our chef, Graziella, makes amazing food for us every night. Some dishes we've had are polenta with wild boar (from our property), risotto with asparagus or saffron or nettles, pasta al pomodoro or al pesto, bean/vegetable soups, lamb, pork, lots of venison, leeks, fennel, roasted potatoes and chicken. Sometimes we have tiaramisu for dessert. It's basically like eating at a fancy restaurant every night, which is a little overwhelming. There is a lot of oil and butter in the food and much more starch than vegetable, so it's very thick. I try to pace myself and not eat too much, but it's tough after working all day. It makes salad feel like a huge relief when I get a chance to have some. We'll have more as the veggies come up. After dinner we sometimes go for a walk, or hang out in our house and socialize or read or something. I usually get to sleep around 11:30 or 12.

My italian is coming along slowly, it's hard to get into a groove because everyone speaks english on the farm. I think I'll get a better chance to practice after the program is over, but this is definitely a good start, and the italian lessons are teaching me proper grammar. Speaking of after the farm, I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do. I haven't made any decisions yet, but it will probably involve biking around a bit and working on other farms for shorter periods of time. There is also a chance a few of the interns and I will get an apartment for a month someplace around here and just explore a city for a while and cook a lot.

I've definitely had a lot of time to think since I've been here, which has been nice. A lot has been about farming, food and sustainability, which is pretty depressing. Our food system is out of control right now, and there is no easy or obvious way to fix it. It's totally overwhelming to try to imagine how an individual can have the greatest impact improving it. I consider having my own farm, doing things right and teaching other people through that, but the effects would be slow and isolated. Maybe public policy is the most effective route, but it is a tough fight against huge amounts of capital and establishment. And whatever the method, it has to be preachy (which makes me uneasy), telling people that the way they are living is destroying our health, environment and livelihood. Basically, we've created an enormous system that we don't understand and can't control, and it's going to take some major shock for us to realize how much we have to change in order to save ourselves.

Meat!

I wrote this one a while ago but didn't have a chance to upload it until now... I've definitely been enjoying some time away from the computer!

Meat has been a big focus of this trip so far. The farm is basically a meat farm, everything else (except wine) is produced only to be consumed here (vegetables, oil). I've been working in the animali group, specifically as the shepherd. We have about 30 sheep and 15 new lambs this year. It's nice to work with the animals, and fun to try to figure them out and get to know their personalities. I feel a little bit weird about raising them only to be slaughtered, though. If I have my own farm, I doubt I will keep many meat animals, maybe just one or two a year, and use the rest for milk. Last week we took 8 of the lambs to the slaughterhouse for Easter. I was impressed with the process, and part of the reason the farm uses this one is because they do things humanely and old-fashioned. I was unloading the lambs from the back of the truck, and by the time I was ready to pass down the next one, the first had already been shocked and had it's throat slit. It doesn't take long for it to die after that point, it just has to bleed out a bit. Very quick, clean, and efficient. Then they cut off the front feet, fill them with air and skin them. They hang up the skinned lambs before they eviscerate them. The interns who stayed around for Easter (I was in Rimini at a frisbee tournament) had half a lamb for dinner, and did something fun and delicious with the head, but I'm not sure what.

The pigs seem very different to me. They are our main product, and we have about 120. The breed is Cinta Senese, which is a local breed, identifiable by the white stripe around is front half. Yesterday I worked in the transformation room helping to butcher a few of them to make salumi. I mostly cleaned bones and separated meat from fat. Riccio (the boss) was particularly upset with the quality of the meat returned from the slaughterhouse. There were bruises, cuts and welts showing that the animals were treated pretty poorly before slaughter. He is very concerned about the welfare of the animals, and said something about not using that house anymore. I haven't really enjoyed eating the pork here very much, partially because the flavor is so overwhelming, but also because the pigs are so obviously being grown to slaughter. You can't do much else with a pig. In taking care of them, I can easily understand why some religions don't eat pork. They are basically nasty animals. Unless you bottle feed them, they are very aggressive, dirty, and only live to eat. We had some dead piglets in a bucket between pig pens the other day, and while we were moving one of the moms she ran over to the dead piglets, grabbed one in her teeth, pulled it out of the bucket, ripped it in half, ran away with it, entrails dragging along, and tried to eat it. On the other hand, if you bottle feed them, they turn into sweet, smart, responsive animals, but then you regret eating them more. Tricky...

So basically, this is a very informative exploration in the world of meat, but I'll probably go back to being a vegetarian when I get home, and I'll definitely never eat anything that isn't local, organic and well-raised. Here we do meat the best it can be done, and it is still a moral dilemma for me. The babies are really cute.