22 Maggio - Gubbio

Last Sunday, for my day off from Ca' Mazzetto, I took the opportunity to check out Gubbio... another scenic Medieval Umbrian town.The town is very nice, they have the standard repertoire of Umbria: Il Duomo, a Rocca, lots of old churches, amazing views, nice architecture.... Gubbio even has a Roman amphitheater.

While all of the sights were very nice, the real highlight of the day was the Corsa dei Ceri. This yearly festival is one of the greatest/most random celebrations ever. The Ceri (or candles) are made of two large wooden prisms end to end with saints mounted atop, they weigh a couple hundred kilos. These pillars are then mounted to carrying boards, so that they can be lifted by groups of crazy hardy men and run all over town. The festival culminates with a race at the end of the day where the three saint topped ceri are raced through the town finishing at the top of the hill. Technically, I missed the official Ceri Marathon by a week, but the day that I was there was the junior division (ages 16-20 I believe). It was all pretty hilarious.

It was definitely a great time.

7 Maggio- A Day in Bologna

Blogger lost my entire post from Bologna. It was funny, I promise. I don't have time to rewrite the whole thing. So I'm just going to post the photos. I'll update this post later. So check back some time soon.

For the record, the person in some pics that you probably won't recognize is Dom, the couch surfer who stayed at Ca Penelope for a few days. He was staying with friends in Bologna, so we decided to meet up and check out the town together.

On to the pictures....

Walk to the train station in Modena

Basilica of San Pietro

More Basilica

Neptune... with a woody. I'll explain later.

Dom demonstrating the communication corner thing. There's also more on this.

Mmmm... fruits and vegetables

On the Way up the Torre

View from the torre

More view

The view from the bottom... more than 100m tall, and listing a mere 7.5 feet from perpendicular.

Where we had lunch... cheap and tasty.

As I said, some of these pictures warrant a deeper explanation, I promise to get on it as soon as possible.

Ciao tutti.

Ca' Mazzetto

Well, hello. I apologize for my prolonged absence here on the interweb. I haven't had access to the internet for some time now... But I'm in Gubbio for my day off and I thought I would update you all about my last farm Ca' Mazzetto.

The farm is located on a hill a few kilometers from the town of Valfabbrica... and the view is horrendous (not). Here on the farm, they have a couple hundred sheep and grow a variety of cereal crops. The sheep are raised primarily for their milk, which is sold to a local cheese producer, or made into raw milk peccorino here on the farm. In addition to the farm, They have a family run agritourismo and a restaurant.

My tasks on the farm have included making cheese (and ricotta), raking cut grass to feed to the sheep, stacking hay, helping out in the restaurant, and occasionally herding wayward sheep back to the barn.

That's about all of the writing I'm going to do for this post, I think I'll let the photos speak for themselves (ok, I'll put cations to clarify things too).

The house and agritourismo

My room

A small portion of the incredible view

More view

Even more view (This is wheat I believe)

The machine that cuts grass, and the road leading to the house

I the red tractor and a few wayward sheep

The occasional spectacular thunderstorm rolls through. For the record... I love thunderstorms.

Weighing peccorino

The finished product, packaged and ready for sale.

Sheep, on their way home

The one of cats likes to hang out on my window sill

The only kitten that will let me approach it (there are 5 )

Even more view

Thanks for reading... More updates soon.

Ciao.

My Last Farm

I have arrived safely at my final farm: http://www.camazzetto.it/ I'm back in Umbria (I just can't get enough of this place), this time near the town of Valfabbrica.

Unfortunately there's no wifi here at the farm, so I can't post any pictures of the amazing views (for a few days, anyway). I'll get something up as soon as possible.

Also, apparently Blogger go rid of my entire post about Bologna (those bastards!!!) so I'll have to write that up again when I get a chance.

Ciao!

More Signs

Yep... the signs are funny here in Northern Italy too. And you all seemed to like the last post about signs so much that I thought I'd do another brief post.

Yield for pedophiles chasing down little girls

You can park here. But watch out for the invisible man and Boba Fett racing motorcycles.

 There's nothing funny about this next picture

Oh look... Horses. How nice.

 ...except that it's on the front of a horse butcher

Wait... not so nice.

 And arguably the funniest sign I've seen...

Berlusconi propaganda mobile...  get stoked

Ca' Penelope: Thus Far

Sorry for the lack of updates over the course of the past week or so. I'm sure you have all been wondering what I've been up to over here.

The garden

In the greenhouse, waiting to be planted

My tasks on the farm have mostly involved the garden:

• Planting onions, squash, and watermelon

Onions flanking peppers

• Watering plants
• Weeding (mostly around the strawberries)
• Laying down straw around the crops
• Laying down cardboard and wood shavings between rows to prevent weeds from growing
• Setting up a fence to keep the chickens from messing up the garden
• Cutting grass and feeding it to the donkeys and cow
• Helping to care for the chickens, ducks, donkeys, and cow
• Gathering stinging nettles to soak in water in order to make bug spray

Samuel and Johnathan cutting up nettles (note the gloves... the name "stinging nettles" is not a joke)

• Picking, cleaning, and freezing strawberries (to make into jam eventually)

 There has also been a lot happening here aside from the farm work, and quite a cast of characters:
Valentina: runs the B&B portion of the agritourismo and is generally in charge of the place. She speaks excellent english. She is very nice and hospitable.
Samuel: runs the farming portion of the operation. He is actually a long term WWOOFer (he's been here for a few months). So, he's fairly new to farming, but he's got the garden in pretty good shape.
Valentina's parents, Atos and Fabrizia: they run the restaurant on weekends, and speak very little English. I can still usually understand what Fabrizia wants me to do. Atos wears purple converse high tops.
Dom: couch surfed for a couple of days and arrived on a bicycle. He was (and still is, I suppose) Australian, and has been travelling the world since the beginning of last year. He flew from Sydney to Hong Kong, then took trains all the way to Europe. He spent a year WWOOFing in France and is now nearing the end of his trip. He decided to finish things off by biking from Veneto to Napoli before heading back to Australia. Moral of the story: he is pretty epic and a really nice guy.
Marianna and Johnathan: Valentina's sister and her fiancée. She lives in Spain, he is from Colorado. They met when he WWOOFed at Ca' Penelope. Now he works in Antarctica at a remote camp doing weather spotting. Apparently it's a bitch to get married in foreign countries (i.e. there is a ridiculous amount of bureaucratic nonsense and paperwork).

Sorry I don't have pictures of anyone. I'm sure my camera has been feeling extremely ignored lately.

At any rate, I'm having a wonderful time here. The people are young and the focus is much more on the B&B as opposed to being a primarily farm oriented operation. It is a totally different experience, and I'm enjoy seeing a different side of things.

Ciao.