Citrus Heaven in Sicily

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We left Marsciano Dec 4 for a 20 hour train ride through Rome and Naples to Sicily. We rode the train through the night. At about 5am we reached Villa San Giovanni at the toe of Italy. i watched in wonder as the train we were on was broken apart and loaded onto a ferry to cross the water to Sicily. Apparently Italy wanted to build a bridge but it would be too costly and with the constant seismic activity in the area it would not be worth the expense so if you want to cross from the mainland to sicily whether on foot, by car, or on a train you have to take a ferry. This crossing however made our train two hours late. We passed by mount etna and eventually made it to the little town of Noto, further south than the northernmost parts of Africa. Noto is best known for its Baroque Architecture. The citrus farm was about 3km from Noto. The household was Massimo and his Danish wife, Janne with their two children Sophia and Matheas. Janne's mother, Marit, also lived at the farm. Life at the farm was very interesting. All of the meals were macrobiotic. We consumed no dairy, meat only twice during our stay, no frying, no sugar, no caffeine, no alchohol, etc. we did the dishes for lunch and dinner. Sophia and Matheas were both in middle school and high school respectively. In italy there is a break halfway through the schoolday so the kids needed to be taken to school in the morning and picked up in the afternoon then taken back to school and picked up in the evening. they also go to school six days a week. this meant that between the parents, they drove to town and back at least 4 times a day. Janne, with the help of Marit cooked all of the meals and took care of the housework. Janne also helped with the farmwork when she could. Massimo was the farmer trying to make ends meet. On top of farming he rented out rooms, baked bread in a woodburning brick oven twice a week and delivered it(5am to 11am), took english classes, and he worked as a massage therapist a few times a week. Our quarters were usually rented out during the warmer months. we had a large living room the opened out into a stone courtyard with grapevines, a cacchi tree and lemon orchard. we had our own kitchen that opened out to a small table overlooking a stream. We also had our own bathroom.
The farm had Lemons, oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, mandarancia, almonds, cacchi(persimmons), pears, olives, and myrtle. it was in a deep valley with two streams running through it. We had breakfast at 8am which always consisted of homemade bread and an assortment of organic honeys and homemade marmalades. we began work at 8.30 except on a couple occasions when Massimo needed me to help hand start the tractor or when he needed me to help load and unload citrus for shipping. Work was always varied. We never did the same thing two days in a row. we made cement and paved the washed out driveway, we built a dry stone wall to prevent erosion, we collected, split, and stacked firewood(i found two scorpions while splitting) for the furnace that heated the house and the water, we dug holes for new trees, we cut and burnt weeds, we harvested myrtle(a fragrant, green cherry sized fruit), we harvested oranges and lemons and mandarancia, we pruned suckers from the olive trees, etc. we always got done with work at 1.30 except on a couple of days massimo had massage work during the day and he would drop us off at the beach while he worked. after work morgan and i usually took a walk to watch the sun set. once we ran into a man herding sheep along the roadways. apparently the sheep dont have a permanent home they just are herded down the roads keeping the grass cut along the ditches and stopping traffic. resourceful. after dark we often went to noto on one of the many daily trips and tried to find an internet point. in our free time at our flat, morgan realized that she doesnt like to play chess but loves to play poker. we ate dinner around 830pm. one night they let us watch "fame" with english subtitles with the family.
we had one day off each week. one day we spent walking to Noto Antica or old noto. italy has been conquered by many nations and attack was always imminent. For this reason towns, especially in the south, were walled and on the top of a hill so that if an attack came from the sea, there would be plenty of time to gather within the city walls and prepare for battle. but a few hundred years ago the threat diminished and after an earthquake which damaged many buildings the residents of noto rebuilt closer to the sea and left the town an empty shell. it is very common in southern italy to find that old towns that are on the sea have been relocated from further inland in a more defensive location. so morgan and i walked in the warm sicilian sun for two hours along winding roads to Noto Antica. it struck me as we walked that just about everything that we saw was edible. we walked by bushes of rosemary and roadsides were covered with wild sage. fennel was growing everywhere. orange groves and lemon groves and mandarin orange groves and olive groves covered the landscape. we picked oranges straight from the tree to eat. we picked almonds and cracked them with stones on the road. i picked a few pomegranates to eat as we climbed the final hill to noto antica. we walked on a road that was built and rebuilt in different centuries by different cultures. one end of the ghost town was perched on the edge of a cliff and deep valleys fell away on two other sides. morgan sat in the grass at the edge of the cliff gazing out at the distant sea as i tried to capture the dichotomy of crumbling architecture and vibrant wildflowers. the town was dead and empty. we had passed one car in the two hour walk. we explored some of the old buildings imagining storefronts or stables or homes. most of the town, though, had been reduced to rubble with a column here and a partial wall there. we had lunch (fruit, olive bread, and pesto)on the stone roof of what used to be a house dug into the hillside stone. as we looked down into the canyon we saw holes in the rockwall that were the burial sites for the city. the soil was sandy and rocky so there were rock walls surrounding all of the terraced fields on the hillsides. even if they were abandoned and covered with mediterranean scrub, canes and brambles, the walls remained as a reminder of the toil and attention given to this land for thousands of years.
