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Published: November 14th 2007
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View From Our Window
small towns, vinyards and olive groves in the foreground. snowcapped mountains in the background. We left Cecina on a sunday. we decided to stay in Florence(Firenze) for a night to break up the 5 hour train ride. we had booked at hotel ester just around the corner from the train station. after dropping off our packs, we explored the city. we walked along the shops to duomo(cathedral). the design is so intricate and ornate that you just stare in wonder at the placement of each block the carving of every statue and pillar. imagining the skill and manpower necessary to construct such a building without technology. we looked around inside admiring the stained glass and frescoes. we talked to a street artist on the way to the uffizi. we admired statues and paintings at the uffizi, and walked along the arno river as the sun set on our way to ponte vecchio(old bridge). we had dinner at a small out of the way place where they spoke no english. even though it was chilly we had gelato on the steps of duomo in the moonlight.
we left for perugia early in the morning by train. from the train station in perugia we searched for a way to the city of marsciano. i tried to
Duomo Firenze
bustling city streets. ornate, intricate architecture. Morgan at bottom right corner. communicate with a lady selling bus tickets and she suggested in italian that we go to the main bus terminal. we ate some lunch in a park overlooking perugia near the bus station. we called adriana at our next farm to let her know when we would arrive in marsciano. our first stop on the bus was the train station(duh josh). at the bus station in marsciano a man approached us saying with heavy italian accent, 'wwoofers? adriana?'. apparently he had been travelling with us and was heading to san fortunato with us. adriana and her husband carlo(an audio technician) picked morgan, stefano, and myself up.
San fortunato was a monastary at one point and was built 500 years ago. next to it is a chapel that is only used a few times a year now. at the beginning of the drive is a storehouse for grains, olives, and wine production. near the store house is an enormous oven where most of the bricks used for buildings in the surrounding area were at one time baked. san fortunato is on top of a hill surrounded by rolling hills, old hilltop towns with castles and cathedrals, and snow topped mountains
David
just outside the uffizi. in the distance. the fall colors showed themselves here where they seemed to be missing in the pines on the western shore in cecina. san fortunato has 1200 olive trees and they are full of olives. so many olives. there is one horse and 5 dogs. the dogs stay outside during the day but come in for the night. adriana and carlo have twin daughters silvia and margherita going to university in perugia to become vets.
our routine here is to wake with the sun and have a short breakfast. we begin picking olives and pick olives until 1ish. we have lunch. then we pick olives until 4ish. then we do some cleanup and lug all of the olives to the storehouse. we then have some freetime which morgan and i have used to take walks to ponds of the area, through farmland to ruins of barns, to ruins of an old convent, or just around san fortunato. we began giving ourselves italian lessons during this time as english is not spoken here much. we start dinner anywhere from 730 to 900 and it lasts until late.
olive harvest is pretty simple work, but time consuming and a
Ponte Vecchio
a bridge on the river with jewelry shops on both sides hanging out over the water. bit straining. we spread large nets on the ground under the trees. then we climb up ladders and strip the branches popping the olives off as our fingers run down the branch. sometimes they come off easier than other times. your fingers get jabbed by twigs and when it is cold in the morning, your hands feel raw with the scraping of twigs and leaves and olives. the ladders are usually precariously pivoting on the uneven ground or swinging thin branches. you are usually right up in the branches with leaves and twigs springing back into your eye(a very unpleasant feeling). it is very satisfying work as it is easy to see a swollen olive tree emptied and crates filled with olives. depending on the help, we pick between 6 and 9(our record) crates a day. we picked 40 crates our first week. each crate holds about 33kg(lbs) of olives so we picked about 1300kg(over a ton) of olives all by hand our first week. adriana took the olives to be pressed in marsciano and returned with some 220kg of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil sealing in r2d2 size stainless steel cannisters. so it was about 6:1 conversion from
Monkey Man
Adriana referred to me as 'monkey man' as i was more comfortable in the tree than in a ladder...and i am hairy. notice nets on ground and crate at corner. olives to oil. everything here is cooked in olive oil whose caliber i have not encountered anywhere.
the wwoofers are also charged with tending the fires in the house(the sole source of heat) and transport and replenishing of firewood. we help with some cleaning and setting the table and food prep and clearing the table.
stefano, an italian beachworker, was here for a week and a half. genna, an american working as a tourguide for senior tour groups here, came last week. last night rosanna, an australian wwoofer, arrived to help. morgan and i have been here since the beginning and hope to stay to the end of the harvest in early december. beside adriana, our captain, we are helped on and off by her friends, spina and rossella and sometimes her husband carlo, who has been away in milan for a week.
olive harvest has a small window so we dont really get regular time off. so, in effect, we havent done much travelling from here. also there is no public transportation from the farm to marsciano 20 minutes away. we visited Todi, a 4000 year old city, with spina when adriana was pressing olives. we
Umbrian Sunset
blazing sunset from San Fortunato. hung out in marsciano one night. but mostly we go on walks around here which is ok because it is soo beautiful. one night we were invited to go to a nearby farm for dinner. in broken english and mixed in italian we were told that a farmer nearby had killed a pig and that we could go there for dinner if we wanted. we agreed as it sounded interesting. after picking all day we cleaned up(spraying in a bathtub, scrub with soap, turn water back on to rinse) and got dressed to go out. when we arrived we were led to the basement where, to our surprise, we were given old butcher knives and directed to half of a 500lb hog layed out on a table. we were given brief instruction in italian and we began cutting. we had really fresh sausage and pork for dinner.
we are feeling out our next move. we have had a couple of offers including a week with rossella, adriana's friend, friends in afghanistan, and an english-teaching housesitting gig nearby. we are thinking warm and considering our tourist visas run out at the beginning of december. we have some thinking to do.
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