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Published: December 10th 2007
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Rossella's House
note Rotecastello perched high on the hill, also greenhouse and rainwater collection at corners of the house We finished the olive harvest at San Fortunato November 27. the family took morgan, jenna and i to a great seafood ristorante tucked high in the hills(strange for seafood) called 'piccolo mondo'. They also finally showed us the chapel on the farm where the monks met for mass. We didnt have a farm lined up because we had finished the olive harvest earlier than expected. luckily though, morgan's friendliness and charm got a friend of the family to invite us to stay with her for a few days.
Rosella had stopped by to help with the olive harvest once or twice a week. she is friendly and energetic and would often break out her italian opera voice while picking olives. she was Adriana's tai chi and yoga teacher. she knows yoga but is a master in Tai Chi. She picked us up from San Fortunato on the last monday in November. We had spent exactly 4 weeks at San Fortunato.
We parked on the road below a small hill town called Rotecastello. Rotecastello is a town of 20 citizens, down from 200 a generation or two ago when there were big families and before the young were attracted to
Our Last meal at San Fortunato
This seafood ristorante is on top of a hill? 5 or 6 seafood courses filled us bigger cities to make their fortunes. We walked down a rarely used lane to Rosella's small house below the town. the eastern and southern borders were a small stream. the western border is a tree-line. and the northern border is the road separating her property from the town. the house was originally used as a mill and was built in the 1600's. Morgan and i had bunk beds in a rennovated part of the cellar.
Rosella is energetic and outgoing but is disciplined at the same time. She lives alone in a very minimalistic way. she has large bins at every corner of the house to collect rainwater. This rainwater is then used to water her garden and her greenhouse. the rainwater is also used for flushing the toilet. she uses the rainwater to wash her hair and to wash dishes. she bakes her own spelt bread every week and makes her own jams and pestos and marmalades. the source of heat for the house and water is also the source of heat for cooking. she uses a wood stove and oven to cook her food and bake her bread. The wood comes from the surrounding woods and sometimes
Rossella Tai Chi Master
Rossella showing her moves in her house. she buys or trades for wood. nothing goes to waste. peels from fruits are dried on top of the wood stove and burned. pasta water is used to clean dishes or floors. other food waste goes to compost and is used in her gardens. the white, fire-cleaned ash from her stove is used to clean dishes or pots with oil residue. she had considered solar panels, but her use of electricity is so miniscule that it would not be worth the cost. all of her appliances are powered by hand; knives instead of blender, mortar and pestil instead of food processor, hand-cranked coffee grinder, etc. if we needed to take a shower(twice was pushing it) we had to tell her 45 minutes or so before if we wanted warm water. it was very interesting and very informative having lived with her for a week.
My main job was cutting wood(by hand) and making and installing a door on her greenhouse. the materials i had to work with were scraps and leftover pieces of wood, and i dont think that there was a matching nail or screw. the only things purchased for the project were the hinges. it took me
Morgan Working Soil
Inside Rossella's greenhouse. note new door in background 3 days to frame the doorway, build and waterproof the door, and put it all together.
Morgan spent alot of time working in the garden. she harvested potatoes, turned soil, cleaned out and reorganized the cellar, collected wood from around the farm, learned how to clean with ash, and made spelt bread.
After work we had lunch and usually an afternoon espresso. Rossella was always busy with tai chi or yoga or friends. the first two nights we were there we drove to Marsciano and watched free documentaries on asia in italian. one night we played dominoes and talked. One night we went to Orvieto, a very old city, where Rossella taught tai chi. we stopped in a pastry shop and met with a co-owner who took us down into the basement. apparently his mentor had spent 25 years meticulously excavating the buried city below. It was pretty amazing really. there was a series of interconnected rooms carved out of stone below the city streets. we walked through the tunnels that at one time connected the ancient city's water supplies. there were water wells, grottos, wine cellars, statues, even a petrified tree from 1.3 million years ago. some
Washing With Ash
goodbye palmolive, hello ash of the rooms and sculptures were roman and some were etruschan. morgan and i walked the streets and looked out at the valley below while Rossella taught. we finished the night with pizza. our tour guide in the tunnels and rooms joined us. We found out that he has a television show on cable where he shows the audience how to cook italian food. on our saturday night there we went to a party with rossella where she and morgan tore up the dancefloor. on sunday morgan and i went to Assissi. it was a difficult trip. we left at 10am from the marsciano train station. the train was supposed to arrive at 10.24 to make the connection in perugia at 10.31. our train, however, didnt get to perugia until 10.33. we were the first off the train and just made it to the right platform to watch the doors close as the train pulled away from the station. dejected, we checked the schedule to find that the next train(just a 10 minute ride) didnt leave the station for another 4 hours. we walked around perugia and made the best of it. we did finally make it to Assissi and
Tunnel Under Orvieto
Morgan squeezing through ancient passageways under the new city went straight to the duomo. The cathedral was massive, enormous and seemed to counter St Francis'(San Francesco's) attitude. San Francesco's push was simplicity, nature and humility. The Cathedral constructed seemed so strange as it opposed his philosophy. We went inside to find that the Church had built the Cathedral around San Francesco's small church constructed by his hands hundreds of years ago. There were Franciscan monks everywhere in their brown robes with hood and cincture ropes around their waists. San Francesco's actual cincture rope was preserved there in a small cappella.
Morgan and i said our goodbyes to Rossella the next day at the train station in Marsciano and began our 20 hour train ride to Noto, one of the southernmost cities in Sicily, further south than parts of Africa.
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Jen
non-member comment
Helllooo!
Merry Christmas to you two out there....gosh I'm inspired.