Scribbles & Bits

Words Soon, Images Now

2009-06-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

The farm has its own Flickr presence at flickr.com: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatbeatheartbeat/sets/72157606655309059/.

Check out photos by other people, and scope out a broader set of pictures of the farm by searching "casfs" in the Flickr search box. We've got a lot of photographers in this apprentice group, so my lame photo skills (and lame camera) won't be holding any of us back from capturing and enjoying the scenery. :-)

A presto,
E

Sights, Sounds, Thoughts

2009-05-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

In no such order. Today is a tired one....allergies hitting the farm in full force.

There is a zipper cacophany, a chorus that greets my every morning, and closes every evening. Each tent stretching down either side of the Tentland Lane from my abode has at least 2 zippered doorways to pass through in entering or exiting...meaning that each zip up is followed by a zip down by a zip up by another zip down, per each enter and exit. Each morning, if the breakfast bell doesn't wake me first at 6:45, the zipper orchestra will bid me awake...ditto the evening. And those mid-night bathroom runs...

There are owl boxes throughout the farm landscape, obstensibly to attract the bird life that will feed on the copious gopher populations, which otherwise feed on our tender, gorgeous produce and flowers. The great circle of life - or at least the food chain at work. I can't confirm that the owls are doing a better job than our metal clamp traps, but their presence is felt - mostly via their on-going screeching from dusk til - I kid you not - dawn. One bird has taken roosting preference in the large conifer between my tent and Iwaloni's. That side of my tent's nylon is a real mess these days.

Other sounds that have caught my ear in recent weeks: coyotes howling urgently from afar, cows mooing urgently from a-close, raging MC'd rap parties at a nearby residential college, a suspected bobcat at my tent door - turned out to be Spencer, one of the resident cats, pawing at my door.

The many farm quail don't carry on with noise, but are thick underfoot, running from the kiwi grove into the Down Garden and back towards the Arboretum. I run into them scurrying about when I'm leaving my tent in the morning, and then again when I'm returning to it at dusk. Love their fancy headwear and blue-green tinged plumage. Always think of what they could potentially add to the dinner table, though.

The garden rows and field are looking groomed and increasingly green. The blueberry bushes are heavy with fruit, as are the intern raspberry bushes. Most plants are heavy with flower (lavender, Western Spice Bush, roses, snapdragons, nigella, various salvias, and a gabillion others), though our vegetable crop is on the thin side: lettuces, turnips, greens, straawberries, tat soi. Most everything else is still bought in from farms in the Valley, and I'm still regularly frustrated that the kitchen is always in short supply of cooking staples like onions, flour, milk, eggs. (Counting to 10, even now, and trying to focus on creativity in the kitchen...."egg" = flax meal blended with water. Unless you want it scrambled or fried, or served over potato hash (another missing staple in my book).)

I miss the bounty of ingredients that we pulled from the farm in Italy - days full of tending to and reaping the rewards of wine, olive oil, prosciutto, cardoons and kale, fruit, limoncello, carrots and lettuce, beets, pizza! Una vita diversa.

In my occasional forays into news and the happening of The World, I still tend to focus on food and economics...an article in the New York Times today noted that the sales of organic milk, after years of high growth, have now dropped to a level that is preventing the renewal of many contracts with small, organic dairies across the US. The cost of animal feed - coming from the midwest to places like New England - has risen, along with other operating costs, and consumer demand has slumped as folks are choosing to go cheaper on their grocery staples. This marketplace "vote" will soon be putting these small businesses out, strengthen industrial dairy operations and support their unsustainable and inhumane practices, and pass along hormone and antibiotic residues detrimental to those consumers' health. But - pay more or go without? Where is the solution?

My last tired thought of the day...I miss DC summers (!). The persistent fog and cold here in Santa Cruz is a real spirit-dampener. Please to trade the cool breezes for warm ones, evenings spent in sundresses and sandals, ice cream as a survival tool rather than a tasty treat, the desire to sit outside... June is next week, and I'm sleeping in long johns, sporting a down vest most all day long, and wouldn't get by without my knit hat. 2009 looks to be one long winter! Albeit with tasty veggies and organic milk.

Farm Camp, round two

2009-05-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

When Orin Martin, the instructor for the Up Garden, arrived late at our very first orientation meeting, his introductory words were: “In the words of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, ‘all apologies.’” Such borrowed references randomly pepper his lessons, and I feel compelled to borrow and apologize for promised stories that have not yet been shared…

Today was the first day of our first Rotation, meaning that the six letter groups (A-F) we’ve each been assigned to are beginning their first 6 week garden site rotation. These first four weeks – I’ve been here a month! – have been orientation-oriented, large-group, and catch-all through different garden sites. My group D has spent much of the last 3 weeks in the Up Garden (nearly a week of which I missed in doing the FAS conference), a messy, chaotic tangle of pome and stone fruit trees, citrus, short and sloped crop beds, roses, bees, and other growing garden accoutrement. All order there is underlying, but its beauty is well enough in your face, aromatic, loud but with demure, quiet corners. Orin would chatter at us in the morning, delivering plant-based information interlaced with stories and planned afternoon tasks. Hard to take notes, but easy to pay attention.

Group D is now in the Down Garden. We work at a site just adjacent to tent land, and the Farm Center, no longer needing to commute the 30 minute hike up the hill to the Up, passing a gorgeous panorama of Monterey Bay that UCSC sports from its athletic hill. I miss the walk, but the time gained perhaps means I can catch up on needed reading? Or naps.

The Down Garden spills into just over an acre of hand-worked rows. We use spades and forks to till and shape the land. Straight, flat, open, orderly. It feels a bit stale compared to the Up, save all the blooming flowers that will soon go into CSA bouquets (presently making our eating and bathroom spaces look soo nice) and various perennials tucked into the bed ends. Today, the two groups assigned to this space (others are in Up and the Field – machinery-implemented scale) walked the site, noted the plants growing, those needing to be pulled, those polka-dotted with the bite of the flea beetle, got familiar with the work to come. We sat in the herb garden and talked about the site, expectations, and what we were each looking forward to the most, worried about the most, and felt we had to offer. Only the middle topic was easy to answer! The others were a ramble of thought and speculation.

We got into some light work before lunch – hula hoeing weeds between rows of crops with a swaying back and forth cut of the tool to slice the tops of weeds from their roots – then really dug into the afternoon’s four hours…though if we were working for money, we’d be a poor bunch. My afternoon hours were spent assisting in bed preparation then planting of fillet beans (haricot verts), running the bed with a drip line, and assisting with a bit of the same in other beds. Hardly taxing, and yet it was.

Plenty of time for dirty-ing hands, drinking water in the hot sun, asking questions, wishing the raspberries and peaches were in already. Our four hour afternoons are now matched with four hour working mornings, a slight change from the Basic Block beginning. The Real Deal now, folks. Which makes me feel less ridiculous for wanting to head to bed shortly after it gets dark out…or napping after eating lunch. You can chuckle at the tent life if you want, but having fresh air at your face pretty much all of the time, being well in touch with the rhythms of the day, and the cycles of the sun and moon…it’s pretty nice.

Walls and private spaces will be welcomed in the Fall, but Extended Farm Camp is fun! Plenty of room for you to pitch your tent, so just let me know when you’re coming, ok?

Home Is Where Your Tent Is

2009-04-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

It all comes down to where you care to bare your backside, perhaps. And so far, so good.

