It takes a village called Paterno

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ciao. scusi the typing. punctuation hard and im too lazy to find it and want to type fast since im paying per hour here at the internet place here in genoa. having a great time. wwoofing was great. darcy and adolpho were great hosts and yes we worked our butts off. but on the flip side, we were able to eat a lot. you are asking, what did we do. well, we scooped horse and donkey poop and filled buckets and dug out trenches around fruit trees and applied the manure around the trees. we moved bales of hay from a relatives barn to their barn. i didnt get to do this growing up cause it was considered mans work. ha i say. i have now worked in the hay. we dug holes, planted trees, built some structures, fine tuned a roof on a straw bale tool shed. pruned willow trees. spent two evenings at gregario and guliannas house observing basket making. warm and sunny most days until our last day when approximately 4 inches of snow fell. very very beautiful. we were probably 20 km outside of spoleto. we spent a morning in spoleto and visited casa romana which was a pretty darn old house. reportedly the home of the mother of emperor vespucia. long train ride from spoleto to rome to genoa, but arrived yesterday. great evening last night and sat beside and enjoyed dinner with two maltanese young men. we have now added malta to our list of places to visit some day. lots to say but i want moose to have a say. food is incredible. had fresh sheep ricotta with jam for breakfast a couple of mornings. perry ann is italian at heart, no doubt, due to her warm friendly personality and animated gesticulation. Okay I am going to use caps appropriately now. Special note to the Wilmers, our wwoof hosts used the pet name "monkey" with each other. We did find that a bit humerous since we thought of you all every time they used it. And we found out that Adolpho's mother is also a part time actress and was in Pinnocchio by Bennini. I must also say that I sometimes feel that I am in a Bennini movie. Ya know, life is beautiful. Ciao.
Squirrel

Boungiorno! Squirrel is lazy, true. Punctuation is not hard. The farm was near the village of Paterno, a cluster of stone buildings perched on a hillside with a population of 10. Picturesque. Above it was another village, Monte Forello, and below it in the valley yet another village of 100 sitting on another cliff. Medieval locations. Around these villages were mountains soaring to 6000 feet from the valley at 1000. A bit of snow clung to the high country. It was removed from Spoleto by the mountains so it was like being far away from everything, though only a 30 minute drive. Beautiful. The farm was on very steep, mountain slopes and was planted in many kinds of fruit and nut trees. They are building a new house for a B&B. We sat around the table in their small cozy kitchen and talked about farming, politics, agriculture policy, America, Italy, family, everything you can think of. They took us to Paterno to the home of Gregorio and Guliana, cousins of Adolpho's father, where we watched Gregorio make willow baskets and drank tea in front of the fire. Lovely. The kind of experience you hope for. Gregorio is amazing. At 75 he scampers up trees to prune the branches and makes the most beautiful chestnut ladders you have ever seen. We had a wonderful week in the country and to top it off, the last day it snowed about 4 inches, the large flakes floating down in lazy circles, the kind of snow we don't get anymore. Stupendo! More about Genoa later. Ciao!
Moose

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Comments

[lori & burt]

So good to hear from you guys!
Life is Beautiful! What a wonderful experience. I am looking forward to following along on your trip through Italia! Susan, as a girl growing up somehow I did get to shovel poop and do all the work outside, but even then I thought...well, I get to be outside! and it beats dishes. Jim, I could just see you two there with the tea and the good conversation. Congrats on making this trip and time in your lives happen for you. A dream made true! Enjoy! Enjoy-Lori

[Betsy]

Sounds Wonderful...
Glorious...to be envied...beautiful! Glad you are having such a great experience though it might make it hard to come back home. When are you coming home? We'll be in E. TN at the end of the month and would love to see you if you are back by then.

[Windie]

Snowing all over the world
We thought we would tanut you with the fact that it has snowed here twice since you left. However, it sounds like what you saw was gorgeous. Besides our snow was puny - AND IT WASN'T IN ITALY! I must learn more about the "monkey" people. If this is a common event that you experience while there, this will be a sign that Mark and I must travel to Italy. It sounds like you're having a wonderful time. I'm so glad - although a wee bit jealous!