Sicily- La Casa

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What a beautiful island, we truly enjoyed the 3 hour bus ride from Palermo to Catania, from one side of Sicily to the other. Surprisingly, there were so many rocky peaks, rolling hills, and of course lovely citrus orchards. We arrived to our next destination, La Casa delle Acque, on a particularly warm day, about 85 degrees F. We were welcomed with a spaghetti lunch and several bottles of champagne and local wine. I guess it was a New Years Eve Eve celebration. When we arrived to the house there were already about 15 people there and many more to come. The owner of the property Nirav, was away to Tuscany visiting family for the holidays. The two individuals in charge of the Wwoofers were Philip and Nele, a German couple that has been working for Nirav for four years now. This group included several of Philip and Nela’s friends visiting from Germany. After lunch we were given a quick tour of the property which was amazingly beautiful and filled with orchards that contained several varieties of oranges(Sanguinelli & Tarachi), mandarins, lemons and grapefruit. We were told during that tour that we were welcome to eat as much citrus as we wanted which was music to our ears. 12 in one day was James' record. The house has an amazing view of the gorgeous Mount Etna, an almost 11,000 foot active volcano that was covered with a layer of snow on the peaks. The property had channels of water that ran down Mount Etna through the orchards making supplemental watering unnecessary. Our sleeping quarters were by far the best we’ve experienced on the trip. We lived in one of the six rooms of the Wwoofer house; our room was quite big with a huge wardrobe where we could actually unpack our bags for the first time. It also had wood burning stove, made on the property, which was key later in our stay as the winter prevailed.

Our first day of work was spent helping build a bamboo fence around an area of the property where the chickens would be released and able to forage on their own. Our job was to cut and prepare the bamboo for the others that were building the fence. Since it was New Years Eve, we only worked in the morning and had an amazing lunch made by Nele, the self proclaimed “house wife”. After our lunchtime siesta, we were invited to go with Nele to make some sushi for our New Years Eve. After several hours of perfecting our sushi making techniques we returned to house full of people. With about 40 people and most bringing a dish to pass we had more food than you could imagine. This pre-party involved a lot of eating and drinking and even some entertainment. One of the other Wwoofers, Marcus from Norway, is an amazing musician. He put on an amazing show for us, playing the piano and harmonica and even singing a bit. Marcus and his friend Even left Norway in a van with only 15 euro between them and funded a year of traveling through Europe by performing on the street. He absolutely blew us away; we couldn’t believe his talent considering he is only 20 and has never had any formal training, couldn’t read music, just played by ear. We also got treated to a song created by Marcus and two other Wwoofers that referred to themselves as the Mandarini Blues Band, who wrote a song about their many hard working hours in the mandarini orchards.

Once the entertainment was over the group of us jumped in a few vehicles and went to the town of Paterno just a few kilometers away to go to a reggae concert. Junior Kelly, a well know reggae artist was scheduled to make an appearance in the monastery on the hill atop the small village of Paterno, which would have been the first big name reggae artist ever to play there. Since it was so strange that Junior Kelly was coming to Paterno, there was some speculation that he would not show, but most of us were optimistic. We arrived around 11pm to an empty monastery with a subpar dj, so we spent most of our time walking around and enjoying the view from the hill. As midnight approached we sought out the perfect spot to view the fireworks. We had about a 300 degree view of the skyline and we were awed by what was ahead. The fireworks started out slow and steady, then there were more and more until it appeared that the entire village of Paterno and all the surrounding village were putting on their own show. It was incredible how many fireworks we saw and for how long it went on, the entire sky was lit up, every direction we looked was bigger and better than the last and this went on for almost 30 minutes, before, during and long after midnight struck. Sicilians sure love their fireworks! We headed back to the venue hoping that the show would start soon but as it got later and later we got less and less optimistic the show would happen. With most of our group being die hard reggae lovers and huge fans of Junior Kelly they wanted to stick it out until the end. By 2am we were ready to head back and finally got the group together when we got word that Junior Kelly got held up in New Jersey from a snow storm, likely story. Turns out it was just a publicity stunt and was probably never planning on coming. Oh well. The image of thousands upon thousands of fireworks lighting up the sky will make it a New Years to always remember.