On one of many frigid evenings last week, I had unfortunate reason to exit the warmth of my mummy bag, unzip my nylon door, and try not to wake my close neighbor with a midnight potty break. Temps were in the low 40s methinks. Wearing long johns and a wool sweater, I blindly bushwhacked to a back corner of my tent, near a wire fence that lines the perimeter of the farm. I tried to think not of the coyotes that had been howling earlier, nor of the poison oak that runs rampant across the farm campus, nor of how many cups of post-dinner tea were fueling this bio-break... I avoided thinking of how such a midnight break would have functioned just the week prior, in my tiny DC apartment, with Gravy following me the 10 feet to the bathroom door, then back to my nice, cushy bed.

I did think of (or just feel?) the farm’s cool air that surrounded me, the fields and hills and trees just beyond, as well as the further landscape that spills down towards the Monterey Bay, providing our TentLand with one of the best views in the county. I thought of the other apprentices sleeping somewhat nearby, and, only half awake, wandered into memories of the day's interactions with them, my new community of neighbors, peers, cohorts.

So, yes, with all that I squatted outside my tent for far too long a spell, but a telling time. I hated the thought of leaving my tent much more than the actual standing outside…and once the process was going, my mind wandered into what was more striking and important to me: the overall experience, the “wash,” the collective of being in this awesome opportunity. Inconvenience is everywhere; the rest of this experience is not.

This collective includes 39 apprentices ranging from their 20s to their 40s, 6 second- year apprentices to lend us experience and guidance, 3 instructors for the three different farmscapes (Up Garden, Down Garden, Field), 4 toilets, 3 solar showers, 1 kitchen, 1 small library, an army of bikes, a gaggle of bee hives, and immeasurable enthusiasm. From all over the US, as well as Canada and Ireland, 39 of us have left the things we were doing that weren’t this, and brought all our contained enthusiasm to a place where we can readily unleash it into learning about and producing food, flowers, honey.

From http://casfs.ucsc.edu/index.html:

The Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture is an educational program of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), focusing on practical training in organic gardening and small-scale farming. The Center’s mission is to research, develop, and advance sustainable food and agricultural systems that are environmentally sound, economically viable, socially responsible, nonexploitative, and that serve as a foundation for future generations. Center staff work toward this mission under several program areas: education, social issues research, agronomic research, and public outreach.

The six-month apprenticeship offers instruction and daily work experience in organic gardening and farming, focusing on ecological interactions amongst plants, soils, climate, insects, and pathogens. In a hands-on education approach, apprentices work alongside staff in the greenhouse, gardens, fields, and orchards, as well as attend lectures, demonstrations, and field trips. Apprentices are exposed to the different aspects of growing plants organically on both a hand-dug garden scale and a tractor-cultivated field scale. The apprentices selected to attend the course each year are interested in practical training that will prepare them to teach others and/or to run their own operations.

Since 1967, over 1,400 graduates have gone on to apply this training in a variety of ways around the world: developing their own commercial farms, market gardens, and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects, starting inner-city community gardens, working as environmental educators, participating in international rural development projects, managing organic landscaping businesses, and pursuing degrees in agricultural studies.

A Certificate in Ecological Horticulture is awarded by UCSC Extension upon successful completion of the Apprenticeship.

In a nutshell

2007-09-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

Time short for writing

Must make for efficient words
Haul body to bed

Rooster crows at 6
Dogs bark mere minutes later
Who needs an alarm?

Yesterday's pants can get dirtier
A.M. incense burns
Sip coffee

Clogs on, where's my hat?
Does my shirt cover my back?
Morning air smells sweet

Downward dog to pick
Harvest lettuce, carrots, herbs
Cars honk to my rear

Back numb all too quick
Fingers dewy and dirty
I daydream of lunch

Made in mere minutes
Lunch is fresher, healthier
The real food network

Bison tomatoes
Kabocha and bitter greens
Egg yolks glow orange

CIA crew comes
Food energy and more hands
Externships are key

Carl brings softened shirts
Culled from basements and tag sales
All-Clad pans a find

Byron tills the soil
Baritone Jamaican accent
Breaks the silence

Walter has no teeth
Tomato lunch fuels his work
Calls me Adriaaan

Find shaded work spot
Weed the rows, hang the shiso to dry
Day is done

Collect the day's eggs
Leave shoes by the door
I dream of Happy Hour

Take a stretch, deep breath
Shake off the day long circus
Swing slow in hammock

Duly Noted

2007-09-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

"It is not really an exaggeration to say that peace and happiness begin, geographically, where garlic is used in cooking."
X. Marcel Boulestin, chef, food writer (1878-1943)

"In general, I think, human beings are happiest at table when they are very young, very much in love or very alone."
M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992), 'An Alphabet for Gourmets' (1949)

"Tis better to be pissed off than pissed on." - Quote of the week at New Paltz's Muddy Cup

"Being tickled with a single feather is erotic, with an entire chicken is kinky." - Questionable Runner-Up Quote of the week at New Paltz's Muddy Cup, with name attribution, to boot.

"Going Down?" - handwritten inquiry on metal spike driven into the rock ledge atop Hook Mountain, formerly used by explosive-planting workers who rappelled 700 feet over the Hudson River in order to aid the quarrying efforts there at the turn of the 20th century.

New Found Land

2007-09-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

Newfoundland and Orange County. Never thought I'd live near to either, but here I am, in spitting distance of both at once.

I'm parking my car these days in Middle Hope, a karmic step above a place I once passed through: Little Hope. It was dotted with tombstones and surrounded by a black iron fence, and seemed more Beyond Hope.

Despite their differences, both places have something in common, more so than Newfoundland or the more infamous Orange County: land. Fertile land for digging, planting, reaping. And while Little Hope is primarily in the business of pushing daisies, Middle Hope is seeing all kinds of action, inch by inch, row by row.

In my few days here, I've heard several people calling this region the next Napa...though the agricultural spread here covers a breadth and depth far beyond that of the primarily wine-producing West. Visiting the Family Farm Festival last weekend, I mingled with vendors from all over the Valley, from CSA farms to local wheat millers and bakers, beekeepers, wool producers, house greening/energy efficient organizations...big bounty, good company. Tomatoes the size of your head, and rutabagas much bigger.

I came to the Hudson Valley specifically to participate in this wealth, or at least a niche of it. Honey Locust Farm House put out a call, and I happened to answer. Sustainably producing a wide variety of herbs (basils, anise hyssop, lovage, thyme), mixed greens (mesclun, puntarelle, radicchios, sylvettica, shiso), heirloom tomatoes, squash, kales, chard, edible flowers, and farm fresh eggs, Honey Locust sells directly to some of the top chefs and restaurants in New York City: The Modern, Del Posto, WD-50, Mercer Kitchen, Jean-Georges, Nobu, Felidia, and (formerly) Per Se.

Nancy MacNamara is the knowledgeable energy behind the operation. And after losing her staff this season, one by one, she's been the sole worker bee for the past several days, attempting to keep her 2 1/2 acres weeded and her contracts fulfilled. There's been some letting go and some cutting back, respectively, but her stamina and my persistence at showing up carry us well through the day-to-day.

Nancy's "past 55," short-waisted and muscularly long-legged, with shoulder length gray hair that's usually tied up on the back of her head. She admits to being an "old hippie," an "old broad," but she's just cool. Knowledgeable. Warm smile, quick laugh. She trots around in beige Crocs and sports a wide-brimmed hat, and I try to keep up and catch snippets of her softly-spoken directions as we weave across the farm and through the greenhouses.

