Lettere del Cuore Verde: Spring Break!

I spent this past week (spring break) as a volunteer on a family farm in the shadow of the Abruzzi Mountains south of Rome. It's a sort of experiment in alternative, sustainable tourism. They have several rooms they rent like a hotel as well as volunteers who exchange work for room and board. The idea is to promote visitors to the area and share with them the life on the farm as well as the surrounding natural areas. Sadly, it rained most of the week and I didn't get to do the hikes that I wanted to. But I did get my share of farm life including the hearty cooking and shoveling of lots of nasty things.

I really didn't mind that though. It was a welcome break from my school and city life. I brought nothing responsible with me, so when I was done with my work in the morning, I got to honestly ask myself, “what do you WANT to do today?”. I did lots of walking on the nicer days, to town and to the other farm that they own up in the hills. We spent most of the second half of the week piled onto the old sofa bed in front a the ever-roaring fire. (Italians don't heat their houses very well, so it was either that or crawl under the covers.)

I don't want to write a treatise on farm life, so I will try to just highlight the more interesting parts. The first morning I was there we paid a visit to the cheese-making shepherd who still heats his goats' milk over a fire and uses real rennet for the culture process. We tasted at all stages including a cup of warm whey with ricotta floating in it. I think this part grossed most of the people out, but I kind of liked it.

Maria cooked us a full lunch and dinner every day, including fresh or frozen veggies from the garden, pastas, beans and lentils, lots of bread, and plenty of their homemade wine. It doesn't take much to get used to drinking a glass of wine two meals a day. It was refreshing to sit down with no less than five people at every meal. I get so used to eating alone in my student life, but it something I generally regret. Living together that close, the four of us volunteers became friends fast. They were all great and little bit crazy. But that made it all the more interesting.

I also did what I could to make friends with Concetta, the donkey with the attitude of a fourteen year old. It was a sort of love-hate relationship depending upon her mood of the moment.

But my favorite part was working and talking with Giuseppe, an old Sicilian with no English and a lovely life philosophy. He got really excited when I asked him that first morning “posso provare?” (can I try?) in reference to the fresh goat's milk he handed me to take up to the house. For the rest of the week we spoke Italian, mostly me listening to his romantic memories of Sicily, which he misses very much. “Calmo, calmo, tutto con calmo” says Giuseppe, “il tempo non vale niente” (time doesn't really mean anything). He got mad at us if we dug our holes or shoveled chicken poop too vigorously. He was our daily reminder that everything comes in its time, and everything takes that time. No reason to rush. And when Antonello and Maria were in town and we weren't sure what to do, he told us to just relax, smile, and laugh instead of doing any work. So there I was on Friday morning, sitting in the heart of and Italian farmhouse, warm and smiling, with Giuseppe giving me a list for a tour of Sicily.

And yes, there were all the nasty parts, but we were all nasty and so no one cared. We all smelled bad and hadn't washed our clothes. Our hair was all a mess or under hats all the time. It really ceased to matter and that felt really good. As I walked through the streets of Perugia yesterday, I suddenly felt very self-conscious of my grungy jeans and tousled hair, of the fact that I hadn't showered that day, or maybe even the day before. I could already feel the city taking me back in and when I went out again later that day in my clogs and green blazer, I hardly recognized myself. It was a week of another of those space/time warps. I feel like I was there much longer, but at the same time, like I never left here.