Life In Calabria pt III

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San Giorgio seemed more like a home after taking a vacation from it and returning. We had puppies that needed nurturing. We fed them milk and found shelter for them at night. When we first got them I put both of them in the pocket of a hood I wore, but they grew quickly. Francesco appeared one day with a man who took one of the pups home with him. Morgan cried at the way the pup that was left over searched for her sister. They were so small but at least they had had each other to keep warm. To our relief the man returned the pup the next day complaining that it whined at night and peed. Duh. The pups started out as a burden but they were soon our babies. We became defensive and very concerned with their well-being. Morgan name the lighter pup Stella(Star) and the smaller, darker pup Luna(Moon), as they were a light in dark times. We had never planned on being in italy for so long. And never so long at one farm. After working so hard for a piece of land and the life dependent on it, one becomes one with the land. I don’t mean to be abstract but when you eat food from the trees and plants on the land and eggs from chickens living there and drink the water and breathe the air, so much of that farm begins to course through your veins. Your blood, sweat, tears and waste then become part of the land too. Beside the physical relationship, you become connected to the land and the plants and animals emotionally. And we could work there forever but it would never be for us. The land wasn’t ours to protect and defend. At the slightest whim the owner could do as he pleased. It was a struggle to be connected to land that was run by others.
We decided we would leave soon and started researching flights and farms. We joined the Wwoof organization for Spain and Ireland and emailed a few farms. We found relatively cheap flights from Rome to Barcelona and from Barcelona to Dublin and from Dublin to Frankfurt. We decided on April 11th to leave Italy for Spain based on a ticket for less than ten euros.
We were back to our old routine. We worked fields weeding our previously planted crops. Morgan hit olive branch bundling. I tilled fields with the tractor. I worked on construction of a gazebo and morgan painted it. We planted lettuce from our nursery into a field and put up screens for fences. I helped Avramo, pino’s gypsy friend, with construction on a house on the piece of land pino had promised to his uninterested son. One day while morgan planted onion in some beds I had worked up, I decided I should start the mural pino had been pushing me to start. I had done the research and drawn out plans. The mural was to be on the house on Francesco’s land. I started in the morning and got a bold face of the archangel started when Francesco who was rarely around appeared. He asked what I was doing. Without waiting for a response he said, “This is MY house. I don’t want it.” I packed all of the art supplies away and never finished. He later told me that he didn’t know I was painting a saint and asked me to finish what I had started. But as there was only a week left and I had a million things to do, it never happened.
Pino wanted to have a huge festa at san Giorgio for Pasqua(Easter). He employed the help of an older Italian gentlman who had been a previous wwoofer named Antonio. Antonio and I began working on a waterproof shelter for the patio in case it rained. I rebuilt a table and began working on chairs. We had no real materials to work with and little time to work on it. In the end we decided to have the festa at a local bar owned by a friend. For Pasqua there is no large rabbit hiding multicolored eggs. The holiday is a religious event. In the streets of most towns a group of like-dressed young men carry heavy statues of St. John, Mary and Jesus in a quickening procession. They reenact the original Easter morning. John and Peter found Jesus tomb empty, and they ran to tell the others. Apparently John was faster than Peter so only John is represented. So John ran and told Mary and then John and Mary ran to the tomb where they were confronted by Jesus. So the young men walk and build to a run between churches in the towns where the statues start. The confrontation is usually dramatic with the black dress of mary being ripped away to show a white dress beneath and mary and jesus kiss which is a difficult maneuver with heavy statues being held by 6 men. Pasqua is spent at church, then at the procession, and then with the family. We ate with Vittoria. The next day is called Pasquetta and is spent with family and friends, so the festa was to be on Monday. The weather turned bad on Monday with rain and hail and lightning, but we ate well anyway. Morgan and I helped with setup. Cingiale(wild boar) and capretta(young goat) and eggplant and pasta and more than the thirty of us could possibly eat. And wine and grappa to put all in a good mood. Morgan tried her first goat brain after they split the head in half and threw it on the grill. In the confusion of drunken abandon, morgan and I were left to walk through the rain back to San Giorgio.
That night there was strong winds and heavy rain. We woke to destruction. Trees had been broken and the top of an almond tree was strewn about the ground outside our door. The roof of the chicken house had been ripped off and had landed in our salad garden. We spent the rest of the rainy week cleaning up the mess. We chopped and bundled felled trees and I put the roof back on the chicken coop. morgan and I managed to till the edges of wheat fields on the week’s only nice day and plant a perimeter of sunflowers.
That weekend Antonio came back to help on the farm until we left for Spain. Pino’s job away from the area ended that week. Also the time changed so we were really geared to get a lot of work done. On Sunday morgan, pino, Antonio and I joined the alpine club on a trek in southern italy to some waterfalls. After the daylong trek we stopped at a seemingly normal hill near potenzioni. We walked to the top where there were olive trees. At the end there was an ancient moss covered stairway that led down into the earth. There was a huge open cavity carved out of the rock thirty or forty feet high and over 100 feet long. The walls and ceiling were covered with a strange pattern of etching in the rock. It seemed like a church but there was no way to know what it was used for.
Antonio and I started a fence to separate the waterfowl from the rest of the birds. Pino and I dug 50 holes for pumpkins. I began a roof of palm leaves over the patio after disassembling the old temporary roof. We also began construction on a house for the waterfowl. I fixed a waterpipe antonello ripped out of the ground while he was plowing. One day morgan, Francesco and I planted a large field with climbing beans, eggplant, parsley, tomatoes, peppers, basil, etc.
We started saying our goodbyes. We were saddest to leave the pups, who had come to know us and trust us and wait for us to appear in the morning. We had dinner with Maggie and her family a few nights before we left. We had a rocky dinner with the family at the favorite seafood restaurant. The farm was hard to leave. We felt in a way that we were abandoning the pups who had grown quite a bit by now. Vittoria and pino had been so good to us there is no way to repay them for their hospitality. The night before we left pino took us to meet some Irish ladies who were in town. Pino’s friend, Vito, came along as he had a common friend with the ladies. We all went to a Spanish restaurant in the hills for drinks. Vito is a lawyer and the ladies were having some financial problems with an Italian company nearby. So I spent the night translating between the irish ladies who spoke no Italian and Vito who spoke no English. we were in italy speaking Italian, in a Spanish restaurant as we were on our way to spain, and translating for Irish ladies as Ireland will be our final stop before heading home. Poetic eh?

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Photos

The Sea as Seen from Briatico
The water is a dazzling blend of blues and greens.

Morgan and Our Pups
Stella and Luna were dropped off at the farm the day that Dad and Eddie left. This is after we had been nursing them for over two weeks.

Pasqua Procession
These young men run carrying a statue of St. John which is followed by a statue of Mary on their way to meet the statue of Jesus.

Alpine Club in Calabria
This is one of the waterfalls we visited during our hike.

Our Salad Garden Before
This was taken January 18, a week or so after planting.

Our Salad Garden After
This was taken April 6, the week before we left. Keep in mind that we were taking lettuce from this field every day for two months.

Broken Furnace
This was the source of heat for our shower water. The week before we left Pino's friend came to dismantle it.

Morgan Likes Lettuce
note the painting in the background of St. George and the Dragon.

Goose Hut
I spent the last week in Italy building this over engineered goose and duck coop with Antonio.

Morgan and Our Big Pups
The day of our departure Morgan sheds tears as Stella and Luna look on with curiosity.

Pea Field
Morgan and Giuseppe crouch in the first of many fields we planted together.

Comments

[anonymous]

Hey! I want to read about Ireland.