She shows me her herb garden, a triangular beauty of landscape and variety, we teeter at the edge of the vermicomposting trough, we crawl through the jungle of cucuzzi in the top greenhouse, tear bottom leaves off of the tree-like lacinato kale plants...then it's on to the hot spots for nasturtium collection, where the watercress grows, how to cut lettuce, which radishes are for harvest and which are too large (since the chefs want baby and Nancy's been short-handed, most are left behind)...and on and on.

Nancy thinks out loud a lot, mixing her instructions with general teachings and her plans for the day - at that moment, before the next produce call comes in, or a special party is planned at one of the restaurants in the city.

Busy is the name of this game - always for the farmer, but a scoot too much at present for these two. We laugh, though, acknowledge what can actually be done, enjoy what we do, smell the sweet air, and practice our best downward dogs as we bend over the crop rows. My hamstrings have never seen the likes of this workout.

Size mic Mis fits

2006-03-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

(Oh, the themes we are revisiting here...)

It wasn't until a few years ago - a respectful grace period after the fact - that a friend relayed his story of delight in my very certain college failure.

A little less out of touch with myself than I am now, I entered college as a biology major, embracing my desire to study environmental science and do my part, one solar panel at a time. After enrolling in BIO 101 for concentrators - the first day of class I perhaps fatefully missed due to my visiting long-distance boyfriend (I can still remember the shocked faces of my hallmates when I asked them to bring me back a syllabus) - I was quickly and with certainty weeded out, fulfilling the instructor's brisk vow to take down over half the lecture course's enrollees by the end of the semester. I received my first (and last) failing mark - ever.

My friend had known me through my over-achieving years of high school Honor Roll, Honor Society, Advance Placement courses (ironically, none in science that I can remember), nerd camp, and all too serious behavior. And he has known me since my more laid-back recovery from the lower ranks of alphabetic achievement and upper echelons of Type A tendencies. It wasn't until after I was distanced from grade-based success, though, that my friend let it slip that not only he, but he and his father, had shared a great belly laugh over my topple from the academic pedestal. He chuckled when he told the tale, and I could hear the utter humor in it - then and now. I couldn't stop my own laughter as I thought about those two clutching their sides in male-bonding glee over an unexpected situation that had left me a tad morose and rearranged, freshly out of the glow of the academic limelight. He was so, so happy that his do-gooder friend had "flunked college." And you know what? So am I. I am delighted.

I got weeded out. The shoe didn't fit. Found myself confronted with an environment that I just wasn't cut out for. And it's happening again. Learning through doing, my skill sets are being whittled away, my clarity and awareness of task-reach increasing while inversely the task-reach itself is narrowing. And I'm sure we'll be laughing again. After the grace period of time ticks off some distance.

Let me back up and just say I've always had issues with fit, with size. Numbers are not, and have never been, my metier. If measuring is an art, my HB pencil is too soft, my paintbrush too large.

When I was little, my Mom would withstand shopping trips with her energetic daughter, who not only collected some of the most unfortunate fashions from the racks (Remember that olive green tie-dye legging and t-shirt set, Mom? The shirt was supposed to be oversized...my hair, not so much.), but in sizes she could only labor to one day fit into, years and calories down the line. So many trips I made between the racks and the dressing rooms. I established myself as a conceptual thinker at a very young age.

Lately, I've seen the transference of this phenomenon to other areas of my life. In the test kitchen where I labor - years and calories down the line - this has rather wasteful and exasperating effects. I grab, I assume, I use my skewed inner-ruler to act. What is a large skillet, really, or a medium onion, and how scientific do we really need to get about it? Re-test. A common question I am asked is whether I measured a given recipe's yield; my common answer? No. Re-test. I see gallons of ice cream where there are halves. The other afternoon I sat in my office clothes (which I have learned do so much more for, well, everything when they fit properly) at the tasting table, sipping a punch made runny from not enough ice cream. I was surrounded by food critics who pronounced the drink "watery," "fermented," and in need of a re-test. My ill-made drink. My lapse in accuracy in this case, but on a grander scale, it cinched my lack of "fit" in the TK like a wide belt around an oversized shirt. I wanted to run to my Mom, my 14-year-old hair trailing behind me, and ask her for help with measurements and fitting; I wanted to check out of there and ask my friends to bring me back any necessary paperwork; I wanted to laugh, shaking, tearing over the silly misfortune, reducing the seriousness of capital letters and drinks made with melted ice creams to their appropriate, lesser states.

These days, it's test kitchen cooking that doesn't fit. It's constricting, uncomfortable, and it doesn't make me look good. Time for a size-up and an alteration. The shoe doesn't fit, so to speak, but I don't think I need have much concern for that. Isn't life just a series of alterations anyway?

Desperately Seeking Solace

2006-02-12T13:45:00.000-08:00

A week ago today, I hit full emotional absorption overload, wearing a wide-eyed blankness as a shield to more seeing and more feeling. I was riding the open highway back to Birmingham from a long weekend spent in New Orleans, where I alternately logged hours as a trash-toting volunteer and succumbing to the pull of the Crescent City: the lure - now with a poignant past and a near-desperate present - of a Home with character, culture, and a thread of funkiness running like a backbeat all through it.

It's enough to give a girl a complex.

I went (further) down South as a volunteer with the Southern Foodways Alliance, aka The Best Organization Ever, which has partnered with the Heritage Conservation Network to reconstruct the modest restaurant and adjoining shotgun home of Miss Willie Mae Seaton. The restaurant, Willie Mae's Scotch House, with Miss Seaton at the cooking helm even into her 80s, has been providing home-cooking - especially her famous fried chicken - for over 50 years. Check out the coverage at http://www.southernfoodways.com/; their links to various news outlets who've covered this project speaks to my volunteer time as well as my own words would.

Except for a few small details: One, the stink that still permeates some areas, like the dank rooms at Dooky Chase, a nearby restaurant of greater size and renown, where we spent time Friday clearing rooms of flooded dishes, foodstuffs, furniture, and linens. A short time ago the entire city smelled of this foul floodwater effect. Two, the intense enthusiasm and emotion seen in the crew of volunteers I worked with this weekend, and expressed in the gratitude of Leah Chase and Willie Mae Seaton and their families. They know now that when they say "I've got nothing," they can only refer to material possessions. And I know now what a renewed faith in mankind is like. On the flip side of that is Three, a passionate contempt for government and what we can no longer even call leadership. At all levels, elected officials, and those who are just paid shamefully large salaries, have dropped the ball of responsibility, or haven't bothered to pick it up in the first place. On several occasions in ItalyI was asked about the complacency of Americans towards their inept and undiplomatic government. It's embarrassing, and making our country an embarrassment. To all those who still sport "W" stickers, I have to ask: Where all the democracy has gone?

I was drawn to this work weekend not only to glimpse anew the city whose spell I fell under pre-Katrina, but also to show very civic-driven support for this marginalized place (probably possessing the nation's richest food culture), and to find an outlet for my own grief.