Our work schedule was broken up into orange harvesting, sorting and packing on the weekend including Friday. And random jobs around the property the rest of the week, these jobs included repairing fencing, garden work, installing a solar powered hot water heater and general maintenance and cleaning. Since there were so many of us the work was not too strenuous and usually varied. La Casa delle Acque was funded by the sale of oranges all over Italy, and this was only made possible by a deal of flat rate shipping of up to 30 kilos(~60lbs) for roughly $11.00. Besides the most delicious blood red oranges, the boxes could also include mandarins, lemons, olives, olive oil, Almonds and various marmalades. Emily and I with the help of Ellen made a delicious orange marmalade which filled 32 jars and we were very excited to bring some along for our week in Spain, but unfortunately the airport security made us remove it from our bags and then promptly threw it in the trash, what a shame. The orange harvesting was by far our favorite activity, as it provided me with a form of active meditation in the orange orchards. The orchards were haphazardly planted and under the trees were many different types of vegetation the most common being yellow flowering clover, which provided nitrogen to the trees.

We had one, sometimes two days off a week and mostly spent them exploring the area around the farm. We were very limited on where we could travel in Sicily without our own transportation. On a couple of occasions we ventured out to visit some surrounding areas. One of our favorite days out, we accompanied Ellen and Laura on a trip to the northern east facing coast to visit a farm Laura had wwoofed on previously. Before visiting the farm we went down to the sea and had an impromptu Frisbee tossing session. The weather was cool and windy when we first arrived but soon cleared up and became sunny leading to some frolicking in the sea in January. After our awesome time at the beach we headed up to the farm making a quick stop at this abandoned property Laura knew about. Exploring the property we were amazed by all the food we found, this property is planted one season of the year and the person responsible only harvests once and the rest is left for the earth. We collected 4 different large squash, about 40 lbs. of 3 types of Avocados, some kiwi and some varieties of oranges we hadn’t seen before. You can’t beat free organic food! After a beautiful 20 min. hike to the farm we were blown away at the scale of this place. They had just recently planted 150,000 grape vines costing $0.50 a piece. They also had dozens of varieties of fruiting and nut trees, and were in the process of clearing terraces to plant a large number of pomegranate trees. The property also contained a couple hundred mandarin orange trees which just fell to the ground because of the fruits abundance and lack of market in the region. The whole property was set at the foot of Etna and everywhere you walked was steeply up or down. On top of all the wonderful food there was a beautiful view of the coastline the beautiful blue water and across the water Calabria, the mainland of Italy. One great day!

Our time in Sicily was one we will never forget, a truly beautiful piece of the world filled with abundant nature and loving people. One person worth mentioning is our friend Alfonso; he was a long time friend of Nirav and was living at La Casa delle Acque during our time there. Alfonso and his family were from Catania and he truly loved Sicily. Many nights we had great conversations with Alfonso as he told us about Sicily, specifically Catania. To include one interesting fact, Catania or large parts have been destroyed roughly 7 times throughout history by earthquakes. Every time after destruction Catania was rebuilt by a new ruling force Roman, Greek, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragon, Spanish among other all controlled this important settlement at one time or another. Alfonso was also responsible for the rescue and relocation of some abandoned puppies that he found. When we first arrived there were 6 adorable puppies being around 6 weeks old. They got lots of attention and one by one they found happy homes to go to. Two stayed in Sicily, three have gone to Germany and one will return with another wwoofer to the states. As all the puppies had gone there was only one left which Em and I took in. Elliot is his name and we proceeded to fall in love with one of the best little puppies you could ever have the luck to meet. He is so adorable and well behaved, only having one accident in the process of us house breaking him. We were both amazed by how relaxed he was, he really appreciated all the love we gave him and was happy just to lay in the grass with us and soak up the sun. He was in our care, even sleeping in our room for around three weeks and it was a very very sad day when we had to say goodbye, as he was on his way to Germany to go to an adoption agency where his two other siblings had found happy homes in the country. We still think about him pretty often and can only hope the best for him and that we may find a puppy some day that has fraction of what Elliot had. Thanks to Nele and Philip, Martin, Ellen, Nirav, Laura, Emilia, Angela, Marcus, Even, Alfonso for a great time and you all know you are welcome to come visit us in the states. Especially you Norwegians, hope you guys made it back and your next adventure starts soon. We're off to Spain now, for some road trip action!

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Comments

[Mike and Sandi]

Crazy Kids
Aloha. Good to hear you are getting along. Huge waves today:) Sandi still isn't talking yet but I think she is jealous of your friend there. Anyways, just saying HI. C-yas