another day off we took a train to Syracusa. The city has theater ruins from both the greeks and the romans. the city is right on the sea. the old city is on an island that is separated from sicily by a narrow waterway. of course there is a newer part on the mainland. at the very tip of the old island city there is a castle inside a protective wall. we walked the perimeter of the old city and watched the waves crash along the abrupt shore and along the jetty for the harbor.
one evening massimo had some business in the city of Modica even farther south than noto. he invited us to come. it was a strange city in that it was not on top of a hill or on the water but at the bottom of a valley. Modica is known around the world for its chocolate. the recipe for this chocolate dates back 500 years to when explorers brought cocoa and the recipe back from central america. we walked the streets in search of this specialty. we found a small shop and bought a variety of flavors including citrus, cinnamon, and hot pepper. the flavor is strong and dark but the biggest difference is that the texture is gritty. we saved it for friends and savored each morsel. we still have some at the time of this entry(february).
we had no plan for the holidays. all of our attempts at finding a farm had failed. noone wanted to have foreigners during christmas and new years. the massimo and janne needed us to leave by the 20th of december to make space for family arriving then. there was no response from anywhere in the south of italy. we then tried to contact a farm in calabria that had said we could come at the end of november. the next time we made it to an internet point the farm had responded saying to come. but on that same day another farmer in noto responded from 3 weeks earlier with this response "its ok in december". we didnt know whether this meant yes or no. so massimo called and it turned out to be yes. stay in noto in beautiful weather and save money and 8 hours of trains or follow through with a farm we didnt know but had asked twice. in the end we decided that the right thing to do was to honor the man that had invited us into his life twice. we bought our tickets at a travel agency because the noto train station was too small to have an office. we were dropped off at the station in the morning after our goodbyes. we made it to syracusa for a connection. at the platform where our cheap train was supposed to be, there was a fancy expensive eurostar train. we asked where our train was and were told that a train had derailed and there was no longer continuous service to mainland italy. in very broken english we were told that we would take the nice train and then take a bus where the tracks were obstructed to the next station and continue from there. it was hectic and slow transferring holiday luggage and seniors and children from train to bus then back to train. on the bus we saw where a landslide had smashed the top of some train cars and apparently had derailed them. we had to stop one station too early because our train wasnt crossing on a ferry to the mainland. when we made it to the port we found that the ferries were running at least an hour late and that would make us miss our connecting trains. so we snuck onto the next boat at the port not really knowing where it was going when it left the port. we ate some fruit and hoped for the best as we left sicily in our wake. the boat stopped at the right city on the mainland and we hurried with our packs to the station where we found a train leaving for our destination as we pushed on. it wast the train we had a ticket for but as timing is never guaranteed here a ticket is a ticket. we arrived at our next connection 5 minutes before a train left for briatico, our final destination. we had just enough time to call the farmer in briatico to let him know we would be hours early after a sequence of lucky changes. he told us that massimo had said we werent coming until the next day but he could make arrangements. it was our luckiest and easiest trainride yet. Giuseppe met us at the station in Briatico and took us to our next farm, San Giorgio.

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Photos

Traffic Jam
At the end of our lane we caught a glimpse of a herd of sheep always in transit.

Train on a Boat
Our train was broken apart and pushed onto a ferry to cross over to Sicily. no bridges

View of the Sea
Morgan gazes into the valleys below Noto Antica, abandoned 300 or 400 years ago for present day Noto.

Harvesting Mandarancie
Citrus harvest days were the best.

Arial View of the Farm
note smoke coming from the wood furnace.

Beach near Noto
Massimo dropped us off at the beach while he gave massages.

On the Island City of Siracusa
We walked the perimeter of the old town. we couldnt get in the castle at the tip of the peninsula.

Scorpion in the Wood
This little fella was inside a piece of wood that i split.

Noto is Known for Baroque Architecture
We visited Noto often.

The Farmhouse
This is where we ate all of our meals and watched Fame. we lived in the basement.

Our Ferry to the Mainland
They open in the front to allow cars and trains on board. note in bottom right corner that this is also where amphibious cars can plunge into the sea.

Comments

[Nathan Q.]

Chocolate
I hope you save some of the c for me. Thank you for the detailed update; it's always a pleasure to read about your travels/adventures.