On Thursday , when we drove into New Orleans from the East on Interstate 10, I glimpsed ugly stuff - skeletal apartment buildings, doors and windows open from weather/looters/who knows what...few cars, gray with dirt and condensation, rammed up on curbs, into one another, many with trunks and hoods open, contents spilling forth...parking lots empty of traffic, save that of trailers, construction vehicles, and mounds of stuff - trash, belongings, stray debris...strip mall store signs missing letters, free-standing ones bent over onto buildings. As far as the eye could see were blue tarp roofs, a sad contrast to the red tiles I saw for months in Italy. The trash-strewn highway was lined by trees blown over by the strong winds that came after the eye of the hurricane passed over the city.

*********

Bookending the weekend was the Sad Sunday Tour, nothing even a real drive in the country can remove from my mind: a pasture of rubble stretching out in all directions where neighborhoods once stood, a landscape broken by uprooted houses which had been lifted from their beams and foundations and had slammed into other homes, trees, cars. This was the area where residents broke through their roofs in efforts to save themselves.

The streets - those that I could make out - were brown and muddy, edged with debris. Many were blocked with homes that had landed willy-nilly, Wizard of Oz-style when the flood waters receded. The landscape was horribly open, and we were wholly constricted, short of breath. Pableaux, the local, narrated, to help us make sense of what we were seeing. "Just so you know," he said, "about two hours from now, you'll be wanting to curl up in a fetal position and bang your head against the wall."

Adding to the confusing view of a neighborhood that's no more were signs of its expiration, the haunting signs from Then as well as those of Now: clothing hanging in shreds from barbed wire fences, moisture-riddled cars half-upended over a neighbor's fence/rubble/other cars, camouflaged tanks on the streets. A few other people were around, most of them visitors who were pulled over and out walking, absorbing the battle-zone. Volunteers with Common Ground, a comprehensive relief effort organized shortly after the hurricanes hit (http://www.commongroundrelief.org/), were manning a makeshift distribution center amidst the rubble.

"All the windows you see that are blown out, were done so by water," Pableaux pointed out. In neighborhoods more fortunately located, we'd seen devastating wind damage, elderly oak trees expired from an overdose of brackish water, and dirty water lines marking flood time. Homes in the Lower 9th Ward weren't ringed with water or missing roofs - the water rose too high to leave such legible signatures. What I saw last weekend is as you've seen it on tv, but real, un-distanced, confusing, and harrowing. And surreal, because the people are gone, their dimension missing from the cause of their despair.

As a friend who lives there commented: "It’s just f'ed up." And it really is.

For those who are interested to know, there is new life being breathed into New Orleans. All this really means, though, is that a fraction of those who call this city home are returning. This "new life" is not due to federal emergency relief efforts, or those of the city's officials, as much as it's the result of those fortunate enough to a) make their way back into the city, b) have the resources to rebuild their lives, or c) have something to come back to and try to work with. It's better than nothing, to be sure, but the last thing New Orleans needs is to be overlooked as "ok" again.

*********
A majority of our "leadership" hasn't seen first-hand the state of New Orleans. Care to write or call and ask them to do so?

Life, down South: Still Peachy as a Pie

2006-01-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

I thought I was done with dessert. Hoped.

After 4 months of multi-course meals in Italy, each ending with an oversized serving of some irresistible homemade dessert - torta della nonna (or torta della your mom, as Aubrey called it), salame dolce, gelato, tiramisu - I thought I'd return home and be done with it. Get back to my usual eating of small meals, less pork, next to no sugar…except for the occasional Krispy Kreme binge.

My first day in the test kitchen here at Southern Living, I ate full-size servings of both desserts tested: a perfect peach pie and a pound cake with a fruit compote topping. At tastings, our plates tend to get crowded with bites of this and that - a mini plate buffet - but mine was consistently an oversized serving of some irresistible homemade dessert, with a mini plate buffet obscuring the rim of the plate.

We retested both dessert recipes several times over the course of the next few days, and I did not sit them out. Visions of flaky pastry and cinnamon-sugar danced in my dreams. I slept through my alarm consistently.

On its final day of testing, the pie easily and unanimously received our highest rating. All hands were raised, mouths moving in a waltz of masticulation, murmurs interjecting the quiet of the chewing. The poundcake? I had to keep going back for more in order to figure it out.

I like working in the test kitchen.

I average two days a week in the TK, using the kitchen of whoever isn't working that day. After 12 months, I'm still not accustomed to using foreign kitchens. I open drawers and cabinets every 5 minutes, make unnecessary trips to the fridge, and generally practice inefficiency for a full work day. It's good to have obvious, immediate goals.

Yesterday, I neglected to check and see that the oven I was using - a different one from the previous day - was calibrated so that the exterior knob actually reflected the interior temperature. I didn't even do a hand test. Assumptions killed the casserole. I couldn't dwell on it, though, because I was in the middle of mixing up a cornbread retest, and determining the individual servings math for a banana pudding that was developed for a single large dish, but was photographed in small, individual dishes. (I already know how many reader calls it would generate if we published the recipe as it was with the photo, as it was)

While tasting schedules and story schedules won't always let me slow down, I will check the oven temperatures, I will check the oven temperatures. I'll stop dwelling on the fact that I haven't really cooked in a kitchen in about 4 months, swallow my fear of cooking for foodies, recipe testers and developers, food editors, and freely-commenting folk. The sweat on my brow will henceforth only come from a correctly-set oven, pounding out its proper degrees.

For those of you who have more questions about the test kitchen, keep reading - or just stop by and take a tour. Groups tramp through the middle of the 8 "home-like" kitchens that Southern Living uses to test and develop recipes weekly. At any given time, a test kitchen employee (lots of ladies, and a fabulous guy) is cooking several things for a tasting that we have scheduled that day, or making a previously-tested recipe look pretty for a photo shoot.

The cooking is different from what I've done before, and for obvious reasons. I pay more attention to setting timers and following a recipe's instructions to a "t" because it is the recipe I am testing, not my skill in making a dish (that would come in the form of Recipe Development, which SL certainly does, though whether I will while here is still to be determined). I constantly fight the urge to season a dish, add a dash of whatever I want, sub ingredients for a better idea, and otherwise do anything I would do when cooking at home or in a restaurant. I have to be somewhat exact. I haven't been Type A since I was 19 (right Mom?). This is hard, uncomfortable work, people. And that's not including post-pie belly.

I can't wait for peach season.

What the Magi Brought Me in Italy: Reflections from a Pastorella

2005-12-20T01:30:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to add to the blog recently, if only to take the focus away from all that blood on the grass, reality of farm life, and whatnot. My apologies to all you beloved, weak-stomached friends.

Today, being my last full day in Italy, this week being the last of few in this year of exploration, and this time of year being a reflective, overindulgent one, it seems appropriate to write today and share some highlights. For the sake of time - yours and mine (the computer room is NOT warm) - we will sample three uniquely Italian things: gelato, driving, and traditions. Note that all three are indulgent, reflective activities in themselves.

Indulge me.

* All gelato is not equal. There is gelato and there is good gelato.

First place tie for best gelato: rich gelato made with the local sweet wine in Vernazzo (see earlier post about recharging qualities of good gelato while hiking the Cinque Terre), and also the simple pleasures of a rather plain ("plain"..I should bite my frozen tongue!) cream gelato, from a rather plain little coffee/pastries/gelato bar in a village smaller than Staunton, VA. This particular cone, paired with Nutella gelato, was consumed in the company of all the other interns, crowded around a small, umbrellaed table, following a long morning at an interactive museum dedicated to the history of Tuscan sharecropping traditions. It was a rather quiet table, save for the licking and the sighs. Always interesting to witness the flow of sugar into previously weary bodies.

