all olio, all the time

Well olives found in the millions, in Toscana, in trees crazy old like planted by Benedictine monks old, and it is a lovely way to spend the days hundreds of feet up in the silvery green, collecting the tiny jewels - some in easter pastels some in purpleblacks - wondering who was in this tree a thousand years ago?
Practically drinking the green golden gold, there is so much of it.
Always farming in foothills, always a silhouette of a mountain beyond, a village on top. Here, near Mt. Amiata, the distance one can see - and the detail of that view - is remarkable, three wide bands of color up the mountain, the topmost already in winter, autumn in the middle, and summer still hanging around the bottom.
Now in Rome, tomorrow to Ireland just for a week before returning to the States. Many places we had intended on going that we won't be getting to, on this trip anyway. Already working on a plan for next winter because although we are excited for home and family, we feel like we could just keep going at this point.
Ah, but orchards to plant and goats to raise and bread ovens to build is sounding pretty sweet too.
That will be all, friends. Can't wait to see you.
The end.

foodfoodfood

Earlier this week Calder and I had a day to ourselves so we packed a lunch (prosciutto {from last year’s pigs} sandwiches, wine, and apples) and went walking further up the mountain just south of the farm.
The forests here are still held in common, Parma being one of a handful of provinces still doing so in Italy. There is certainly a different feel to a wood that is known and used by residents - particularly when that use is so intimately linked to the local food culture (mushrooms, chestnuts, wild boar) or something as basic as collecting firewood.
After lunch, we started to collect chestnuts (fare il raccolta di castagna), which seem to be dropping everywhere these days, all spiky grreen globes with the smoothest, shiniest chestnuts inside, almost like drops of polished wood. We took only what had fallen on the dirt road, nothing from the forest, and of those only the best of the best, maybe a bit more than a kilo - about a tenth of what we could have easily taken home.
Dinner was roasted chestnuts, bruschetta (with mushrooms also collected from the woods that day), salad from the garden and bread from the brick oven .
Needless to say we are eating very well here. Last week we spent a few days in Florence, where the ideal of Tuscan food is pimped out to tourists. Because we’ve had the good fortune to be eating that way everyday, we didn’t feel the pressure to find a great ‘authentic’ meal. We were able to find some very cool spots that we may have otherwise missed, one of which was one of the coziest and lovliest vegetarian restaurants (packed only with Italians, I might add) I’ve been to in quite awhile.
We’ve ended up being here for longer than initially planned, partly because we haven’t found other arrangements and partly because we’ve been so content to stay. We’ve found that sweet balance of daily familiarity and newness.
Until we find an olive harvest in the south, it looks like we’ll stay put.

pipistrello is my favorite word.

So the rain has come. And with it the funghi. And with the funghi, the old men and women walking slowly and purposefully through the woods and meadows with their baskets.
The house has been full the past 2 weeks, with Iris's parents and weekend guests and friends - a thoroughly pleasant dance of work and food and drink and language and stories. Both Gianluca and Iris, as well as Iris's parents, have all worked for the International Red Cross at various times over the past 20 years. It seems that they have been on the ground of nearly every major conflict during that time - Croatia, Somalia, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, etc. In fact Gianluca declined an offer to go to Yemen last week because the solar panels weren't yet finished. Incredible stories, told over the dinner table in about 5 different languages. Maybe a seed has been planted for future adventures.
Other than that, I am completely geeked out on the cows here - all sleek muscle and horn and contemplation. I can watch them endlessly. And little surprises like an early Sunday morning walk up to a foggy neighboring village just in time for church to finish - out come the old ladies, arm in arm, huddled together in the grey, practically waddling down the winding street while the fog settles in the valley.

