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.

A is for A-Bomb

We're commuters.
Land-rovering commuters. Through-the-sprawl- of Nagano- to- get- to- the- farm- commuters.
I dread it.

Sarah has taken on so many projects in this area that much of the work is spread thin. She and her husband Joe (A total character - the sort who asks a question and then in one long breath offers multiple choice answers; the sort who finds a use for everything, including rancid pretzels which did you know could be crushed up and hidden in muffins they turned out a little salty but on a hot day like this you need some extra salt i learned that on my first paid job when i was a youngster baling hay and the grandma would give us her homemade pickles - and he won't be offended when you decline the rancid pretzel muffins, but he will proceed to offer them to you; the sort who breaks out into song - English, Japanese, French, German - when he's run out of things to say, in a shockingly lovely tenor. The dude is from Fargo.) are sort of scrambling to keep up it seems - with a baby on the way no less. So much of the way they function is contrary to the way Calder and I function - it's been a bit challenging.

The orchards here are full-on chemical. I've been trying to understand the larger history of agriculture in Japan (which if nothing else, softens what tends to be a knee-jerk reaction on my part) and, as with most things here, it can be described as post-war and paradoxical.

It probably goes without saying that land and farming reforms were embraced in earnest after the war. Japan was decimated and starving, their agricultural production cut by more than half by the time America set about ushering them into western-style capitalism as well as what was becoming western-style agriculture.

What that meant for the villages around here was a switch from mulberry orchards (silkworms) managed traditionally to apple orchards managed with surplus military chemicals. Another depressing change was the clearing of large swaths of native forest to plant cedar trees - the destruction from the war called for a fast-growing source of timber. Those cedars suck up more water than the native forest, so rice fields in the valley suffered, as did relations between neighbors over water usage.

The plan here is to eventually farm without chemical pesticides, but I'm fairly sure that it will take a stable younger generation of farmers to do so. It's not easy to convince 80-year old villagers to change the way they've been farming for 60+ years. For now, the work of saving the old chestnut and apple orchards from becoming apartment complexes - which is what Sarah has been doing - seems to be the priority. It has to start somewhere.

Obuse

How to describe this place? We got here last Wednesday and are still being surprised. I hate to describe a town as charming, but Obuse is pretty damn charming - all narrow streets with gorgeous vegetable gardens, temples, outlying orchards (chestnuts, apples, table grapes), foothills splashed with wisteria, the furthest mountains still with snow on their peaks.
We're staying in the upstairs of Masuichi, a sake brewery that has existed for 17 generations. Our host, Sarah, is a project manager for Obuse-do, the family company that runs the brewery as well as several other businesses in town. Sarah is kind of a marvel, having been integral in bringing young people back into Obuse by creating viable jobs and renewing interest in the traditional crafts and agriculture of the area.
The farm that she and her husband own is in another village so we've been dividing our work time between ornamental gardens here in town and thinning apples up on the mountain. The other day, while doing apple work, we joined the village farmers for their annual 'fire-blight' walk. We split up into a few groups and everyone set out to walk through the orchards looking for signs of the virus. The woman that led us is close to ninety years old and started farming apples 61 years ago.
Japanese people definitely think more in terms of the group than the individual - and it is reflected beautifully in these farming villages. The orchards are individually owned and farmed, but everyone has a vested interest in how the neighbor's fields are faring. And after the work is done, it's a good excuse to gather in the village hall to drink sake and, very likely, gossip about the foreigners in town.

This is Rice.