Second place gelato goes to the orange-chocolate and pepper-chocolate cone had at Vestri chocolate shop in Florence; you were worth the search, baby, and if it had been summer rather than the middle of December, perhaps you could have taken first. I guess this is a contest of gelato EXPERIENCES. Yum!

* Driving in Italy: When Does Experience Make You a Master?

My desires to be a car test driver, schussing along the windy back roads of some foreign country, have been amply fed here where everyone seems to be competing for Formula One status or practicing for that moment when the rushed delivery of some new baby is thrust upon them. I am left thinking that Italian driving falls well within the list of Things I Cannot Understand How Italians Grow Accustomed To Doing (Another item? Intake of Coffee/Caffeine. Do they have an extra stomach lining, or what?).

I drove Big Blue, the intern van, with relative ease on these Tuscan roads (thanks again to Dad for driver's training in large work vehicles), with eight heads bobbing in my sightline, at full tilt of conversation or sleep (theirs, not mine). My favorite BB experience was getting the van unstuck from a tight spot I had put her in at the hot springs. It was midnight, we were damp and beginning to chill. Prone to wheel-spinning, BB made good on lifting out over a dip, and I actually received applause from my carpool. Pressure from the uniformed authorities who wanted all the vehicles out of their current spots (blocking nothing), and the fact that first gear and reverse are in the SAME SPOT (apply a slightly different pressure, feign finesse) were not at all helpful. Herky jerky, I rocked the van right out of that spot. I am still grateful for not having to resort to pushing through the construction fence 2cm in front of me, or nicking the roller skate to my right. BB heaved and sighed, but she got us out of there. Least favorite BB exerience: pushing her out of a slight hill of mud while trying to find our way to another farm on a Field Trip Day. It wasn't raining, there were 9 of us for the task, but still. The wheelbarrows here at the farm have better tires than BB.

...and by roller skate I mean tiny little Euro car, such as the kind I rented when my Mom and Sherry were visiting. Go Twingo! We love you! You took us everywhere, sans complaint, and made good on your offer to keep fuel costs down. We wish you could improve your ability to de-fog the main windshield so we wouldn't have had to keep using the same gross tissue to streak the moisture from one side to the other every day, but at least you kept most of the car's moisture where it should be: in the sopping carpet under our feet. Here's to you teal green Roller Skate!

PS - Road signs in Italy only make sense on the second Tuesday of every other month, under an ascending moon, between 9 and 10:37 in the morning. Good Luck.

* In five years, when I look back on these four months in Italy, I will probably value one singular event over the others: the evening that Mom, Sherry, and I became participants in Siena's most revered historic tradition. No, there was no mid-winter Palio, no galloping horses around Il Campo. But there were twinkly lights over the medieval streets, and drummers and flag-bearers in Renaissance costume. We happened to be in quite the right place at the right time to witness, and then join in, the annual year-end closure of the Palio year and recognition of the seventeen contrade (neighborhoods).

The sight of a lone drummer with two flag bearers, all from Nicchio (The Shell), marching through their contrada to the Campo was a delight in itself. Catching the men at practice, rehearsing an age-old routine with pride, is a lucky sight to see, indeed. Deja vu 10 minutes later, with a different contrada, in a different part of town, let us know that this was no practice. We parked ourselves at the Campo. Every few minutes a new drumming echoed through the stone streets, and a different contrada would enter the Campo in bright color, waving flags. Each filed into the Palazzo Pubblico, and the sense of anticipation grew - as did the crowd in the piazza.

A few minutes later, horns sounded. Our eyes roved to find them. Color flickered at the door of the PP, and a complete procession of the representatives - drummer and two flag-bearers - from each contrada poured from the door. Another group of men in full Renaissance dress brought up the rear, beating drums and blowing horns. The street throbbed with sound and flashing color. People moved in for a closer view. The twinkly Christmas lights shone overhead. At last, banners bearing official crests signified the end of the procession, including the striking Senese provincial crest: a simple half-black, half-white shield. It looked down on us from a long, tasseled pole.

Looking over at my Mom and Sherry, surely I saw my own face reflected in theirs: flushed cheeks, wide eyes, smiles, amazement, surprise. My Mom moved us into the procession, remarking that there was no way she was NOT going to join in the parade. It's going somewhere, she said, and we are going with it.

It wasn't long before we realized we were headed to the Duomo. I thought back to the previous day, when we had visited the near-empty church, seen it dressed in its holiday best, hung with each contrada flag down the length of the nave, such as I hadn't seen it when I visited in an earlier month. Obviously, today was a special day in Siena. We marched on with the parade, through the streets of Siena, and then, with a moment of question as to whether we would actually be able to do so, we marched right on through the open doors of the Duomo, behind all the wonderful men in tights. The place was aglow with lights and color and security guards.

We moved through the nave towards the altar, part of the throng. It was fascinating to see the church populated with people, alive with use. And then, mass began. The second procession of the night came when various church leaders filed from the adjacent sacristy, and then incense filled the air, a young man dressed in black called from the pulpit. Everyone was on their feet. And then most began to sing, the service was fully underway. A singular experience.

We didn't stay for the length of the service (and I saw that not everyone did, nor arrived on time). Catholic traditions, contrada traditions, and unfamiliar Italian words were lost on me. Moving back to the huge central doors of the Duomo, I observed the Senese - families, couples, singles, toddling children. Removing mittens, adjusting their swaddles of winter clothing, each took their turn dipping fingers into the spacious bins of holy water, and crossing themselves, as so many had done for so many hundreds of years before them. It is no wonder churches such as this are so very large: you need such an appropriate space in which to feel so wholly small.

~

Can't feel my right hand! Need to go build a fire!

Buone Feste, Boun Anno Nuovo, and see you soon,

Erin

Blood on the Grass

2005-11-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

WARNING: Today's post contains some graphic descriptions from life (death) on the farm, which may cause some discomfort to you. Please read at your own discretion.

White Boots. Il Biondo.

Two names for Spannocchia's house call butcher, who arrived in the early fog of Monday morning. Like "Coffee Shop Boy" from my college days, these are affectionate, underground sopranomi (nicknames) for a real person with something of an attractive or admirable air.

White Boots was standing by the wall when I saw him, wearing the ubiquitious aforementioned, as well as a pure white tutto (what we might call mechanic's dungarees, a flightsuit, etc), and a black beret. Clean, crisp. Poorly dressed (or perhaps perfectly) for the day's task. As I was noticing him, Nikki approached me and mentioned without breaking stride: "We're butchering your lambs today. Are you ready?"

Thank goodness it was a rhetorical question.

I thought of the breakfast I had thrown down my gullet minutes before, my jog - with a belly full of strong coffee - to the wall for the morning meeting. I thought of my shoes - were they the right sort for butchering my lambs? I thought, was I ready?

The morning was a brisk one, in activity as well as weather, and I didn't have time to think. I climbed into the back of the rickety Macchina Rossa and tried to concentrate on the Italian conversation in the front seat as we bounced along the gravel roads to the sheep stall. My mind wandered. Was I ready? How would I respond to the slaughter of my animals? Would I watch the whole thing? Would I participate in some way? Would I turn away, or gag?

All anticipation, I popped out of the truck once we reached the property. I swear it was 10 degrees cooler than at the upper farm. I shivered. I sweated a bit, too.