Italia

I just remembered that I was keeping a blog, so here I am. That’s not exactly true. I’m just not using computers all that much, so I forgot a little about updating.
We’ve been in Italy for three weeks or so, having spent our first two weeks at San Michele-Tre Marie, an enormous farm in Breda di Piave, not too far north of Venezia. I was initially attracted to the place because they are a well-established biodynamic farm, started about 20 years ago by the anthroposophic community of that area. I’m not even sure of the exact size of the place because they have several disconnected plots, but we’re talking several hundred acres (this includes both the land in Breda, which grows annual vegetables and in Conigliano, which raises dairy cows, grapes, and olives. It is home to a Waldorf school as well).
Farming at that scale is remarkable to see, really. I’ve never quite had the experience of planting literally tens of thousands of seedlings in a few hours. Of course everything is mechanized, so it doesn’t feel like farming; it’s something more akin to factory work I guess. What a paradox to see endless rows of vegetables, but not really sense any aliveness. Biodynamic or not, (and I’m still unsure as to whether I could call this farm truly biodynamic), I just can’t get into anything at that scale.
Thankfully, Calder and I were able to spend a few days in Conigliano to do the prosecco harvest. Whereas Breda di Piave is almost mind-numbingly flat, Conigliano is in the mountains. It’s not a place that can handle such intense row crops and so it grazes gorgeous dairy cows and grows beautiful grapes. The three days of the prosecco harvest were about as lovely as it gets - clipping fat clusters of grapes all day with old Italian men; mid-day picnics of cheese and prosciutto sandwiches, apples, and coffee; beautiful views in every direction; a long lunch of pasta and wine when we finished the harvest. If there had been more work there, we would have gladly stayed. Alas.
As of last week we are at an amazing farm in Albareto, not far from Parma. Iris, who runs the farm with her husband Gianluca, is a no-nonsense Swiss who is built for shot-put and can transition between German, French, Italian, and English easy-as-pie. It’s wonderfully diverse here - cows, pigs, and sheep for meat; chickens for eggs; soft fruit and vegetables; preserves; herbs; a distillery; a nursery; lodging. They have volunteers year-round, but other than that, it is just the two of them brilliantly managing this place.
The work has been really mellow. Calder has been helping Gianluca build and install a huge solar hot water array, and I’ve been doing quite a bit of harvesting and processing. We have the afternoons and Sundays off for hiking or walking down into town for gelato or taking the train into a neighboring village - all of which seem impossibly charming. We intend to be here about three more weeks and then continue zig-zagging our way south.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible two weeks ago, but Fall is definitely here - our second of the year, which means we are spoiled for sure.

plums and stones.

I misidentified the region we were in last as the Czech Moravian highlands when in fact it was Southern Moravia. The last two weeks have been spent in the actual highlands, in the tiny village of Lesonovice, with the Horak family - Ales, Jana, and Simon. Ales, who happens to be the mayor of Lesonovice, is the third generation to farm this property. He’s also absolutely gorgeous. His wife Jana looks like a former eastern European women’s gymnastics champion, and Simon, their 2-year old, is able to work both a scythe and a pickax better than most adults I know.
The family (which includes Ales’s parents and his two older siblings) has about 28 hectares, with about 13 of them used for grains, hay, pasture, and annual crops. Although they are farming organically, the scale and design of the farm is fairly conventional, dictated by and catered to the needs of tractors. The land itself is gorgeous, though. Deep valleys, dark pine forests, meadows for lazing around.
A curious thing about this farm is that under communism it was not taken over by the state. The land was considered too steep to incorporate into massive agricultural holdings and so remained privately owned and run by the family - a fact which might go far in explaining why it is that all three Horak children still work on this land.
(In Streminicko on the other hand, where the landscape is far more gentle, all the farms were seized. Hedgerows, stone walls, small access roads, fruit trees - everything that marked property lines were removed, making way for an endless sea of crops. After the fall of communism, those that wanted to reclaim their properties - and not everyone did, as those couple generations under communism contributed to the loss of farming as a viable profession - found it quite difficult to find and identify them. As a result, they were redistributed equivalent acreage often on the edge of enormous state fields. All the acreage that wasn’t reclaimed simply switched from communist hands to capitalist hands.)
Because Calder and I were living - along with a woman from Kazakhstan and her darling 4-year old Russian charge - in what I can only describe as a hovel, we spent pretty much all our time outside. We must have walked 70 miles in those 12 days - to castle ruins, through forests, into neighboring villages, and more than a few times into the main town for some much needed reinforcements, namely very tasty Czech and Bulgarian wines that average about 40 korunas ($2.00).
So plums everywhere, wine in the night-time meadows watching the full moon come around, an apocalyptic lighting storm, our sing-song Russian Miroslav (in that picture above), and again, possibly the cleanest air I've ever breathed. Oh, and very generously given seeds to take home - 5 varieties of old-strain wheats, a Czech kohlrabi, and a Russian variety of carrot. Sweet.

