Welcome to Ca Penelope

After a mere 7 hours in transit (via train, autobus, and automobile), I have arrived at my second WWOOF farm: Ca Penelope. The farm/agritourismo is near Maranello, which is about a half hour from Modena. It's very nice here. I'll get some pictures and descriptions up soon, but until then you can check out their official descriptiuon here.

Localita il Piano: Week 3

I somehow managed to take almost no pictures during my last week at Localita il Piano..... but it was still an awesome week. We made some major progress on many of the things that we had been working on for the last few weeks. We finished laying hay in the new vineyard, and covered the kiwis, berries and currants as well. We also dug trenches and mulched most of the apple, pear, and fig trees that needed help. And we stacked more firewood. I realized that the posts from the past few weeks didn't really do justice to the firewood gathering/stacking process, so I thought I would include a more detailed description in this week's post:


Load the trailer with wood from the trees that Adolfo cut down near the olive grove.
I don't have any pictures of this part of the process, but some of the pieces weigh a hell of a lot more than Ben. Pieces that were large and straight enough were loaded into the trailer hole so that they could be used later as posts and such. This part of the process also afforded the opportunity to hurl large pieces of wood into the trailer to test our accuracy.... fun. When you get done, you have something that looks like this:

Got wood?

Take the wood out of the trailer and stack it in the storage room.
This takes a bit more time than loading the trailer (and sadly, there is no hurling wood in this part because you have to carefully stack the pieces so that they won't collapse on Ben, Darcy, or Adolfo at some point in the future). It's fun in a different way though; it's sort of like playing a game of Tetris, but none of the pieces are the same shape. This part of the process looks like this:

Yes. I've got wood.

And the end result looks a lot like this:

It's hard to tell, but the stack is on its way to three logs deep.

Why do they need so much firewood? You may be asking yourself right now.
Well, let me explain. No, there's too much. Let me sum up. Localita il Piano has an efficient central heating system that doesn't require outside power. Radiant heating in the flooring is used to heat the 1st floor and the 2nd floor agritourismo. During the summer and when it's sunny, solar panels heat the water used for the radiant heating system. But in the winter, there is not enough sun to heat everything, so they have a wicked awesome furnace system that burns wood to heat the water tanks. (The actual logistics of how the furnace does this are somewhat complicated, but it's super efficient. I can't really explain the whole process, but it's awesome.) The same system is also used to heat the water that comes out of the faucets and shower. Moral of the story: home heating and hot water while being totally self sufficient. Score.


Let's see.... What else happened this week....

On Easter, we dyed eggs by boiling them with onion skins while they were in old pantyhose with leaves (to give them a nice pattern). I don't have any pics of the final product. But here's what they looked like before boiling:

Darcy also taught me to make gnocchi.... hers looked very nice. Mine... not so much. But they all tasted pretty good.

While we are talking about food... I may not have mentioned it, but Darcy is an amazing cook. I don't have many food pictures (because I was usually so excited to go eat that I would forget my camera) but I think these will help get the message across:

Stuffed tomatoes

A salad with flowers and wild greens that Adolfo collected

Mmmmm....

Oh, and in case you were wondering.... the view out the kitchen is awesome.

I'm definitely going to miss this place.

22 Aprile- Norcia

Last Friday (which happened to be Good Friday), Leslie (a eWWOOFer who showed up the day befor Molly left) and I decided to use our day off to head to Norcia. While Norcia is somewhat off the beaten path, I had heard that it was quite lovely. Upon exiting the bus, we were immediately met with this scene:

No... Those aren't real pigs in the foreground...but I think there is one hanging above the door.

Alright, this might not entirely be true.... first we were met with an overpowering smell of cured pork products. But you get the point: Norcia loves a nice pig. In fact, the term Norcineria is used universally for a shop selling cured meat products throughout Italy, and Norcia is damn pround of their meat curing prowess. I never got an exact count, but I would guess that there were at least fifteen of those meat shops in the tiny town center that we walked through (we're talking about a 4 blocks, at one point I counted 7 shops while standing in one place). While I decided to forgo the town specialty, Leslie was happy to partake of a "panini a piacere." Sadly, this phrase translates to "sandwiches to taste" rather than "pleasure sandwiches", as we had initially thought. I don't know what would have gone into a pleasure sandwich, I'm guessing unicorn would have been a prominent ingredient. Fortunately, when she ordered, Leslie didn't ask for a "sandwich to taste", which would probably slightly confused the shopkeeper and make us look like idiot Americans. Her sandwich was apparently pretty good... Norcia made good on their promise of fine meat products.... Still, I think I prefer when my protein looks like this:

On a side note: apparently they don't salt their bread in parts of Umbria, Norcia being one of those places. Supposedly it was their way of protesting against a papal salt tax by reducing their salt consumption. But, as Darcy pointed out, they obviously still salt their meats (which I assume uses up way more salt than baking), so it seems like a pointless reason to curse all of your future generations with crap bread. But I digress...