"This is my least favorite - slaughtering the lambs," Nikki said, with wide eyes and a set mouth. She watched me - for signs of queasiness, perhaps, or general inability. I acted without really thinking, opening the stall gate, and joining the 29 fuzzy sheep inside. It was the first time I didn't call out to them in greeting. I was almost embarassed.

We knew there were three or four male lambs - the young ones, not the full-grown sheep - and these were our selected ones. We began lifting tails.

Nikki pulled our first boy from the stall, and straddled him, gripping with her knees; she held onto his neck to keep him facing forward and still. I stood to his side, avoiding his eyes, and trying to block the entrance to the stall in a feeble attempt to prevent the sheep from seeing what was going on. For the first time ever, I wished I was really, really fat.

White Boots approached the lamb with a slender, aluminum tube, a "gun" of sorts. He quickly shot the "bullet" into the skull, between and just above the eyes. My head swiveled like I was watching a tennis match: looking at the lamb, then away, to White Boots, to Nikki. The gun had the immediate effect of stunning the lamb, and White Boots quickly replaced it in his hands with a sharp, thin knife, which he slipped through the neck of the lamb, piercing a hole to drain the blood. Nikki laid the lamb down.

Another male lamb followed. My stomach didn't once lurch, surprisingly, but the experience wasn't easy. I turned around once to look at my sheep, and finally had their undivided, wide-eyed attention. It was startling and nearly brought tears to my eyes. They were silent and still at first. They were trying to figure out what was going on, and they must have known it wasn't good. Minutes later, after we had pulled the second male lamb, I heard a collective heavy breathing behind me, wet noses channeling deep breaths. I glanced back at my herd and saw their big sheep bellies heaving - a sight seen before when they were excited; it took on a different, deeper meaning that morning. When we entered the stall to find the last male, the herd backed up as a group and began to scatter.

Just when I was about to exhale in having the first part of the morning's task completed, the lambs began to convulse on the ground, one by one, in the order in which we had slaughtered them. I had to get close to those little faces I had scratched and rubbed the evening before, this time to hold their bodies to the ground and prevent them from getting and more bloody or dirty. I remember wishing I hadn't put on clean work clothes that morning, as I noticed blood stains on my brown pants and saw Nikki's neck covered with a light spray of blood.

We loaded the lambs into the back of the plastic-lined truck, and I continued to wait for the morning to catch up with me. I didn't feel like a brute, didn't feel like a murderer. I didn't feel like a righteous meat eater. And yet I wasn't numb, either.

Before leaving the property, I needed to let the herd out for their usual day of pasture recreation and general mayhem. How to lead them into and through the three moist patches of blood on the ground right outside their gate? I didn't have time to feed them fry hay inside their stall, waiting until they finished to lead them to the dewy hillside. Instead, I laid the hay several yards from their gate. I called them loudly, brightly to the pile of hay, and willed them to rush over. If only there had been time to toss down straw, an opportunity for a freak, cleansing rainstorm... They moved as I wished, to the hay, but hadn't moved much farther when we pulled away. They were all looking up at me, their eerie sheep eyes imploring. Not one of us cried.

Nikki let me drive us back up to the farm, avoiding the return ride in the back with the animals. I rounded all the turns as gently as I could, remembered to say "No" when White Boots asked if I was Italian, and thought in my head of the best way to describe the smell in the car. My hands were cold. The car filled with the scent of earth and the metallic quality of blood, the smell of the taste you get when you suck on a finger after it has been cut; I smelled grass and sweet mud. It all synthesized, and I understood this inescapable odor as that of freshly slaughtered meat. It wasn't good or bad. It was strong. I won't forget it.

The rest of the butchering process passed in a flash of prowess and athleticism on the part of White Boots. Using sharp shears, he removed the front feet of each lamb. He then inserted a standard air pump - the kind we use to air tires, blow things clean, etc - into the edge of one leg, blowing the lamb up much like a balloon. It was surreal, horrible and comical at once, so that I wanted to giggle as my knees were shaking, one eye on the bloating lamb. White Boots immediately made incisions in the skins between each leg and the body, another preparatory step in removing the skin. We carried each lamb to a wooden pallet set near the woodshed. Three hanging ropes waited.

I held onto the lamb where White Boots pointed and said "Qua." On the pallet, he removed the rear feet and began to remove the animal hide, revealing the meat below. His technique was practiced, perfected, beautiful. With one hand he pulled at the cuts he had made; with the other he pressed on the flesh, effectively separating the two parts. When he had done as much as he could on the pallet, we ran a hook between the rear legs of the lamb, and hung him. White Boots continued to peel, now using his fist. Punch, punch I saw behind the fur, his fist interrupting the fur from the animal's back. Quickly, the lamb was reduced from animal to meat; the appearance of the lamb as I knew him disappeared.

White Boots threw the pelt into a waiting wheelbarrow. He crossed the lamb's forelegs behind the head, replicating a yoga pose of sorts, where they stayed put. This gave him room to remove the (plentiful) innards. A quick slit down the center of the chest and they spilled forth, steaming. They were strong, staying together when White Boots added them to the wheelbarrow. I saw blues, greys, veins, cords, pouches; there is such an art to an animal's construction. In little time, three lambs were hanging from the roof of the woodshed, slender with meat, not a piece of white fur on their bodies.

If I had to capture the morning in one word, it would be exhilaration. There was no time to comprehend, just a little to feel. The entire morning was fast, unexpected, and artful. Much like a roller coaster. I still felt composed at lunchtime, and think I could have eaten lamb if it was served at dinner. But I'm glad it wasn't.

Like sand in an hourglass...

2005-10-30T23:53:00.000-08:00

I'm in the Last Three Weeks Countdown here. Can you believe it? It feels like three days, even, as though I need to start thinking about packing.

It will fly by, of course; it has been already. There's been little time to write in these full late-autumn days... The interns threw a cook-out 2 weeks ago which was a raging success and drew a large crowd from the "Spannocchia family," I spent a weekday shopping in Siena's open air market, I day-tripped to a non-existent olive festival in Tuscany with a guest here and one other intern, I joined a group to watch the Siena-Firenze soccer game one evening at the local Circolo (apparently rowdiness is saved for the stadium), I was one of 7 who travelled to gorgeous Gubbio for Altrocioccolato (a fair-trade festival featuring the obvious, as well as other foods, crafts, and events), art classes continue, and I spent this weekend with a new hot little number: a speedy, shiny, red rented bike. Everythingiswhizzingbynow. Pack! It! In!

Carrie, our program director, suggested that we might want to make a list for ourselves, to record all the things that we want to see or do before leaving. I can't really fathom such a list. I've done so much here already. I've seen a wild cinghiale, a huge porcupine lumbering across the road in the dark, taken many of the farm's walks, seen the view from the tower more than once, asked the cooks for recipes, met the old men of legend that still work here, biked Tuscan roads, driven the same, bargained in markets, bought leather boots, eaten something new... Everything is gravy, for the most part, until I hit my travel month from late Nov- late Dec. Then, the push to see and do: the South of Italy, perhaps Croatia, definitely Venice, Bologna, the Lake Region in the North.

It'll be so good to get home in Dec and relax...

"What is?"

2005-10-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

What language do I speak?

When I open my mouth, I don't quite hear Italian. But it doesn't exactly sound like English most days, either - just ask anyone I try to converse with. Far beyond my elementary years, I've developed my own language. I am between languages.