cherry butter

Apologies in advance for any grammatical or punctuation weirdness that may arise in this post - this Czech keyboard is all kinds of strange.
We are in Stremenicko, in the Czech-Moravian highlands, nearing the finish of what may end up being one of the more schizo places we have been this year. At the moment, our hosts have taken off, a result of yours truly being such a competent goat milker. Rather than having the farm to ourselves - not counting the crazy old lady that is also a guest here and who I think tried to poison me with mushrooms - as Calder and I initially thought would be the case, we find five new guests, three of which are Czech volunteers who are justifiably surprised to find that their hosts have left them in the hands of other wwoofers.
Until now, C and I have for the most part been working far beyond what is generally expected of a wwoofing situation - and for precious little in exchange, at least as far as the typical host-volunteer relationship goes. The work isn§t miserable, though - for the most part we§ve enjoyed it. I have been hand-milking four sheep and seven goats twice a day, with Calder acting as my assistant wrestler (the design of the milking shed is ridiculous, not allowing at all for a graceful transition for the animals) and general goat-serenader. What began as a rather stressful situation has become our favorite part of the day, possibly because animals are generally not as weird or frustrating as humans, particularly the humans here, who tend to argue constantly and leave messes everywhere and are generally disorganized and thoughtless.
It is definitely more the peripheral things, or those completely unrelated to the farm and family themselves, that have kept us here. When we can walk off in any direction and be guaranteed of finding a cherry tree to feast on, it somehow makes the mess and disorganization of the homestead more tolerable. If we decide to go to the pub in the next village, it means walking through meadows filled with wildflowers and eating wild strawberries along the way. Throw in the kind of breeze that can substitute for showers, tasty sheep yogurt and goat cheese, and red-roof villages tucked tightly into the folds of green, and it§s not too bad.
Still, I wouldn§t recommend it. :)

Seven-Colored Sky.

Or Nanaironosora, which is where we've been the past three weeks (without a reliable internet connection, which is why this post is coming now).

First though, our last week in Obuse was full of spoils, one of which was being treated to a night at the Masuichi Kyakuden, which is a gorgeous inn built by the same family
that has the brewery. Extremely luxurious. We were able to stick around for Obusession, a monthly salon/party wherein a particularly influential person in the
arenas of agriculture, architecture, urban planning, etc. gives a talk and then everyone goes to Honten (one of the three restaurants within the Obuse-do company) to drink lots of sake & eat endless platters of amazing food.
That night reinforced to me that Obuse is a unique place - there is a really interesting confluence of people and history and reinvention and food and celebration happening there. Despite my concerns/criticisms about some of the agricultural practices in that area, I really enjoyed being there and would make it a point to visit again, maybe to run in the half-marathon - yet another wildly successful event started by Sarah.

Since leaving Obuse, we've been in the village of Iiwate (Fukushima Prefecture) with the Murakami family. They are a true farming family, growing all of their vegetables and rice (brown, black and mochi), establishing orchards, and harvesting bamboo and other mountain vegetables from the woods around their property. Next door to their house they have a macrobiotic cafe, which also functions as the family kitchen and gathering space.
Shimpei-san is a brilliant farmer who spent many years doing organic farming development work in Bangladesh, India, and Thailand. His wife, Katsue-san, runs the cafe (by reservation only, which works really well for them in that they know exactly how much food/energy they need to expend on the cafe in a given week) and the girls, Mi-chan (5) and Sora-chan (2), basically spend their time being ridiculously cute and entertaining.

We were there at one of the busiest times due to the fact that they can get a frost as late as May 20th followed by the rains in mid-June, so some pretty intensive field work needs to happen in a relatively short window. Calder and I were particularly happy to be working in the rice fields, which are partly managed by Aigamo ducks. A few weeks after transplanting, when the seedlings were established enough, we fenced the paddies and released 5 ducks into each field. They stay there the whole growing season, eating weeds and bugs, fertilizing, and paddling away (which muddies the water, further preventing weed seeds from being germinated).
It's a brilliant system - the ducks get to be ducks, the year's rice grows, and the humans are freed up to do other work, which in our case was the preparing of beds (no machine tilling) and planting of corn, tomatoes, eggplants, summer and winter squashes, and greens; prep work in the cafe; harvesting and processing bamboo; and making miso paste.

Today we made it back down to Kansai and will get a flight to Vienna tomorrow night. We are due at a farm in the Czech Republic this Saturday. The past three months here have been a beautiful blink - I already feel a bit anxious to return.