Going from the full-on New Zealand harvest to the Japanese start-of-spring has been more of an adjustment than I thought it would be. We’re going through fruit withdrawal. Still, it’s hard to complain when there is an abundance of fish and rice and wild vegetables and tea and homemade tsukemono (vegetables pickled in a ferment-y mash of rice bran).
After two weeks of surprisingly cold weather (made colder by this farmhouse, which for all its initial charm, is not the cosiest place to live) we are finally in what feels like full-on spring. This past week everyone has been getting their rice seedlings into the fields and today we went to the other side of the village to help with a planting. It was such a gorgeous scene - 70, 80-year-old men and women bent at the waist, bodies fully covered in several thin layers of fabric, wide-brimmed straw hats, knee-high galoshes. Bright green spikes poking out of the water.
(The particular family we were helping farms at the base of a small mountain. They’ve had a monkey problem. My 7-year-old-self [and my 31-year-old self only slightly less] wishes I were so lucky).
I found myself wanting to stick around until the rice harvest, which I imagine is a major event around here. The next best thing would be to eat the rice this family grows, which we did at dinner - and, um …I’m kind of speechless about this rice, actually. Unbelievable.

Kansai, Hyogo, Sasayama. We're staying with the Nishimura family - Midori-san and her son Gen-san. The third photo is looking south towards their home - a traditional farmhouse maybe around 150 years old - and the two others are of homes in the village.
The Nishimuras run a language school in town so there are ESL teachers in and out as well as other wwoofers here. This part of the village is, well, very village-like. It's not a layout one would find in the States - all the homes are close together, most of them as old (or older) than this house, each with a garden (invariably growing daikon, peas, beans, cabbages, scallions) and rice paddy. Surrounding the village are larger fields that, as far as I understand, were shared areas when Sasayama was a stable farming community.
Many of those fields, as well as these incredible houses, are abandoned - the result of younger generations moving to the cities and the older ones dying off. The Nishimuras are working to encourage young people, particularly those that want to farm, to return to Sasayama.
Culturally it is harder than it sounds. I don't think it's for lack of people that would want to live and farm here - the way Midori explains it, the old farmers who are still around view the land as family, part of a lineage that isn't easily handed over to strangers.
One exception is that of a man in the neighboring village who has given his farmhouse to the Nishimuras. We've been doing a bit of demolition - all lathe and plaster walls, blackened bamboo, old tatami mats, enormous thatched roof. The plan is to house future volunteers and teachers once it is restored.

the condensed version.

The last week in NZ was chicken slaughter - necks broken and slit and bled and plucked and gutted and into the woodstove and on our plates same day, it was a community grape harvest and the start of wine, it was autumn coming around, bottling the winter beer, harvesting the last of the apples, and heading to Japan.

A bit of city life in Osaka and now in Sasayama, village life, rice paddies, thatched roofs, drinking matcha before walking to the temple before breakfast, pots of genmaicha throughout the day, 80-year-old women in the fields, baby goats, rice hulls as mulch, daikon everywhere.

More to come.

I've Eaten One Hundred Feijoas

I really have. Besides that, I've been thinking about how much I like the work here. Sabine and Wolfgang are very much engaged in the larger definition of permaculture - the development of diverse and resilient and balanced systems in all aspects of their lives, not only that of food production. Architecture, energy, community, habitat restoration, waste management, water management, etc. - everything is being addressed, as it inevitably must.

A bit about the buildings and off-the-grid-ness....

Both the studio/barn (where Calder and I are staying) and the main house are timber-framed light earth dwellings. They are both beautifully constructed, with high ceilings, earthen floors and earthen plasters. Oriented north and with substantial eaves, they shade the summer sun and allow the winter sun to warm the common rooms.

Solar runs the electricity and heats the water. There is a gas stovetop, but all baking is done in a wood oven which has a wetback, so when fired up water is being heated as well. Like most households in this area, there is rooftop water catchment. No water is used for toilets, as they are dry composting, with urine (as well as dish and shower water) being shuttled into the greywater system.

Instead of a conventional fridge there is a cold pantry (passively cooled with below-ground air on the south side of the house - remember Southern Hemisphere) that holds all of the grains, legumes, preserved food, butter, eggs, and cheese - things that we Americans tend to unnecessarily refrigerate - and two small insulated drawers in the kitchen that work as coolers, for things that need to be kept at lower temperatures (raw milk, for example).