I'm not alone. I hear it when other interns speak. I am reassured by others who have "been there" that it is ok to both speak quasi languages, and that it will pass (into what, though?). I guess I should soak up this phase while I can, no?

I caught myself dreaming in Italian on the way back from the hot springs the other night. Or rather, I dreamed about me trying to speak Italian, parsing out sentence after sentence; it was very real life! More often, I have Italian conversations in my head (what will I say if Carmen asks me about the ingredients in today's lunch?), run through vocab, or think about what I actually said that made Angelo give me that funny look. If nothing else, I try to learn a new word or phrase every day, either by necessity (I never imagined myself looking up "cubic meter" in my Italian-English dictionary), or through a random flipping in a dictionary or book (yesterday: dappertutto/everywhere; today: fuori rotta/off course). All of this together is so much better than my years of high school Spanish...

One of the more difficult, but fascinating, aspects of learning a new language immersion-style is realizing how I feel about myself within the process, and also how I am perceived by others. Mostly, I feel like a different person, and see that I come across differently to Italians than I do to people I can readily speak with in English. I am often quieter in Italian company, less gregarious...when inhibitions are down, I'm an eager speaker, though I'm aware of my grammatical mistakes, if not the halting in my speaking. I speak on.

I do hate that my skills in English spelling seem to be on the slip right now. I remember the pride I felt in Mrs. Hill's weekly spelling bees! Is it always that one must lose something in order to gain another?

I dislike more that I can only know people *so* well here - the workers, other Italians I meet. I've enjoyed gaining a new sensitivity and a new perceptiveness when interacting within the language barriers, but it doesn't make assessing someone's experiences, intelligence, or intentions any easier. I do appreciate that the sentiment of "you just have to laugh" carries through other cultures and languages...

Oh miale...

2005-10-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

Of course the pigs got out. The pigs always get out.

There are, give or take a dozen, 80 pigs at Spannocchia. They are separated, somewhat, by age, and so therefore by size. Today, it was the middle-sized (middle-aged?) pigs that were loose.

I learned that the pigs were out when I was finishing the last of this weekend's Animali duty. I had fed the chickens and gathered their eggs (15 Oct, 24 hens, 18 eggs). I was saving the sheep and outer-penned baby pigs for last, forcing myself to first climb the long, steep walk up Pig Hill. I hadn't gotten far at all when I came across Riccio, the farm manager, on one of the tractors.

"Erin!"

He yelled my name with that Italian accent that makes it sound more like "Eddin,"like a shot from the mouth. "The pigs, they are out..." He tapered off his point in his famous Riccio way, leading me to immediately formulate 20 ends to his sentence, 20 questions about the pigs, in addition to the one I already had about the sheep - was he the one who let them out this morning (follow-up questions: Why? And why didn't he tell me at some point in order to save me the trip out to Casetta?).

He pointed to our right and I saw 15 good-sized pigs moving at a steady clip towards us. "Try and lead them...there are pens on the left...you can.....eat the chestnuts. Don't feed box 7."

This is a normal conversation with Riccio.

The tractor was roaring, Riccio was squinting at the pigs, squinting up the hill, and I responded to all of this with the best tool I have learned to have at the ready here: a knowing nod.

Riccio will undoubtedly later ask why you did something ("Why you do this?"). He asks half with accusation, half with sensitivity, as though he is about to bestow a great lesson to you on some tenet of organic farming or animal husbandry. The nod is the best way to get him past his initial explanation (an re-explanation) of something, move you into the hotseat of figuring out what it is you are actually supposed to do, and can often inspire confidence to help you move forward.

I nod.

Riccio stands about 6 feet, and wears a thick crown of curly light brown hair, for which he gets his nickname ("Curly;" his real name, we have learned, is Bruno). He has small, friendly blue eyes which are framed by oft-raised eyebrows, and he seemingly smiles all the time, even when making his Exasperated Face. Exasperation happens a lot on the farm - between the animals, various independent-minded workers, a constant turnover of intern help, equipment and vehicles in various states of disrepair, and the dynamic Tuscan weather - and Riccio's responses are great: a somewhat indifferent throwing of his hands, perhaps, a brief, high-pitched moan from his throat, though most often an "Oh miale..." (Oh pig), or "Ochh Madonna..." (Ochh Madonna). These are his exasperation/swear words; he adds an exclamation point when he needs the emphasis.

Riccio knows more random American songs than any American I know, and he sings them often. Also often, he uses his own lyrics. At dinner the other night, he managed to work the phrase "Don't Worry, Be Happy" into the conversation. He plays the guitar in a Tuscan folk band, which the interns will have the pleasure of hearing in the near future. Riccio has two lovely, curly-haired daughters, Sylvia and Serena, and his fabulous wife, Daniela, also works for Spannocchia, more on the administrative side of things. They all live across from Pulcinelli. I wonder how often they actually see one another.

On our second or third weekend here, Riccio took me and three other interns to a peace march between the cities of Perugia and Assissi, a two hour drive away. He wouldn't let us contribute to a gas fund (though he finally caved to our cacophanous female protestations and let us buy him gelato), and he talked to every random street vendor and booth attendant that stopped him mid-step. He wears no condescension, and jokes as much as possible. If Riccio were an American, he would live in California or the mountains of North Carolina, wear Birkenstocks, and be a favorite amongst the locals. He is certainly a favorite here.

He knows how to do just about everything. Except communicate with precision.

He roared off in the tractor, leaving me with the trotting pigs. I grabbed two olive switches from the ground and began to holler at the pigs, finding a good position for moving but not scaring them back the way they had just come. Miraculously, we made it up some of the hill without losing critical mass to the stepped terraces of olive trees. Pigs can lose their train of thought (and locomotion) quickly, unless it involves food. Blessedly, someone had left a huge gate open on one of the terraces, and the pigs began to file in. Good enough, I thought, shooing the last ones in, and closing the gate. As I wandered on up the hill to feed the others, I found myself stepping over tons of freshly-fallen chestnuts. Perhaps Riccio had wanted me to try and push them further up the hill...by myself....

I like feeding the pigs, really I do. But it's one of those tasks that is often ruined with too much thought about it. Like running. I used to get up at 5:36 in Louisville, in order to drive over to the park and meet up with the gang for the 6:15 run. Not painful at all when you're moving as soon as the alarm goes off, holding on firmly to the stupor of sleep as you slip into the running clothes you laid out the night before. Grab your packed bags, lunch, and go. You wake up either in the car when the familiar chimes of NPR arouse your conscious, or at some point in the run itself, just in time to congratulate yourself on a fantastic morning and a job well done. With the pigs, you can't think about the heavy slop buckets you haul up the steep, steep hill, the sweat and shortness of breath that you gain, or even the dust that you stir up and then breathe when filling the grain buckets. Rather, you call out to Lapo, Sally, and Bea - "Vieni qui" - and talk to those trusty dogs about the fog that the morning hills are wearing, or the late afternoon sun hitting the silvery olive trees. You focus on dropping the buckets and beating the pigs to the feeding pen gates, so you don't have to then chase them out and listen to then scream in protest (they will scream enough as it is).

You find the rhythm and routine to feeding animals that really really really love that you are there to care for them (hear the screaming yet?). They let you know. Then, after filling the troughs with farm-milled grain and water (to slow and aid their digestion) you watch them feast, pushing, shoving, kicking, standing in their food, squealing at one another, and you nod knowingly. The pigs are fed.