In addition to copious amounts of Norcineria, Norcia had no fewer than three outdoor stores (something that I have seen nowhere else in my albeit limited travels in Italy). It also had some other nice things to look at and occasionally take pictures of.

Me taking in the scenery

A crazy looking tree

A loveley street

A different lovely street

Yet another church

I also found a couple more signs to add to my collection.

Since when do bees have hairdos?

After surviving the big bad wolf, the three little pigs apparently met a tragic end in Norcia

A tractor!! How exciting!!

Localita il Piano: Week 2

Things on the farm have been going very well.... It's hard work sometimes, but I really enjoy it.

So far, my tasks on the farm have included:

• Weeding, watering and gathering wild asparagus
• Digging holes upslope from trees
• Filling the trailer with manure
• Filling the holes with the manure
• Leveling the ground around the grapes in the new vineyard
• Spreading hay around the grapes (for fertilizer and to prevent weeds from growing up around them)
• Readying a pasture for the horses
• Gathering and stacking firewood
• Helping to set up the irrigation in the vegetable garden
• Killing red bugs that infest the garden

I'm sure there are some things that I am forgetting.... but that's enough for now. Here's what some of those tasks look like....

Molly leveling the ground in the vineyard

Me breaking into a new bale of hay

Spreading hay in the vineyard

Adolfo taking a load of manure up the hill

A very small portion of firewood... This is just the stuff that was too big to be put in the storage room

I'm staying in the basement, which is actually quite comfortable. There is a kitchen, bathroom, and bed. It's almost like a studio apartment. If only the rat living in it wouldn't eat my hat and shoe laces. Here's what it looks like....

My bed is the messy one on the right

The kitchen (obviously)

When I'm not working (or hanging out in the basement), it's nice to take a walk around the farm....

An olive tree, with the torre above Piedipaterno in the background

Sorba, Jujube, and Gialso seeing what I'm up to

The horses got moved to a new pasture... Gialso had to move in with the goats

It's also nice to go and explore the areas around the farm...

Darcy, Adolfo and Ben showed us around an abandoned castle between the farm and Spoleto.

The castle

Adolfo and Ben

 One day we walked down to this field by the river below the farm...

On another day we took a trip the Vallo di Nera....

Inside la chiesa di san Giovanni

La chiesa di santa Maria

The view from Vallo di Nero: Piedipaterno below and Paterno above.
If it weren't for the hill you could see the farmhouse.

A self portrait

Blood oranges for lunch

Until next time.... whenever that may be. Ciao!

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

I love Italian signs... They just have so much more personality than their American counterparts, even if I can't always understand what they are trying to tell me. And there are so many different kinds of signs here....

There are signs that tell you where you are....

and signs that tell you where you're going.

There are signs that are old....

...and signs that are new.

There are signs to tell you which of Italy's thousands of churches you are looking at.

There are signs that give you instructions or tell you what not to do...

(I have the most trouble trying to understand these.)

If rocks are falling from the cliff... Be sure to swerve. Especially in the rain and snow.

Don't chase after dogs with lassos or baskets

Don't give people in hats high fives.
Also... don't light matches or pour buckets of water on the fire.

Expect to see a man shoveling manure

Do not:
 Spray people on benches with hoses,
Angrily chop down trees,
Or happily pick wild flowers and mushrooms

Do not:
Shoot birds with slingshots,
Hit the slide with a hammer while standing on it,
Or break bottles, put out your cigarettes in cocaine, or drink Pepto-Bismal

Do not:
Try to fly by leaping off of benches,
Light fires with your magic wand,
Or attempt to hurdle flaming benches

Do not:
Let your dog attack a turkey
 (why would a turkey be wandering around this park?),
Or let your dog sit on sausages.