Having a more direct role in the harnessing of resources most of us take for granted naturally makes for more conscious use of those resources. Part of that awareness is sussing out where it makes sense to use human-scale energy instead of electric (even if it is solar-powered). Here that means hand-cranked grinders for coffee beans and seeds, brooms instead of vacuums, an extremely elegant laundry system (above), line drying, scythes and other hand tools, etc.

I'm thinking constantly of how profound good design can be.

Represent.

Saturday 3/14

We've been getting a sense of the larger community of Kaiwaka (pop. 5000), outside of the ecovillage. Some things that might give an idea of the vibe here:

The magazine rack at the local supermarket, which is really more quickie mart size by American standards, has the typical celebrity fare but is also well stocked with all manner of sustainable agriculture periodicals;

A plant nursery/permaculture education center in town, which is part of a separate ecovillage - and where we dropped off some surplus peaches - seems to be humming along quite nicely;

We sat in on a meeting of about 15 locals who are researching alternative fuels, part of a series of meetings that are following the Transition Town model (strategies for a post-cheap fossil fuel age.)

Good things all.

Sunday 3/15

Several people on the South Island told us not to bother with the North Island - both in relation to the people (not enough real Kiwis) and the landscape (tame in comparison). I guess there are regional rivalries anywhere one goes, but I found it surprising that people would be so blunt about their biases, particularly with strangers.

Being from the much-maligned (and oh-so-beloved) state of New Jersey, I've learned not to pay much attention to such generalizations. Yes, the landscape here might be more subtle than that of the South Island but it is absolutely stunning; and the people, while more international (in this area anyway) are incredibly easy-going and generous.

Curiously, the bias doesn't seem to go both ways. I've heard only good things about the South Island from people up this way.

Yes.

Wednesday 3/11

Here is what I love. Figs, cheese, and bread for dinner. More specifically, figs fresh from the orchard, homemade cheese using milk from the house cow, and homemade bread baked in a wood oven.

We're at Otamatea, a 250-acre ecovillage in Kaiwaka that sits on a peninsula in the Kaipara Harbour, north of Auckland. There are about 15 households here, each with a 5-acre lot. The remaining acreage is held in common, with some being restored to native bush and some in grazing land for stock. It's a pretty diverse community - about half Kiwis and half international. A German couple, Sabine and Wolfgang, are hosting us and they're completely lovely - they know how to balance work and rest and do both joyfully.

Thursday 3/12

Last night we went to a community potluck at the house of another member of Otamatea. The four of us walked there, the bike basket filled with food and Wolfgang's homebrew. Hours later, after feasting and drinking and talking (some recurring themes: the American economy, the frightening role of religion in the States, and Why Don't Republicans Travel?) we walked home pleasantly drunk, the full moon softening the way.

Amberley

We got to Amberley mid-January after dividing our first week between Auckland and Wellington. Amberley is a small town in the Waipara Valley a bit north of Christchurch and one of the driest regions in the country (with a rainfall comparable to Sonoma County, for all you Bay Area kids). That, plus the fact that it's a coastal grape-growing region framed by foothills dried golden from the hot summer, made it feel as though we hadn't travelled very far at all.

For about 4 1/2 weeks, we stayed with Nick and Angela and their 3 kids Ruby (5), Matilda (2), and Flynn (5 mos.) on their 16 acre certified organic property. They're working with permaculture principles and have accomplished a lot in the four years they've been there.

Our work was full and varied and completely satisfying - what you'd expect from a place that has their shit together. Enjoyed beautiful harvests of strawberries and carrots and beets and greens, put in the fall planting (in February! and north-facing! - southern hemisphere reality), wrangled sheep for slaughter and greener pastures, babied the chicks, made compost, preserved food on rainy days, weeded, wandered. Time too for swimming - in the ocean and the river and the dam at the vineyard.

A hard place to leave.