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Published: February 15th 2011
Pirapora
So we finally arrived at the first farm! It's located in a small town called Zambrone in Calabria, a region in southern Italy. When Jon and I walked up to the house we could see the most spectacular view of the sun setting over the Mediterranean Sea. Its amazing!! A little background on the farm: it's family owned by Giovanni "Johnny" and Franco who inherited the land from their parents. Johnny is married to Lauren who is English, they have 2 children, Luca age 5 and Sophia age 3. Franco is married to Rosey who is Brazilian and they have 2 children as well, Michal and Sarah, both somewhere between the ages of 14-16. Together they operate a B & B and restaurant in the summer, which is 80% sustained from the farm. They have large gardens full of vegetables, and since its currently the winter season they are growing cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, lettuces, hot peppers, fennel, and there are still a few stray carrots and beets from the summer. There are also orange and lemon trees, and lots of wild roots and flowers to eat! Lauren has been teaching me which plants and flowers are good to eat so I've been trying all the varieties and reporting back to Jon which ones actually taste good. There's one flower in particular that I'm obsessed with, and I can't remember the name but it's a pretty yellow flower, sort of like a buttercup, and it tastes like vinegar. I snack on them all day! There's also a chicken coup with happy chickens and roosters, very loud roosters in fact, it cockadoodledos ALL day. The farm is somewhat positioned on a cliff so from anywhere you can look out and see the sea, and there are the most beautiful sunsets over the water. We feel so lucky to be surrounded by such beauty. We figured that we'd be stuck in a field in the middle of nowhere, so when we drove up to a semi-beachfront farm we were beside ourselves. We've been taking lots of pictures too, which we will upload as soon as we can navigate the computer and keyboard...all in Italian.
Sean, a fellow woofer, took us on a tour when we first arrived as his wife, Frances, and their son, Quinn, finished putting together our room. He showed us around the kitchen we would be using, the different gardens and pathways, and finally showed us the "laboratory" which is basically a home for all the good stuff. Inside we saw the large vats for their homemade wine, shelves and shelves filled with different jars of homemade tomato sauces from the summer tomatoes, marmalades, preserved vegetables, hot pepper sauces (apparently this region is known for their spicy food 😊 and racks of house cured meats. Salami was hanging from the ceiling, Jon was drooling, and then Sean decided to fill us in on the "farm policy". I was assuming that we can't touch any of these things, that it was all for the restaurant and guests in the summer, but turns out we have full reign over anything...actually anything, and we don't have to ask anyone, we just go "shopping"- meats, wine, and sauces from the lab, vegetables from the garden, water from the fresh spring, and a full kitchen to make dinner in every night. We were freaking out, totally in awe of the wonderful situation we found ourselves in for the next month. We were so stoked to have all of these amazing resources at our fingertips! And then the work started...
We assumed there must be tons of work to "pay" for the delicious food and comfortable lodging, which is a queen size bed with our own wood stove to keep things very toasty, so we decided to enjoy our first night and pray we wouldn't wake up to slave labor in the morning. We were pleasantly surprised! Basically the day starts at 8:30 am and we work until 1:30 pm when one of the families makes us lunch. We eat, clean up, and were done! We have each afternoon to ourselves, and aside from basic chores we're finished untill the next morning. The work usually involves gardening, cleaning, raking, moving wood, cutting wood, organizing random piles of junk, and pretty basic farm stuff. It's never too hard, and we've been learning a lot.
We had a really awesome first week. Sean and Frances have been so helpful! It's been nice having dinner company, and 4 hands make the work go much faster. They're from the west coast of Canada and are traveling around the world with their 4 year old, Quinn, who is actually the coolest kid ever. He eats vegetables, olives, fruits...basically anything healthy that you wish your kid would eat. He's hysterical and so smart, he just bops around the farm with his toy box, telling stories, or helping us work or just doing his own thing. It was so amazing to have them around for our first week, and we're totally bummed that they've headed to Sicily to wwoof on another farm. I especially loved that Frances was there because she's a runner, a marathon runner in fact, and she showed me an awesome route to run while I'm here. We did some exploring on our last run together and found the most scenic route, but unfortunately we ran into some scary dogs and a elephant sized bull along the way so it was probably a one time thing. We had quite the send off on their last night, when we made them dinner...American cheeseburgers and "French fries", and all had a little too much wine, making the next work day especially grueling. We wish them safe and happy travels!
Our first weekend at the farm was awesome as well. Jon and I worked a full day on Friday to have Saturday off to visit a town called Tropea which is a few train stops away. It's the tourist hub in the summertime, but there's an awesome beach and a few restaurants still open so we decided to spend the day down there. We checked out the local farmers market, grabbed some beers, and headed down to sit at the beach. It was BEAUTIFUL!! When the sun went down we headed back to the populated area to watch the sunset and wait for restaurants to open to have some dinner. We were starved and nothing was open until 6 pm...at 6:03 we headed into the first place we found--a pizza place with 500 different kinds of pizza! Some wine, antipasti, 2 pizzas, and 4 hours later we headed back to our lovely little farm home!
The next day was sunny so Lauren and Johnny invited us to join them on their typical Sunday outing, a day at the beach! We headed down and enjoyed the sun and surroundings, it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. We grilled sausages, fish, and shrimp and had many beers while the kids ran around naked and played on the rocks. Apparently they do this every Sunday as long as the weather is nice, so Jon and I decided that were going to focus all of our positive energy towards bringing us more sunny Sundays!
As much as we love it here we're both missing home, and the luxuries that we have left behind. We'll see how long farming works for us, but for the time being we're really grateful to have found such a beautiful, and bountiful place!
By the way, the website for the farm is pirapora.it, in case you want to check things out!
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Hunter
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What a place. Absorb it all and these memories will stay with you forever. Enjoy.