Cinque Terre, ees good eenough for mee...

2005-10-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

I went to Cinque Terre last weekend (23-25 Sept), with Nick, Kate, and Kirsty. CT is a 3 hour trek north up the coast, beyond Pisa. We took a bus from Rosia to Siena, then trains from Siena to Pisa, switching in Empoli, and continuing from Pisa to La Spezia, where we had a hotel reservation waiting for us. The travel there really wasn't as difficult as it might sound; all the connections were right on and on time. It had been a long day, though - if only finding that waiting hotel room had been as easy as the woman at the other end of the phone line had indicated it would be. I think we called her three times between the train station and the hotel, and La Spezia is not that big. It's hard when all the streets sound foreign, and when many aren't even marked with a name, dontcha know...

La Spezia was very beautiful, stony and cobbled like you want a small Italian town to be. It appeared well-stocked with interesting (and likely expensive) shops, cofee bars, and small dogs. I can't comment much on the nightlife, cause this old girl opted for immediate sleep while the others went out in search of a beer. I slept pretty poorly in a cot-like bed that inclined at the head end, but was still able to sleepily laugh into my morning as I used the bathroom, which was obviously built for dwarfs. It was tiled and tiny, even on the claustrophobic side. Caught a good view of my knees from the mirror OVER the sink.

We stumbled out of La Spezia as quickly as we could, trying to pack our backpacks for the most comfortable day of hiking possible. Walking to the train station, we popped in a cafe for a coffee and stocked up on focaccia, a traditional treat of the area, and one that abounded in our weekend path. We reveled in the salty-ness of the bread, of course. For good measure, we ate some sweet morning croissants as well, finding out exactly what kind of filling they had as we bit into them; I have yet to see a marked pastry case in Italy.

We caught a quick train from La Spezia to the first town of the CT, Monterossa. We planned to take the hiking path from village to village, an easy-ish trek that takes about 5 hours straight through. We factored in extra time for gelato, wine, and/or beer in each place.

Monterossa is the easy end of things, as far as walking goes. It starts with a paved path, some of it covered, known as Lovers' Lane. I took pictures of the views immediately - ocean panoramas, graffittied walls (and plants!), and high-heeled shoes on several of the women.

Stillettos soon gave way to thick legged Nordic folks, fast moving armies of khaki-clad Germans, and day-tripping American and Italian tourists. Soon there were fewer people in general, as the terrain grew more uneven, more rocky. I really began to sweat under the day's sun in my jeans and tank top.

We stopped in Corniglia, village 3, for lunch. A chalkboard scrawled with Italian foods caught my eye in one of the narrow streets, and - like in A Wild Sheep Chase (a Murakawa novel I just finished reading) - I just knew this was where lunch needed to be eaten. We waited for the 1pm opening time to come around, then waited some more. I positioned myself at the door and watched the owner arrange chairs around the tables. I caught myself licking my lips in anticipation. We definitely rushed the door when it was cracked open.

We feasted and fatted on local white wine, hearty bread, an antipasto of veggies under oil - sun-dried tomatoes, eggplant, artichoke, mushrooms, olives - then dug into main courses: pasta al pesto for Nick and Kirsty, tagliatelle con frutti del mare for Kate and me. All the pasta was fatto a casa. Yum yum! Worth the wait and salivation. We pressed on, digesting en trail. After a gregarious start, wine was ringing in my ears.

By the time we reached the 4th village, Vernazzo, my knees were shaking from the large steps down the steep mountainside, and I was in desperate need of water. I (somewhat crabbily) shook off Kate's insistence that we begin to look for a room for the night, and made for the nearest gelateria. A giant bottle of water and the best gelato I've had in Italy were just the restoratives I needed. I tried a scoop of pineapple gelato, and a scoop of Sciacchiatra, a sweet wine of the region. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmm. I would return to Vernazzo in a heartbeat, if only for the gelato.

When I felt like myself again (myself in Italy again?), I found that I didn't want to walk anymore. I joined Kate's enthusiasm for finding a room, and we began calling the phone numbers we saw posted on doors advertising rooms to let. We pressed buzzers. All to no avail; there were no vacancies. One woman responded to my bell buzzing by sticking her head out of an upper floor window. "Ciao! We are full. I think it is impossible. There are no rooms in Vernazzo tonight." What? No available room on a Saturday night in a tiny, bustling, touristy beachfront town?

We consulted our guidebook and considered other towns. After just a few phone calls, we finally found room at a hostel in Levanto, a short train ride from the Cinque Terre. We hopped the train after wandering and getting our fill of Vernazzo, ready to drop our bags at the hostel and find some dinner. We decided to arrive at the last Cinque Terre village via train the next morning.

Levanto was nice enough, though it seemed something of tourist overflow for Cinque Terre. I definitely had the grossest pizza while there, a little ditty called the 4 Seasons (which season is hot dog, I wonder? And which is canned mushroom?). A bad year, perhaps. Starving, I ate it all. We downed some decent house red wine with the funky food, and slipped out into the night (after the man at the cash register cut us a deal on our meal...? The total came to 63 or 64 euro - "60 is ok," he said. OK!) We found a bar down the street where we topped off with grappa, and then we headed to the waterfront to splash in the Mediterranean because we could. It was a very pleasant evening to a long day.

Assorted Details

2005-10-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

Since I'm not able to write each day, I forget that I need to provide updates on this and that. Please remind me.

Coco Bello, the formerly sick little lamb, is now very much better and kicking around with the other 5 lambs. They rule the school, to be sure, just ask them. They all like to nibble on my clothing when I'm in their pen in the mornings, and Fregona, the little horned one, likes to ram my leg with her head. Always a pleasure.

The damn ram is still on the lam. No definite word on what we'll do with the frisky harem at the end of the intended 30 day separation period.

What else?

Made some great, crusty loaves of bread in the still really really hot pizza oven the other Wednesday night. Stayed up a little late to pull off the feat, but it was overall a small price to pay, especially after being met in the kitchen by two other interns who were still up and more than happy to dance around the warm loaves. Their excitement over the new bread was soooo wonderful. I was also overwhelmed with happiness at the chance to cook something again - it's been a long while (all these 4-course meals being served to me...). The bread baking will continue, and I'll likely begin to skip a dinner or two, just so I can cook for myself now and again.

This is not a vacation...

2005-10-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

Did I mention I had a busy week? I cut out of the grape harvesting early on Monday, to help make dinner in the Villa kitchen, as one of the cooks was out ill for the day. After 2 1/2 hours of prep work and embarassingly little Italian comprehension (it really does depend on who you are talking with!) with the other Italian cook, I sped to Pulcinelli to compete for a shower, then raced over to the Villa's library with the other female interns for our first art class. There is a resident artist here at Spannocchia, Pascale, who spends some of the year here, being creative, and some of the year in England with her MP husband. They are both dear people.

I believe Pascale is French-Canadian; she is surely 5 months pregnant. She radiates positive energy, and charmed us all with her hypnotic voice and poetic turns of phrase. She mused philosophical on the art-making process for us, discussing the habits of the different hemispheres of our brains and how art is often a struggle between what you see and what you know. "The mental process in creating art can cause some discomfort, as it is halfway between seeing and knowing," she murmured, occasionally sprinkling some Italian phrases into her French-accented lecture. After being lulled into a relaxed state, we armed ourselves with pencils and drew and drew and drew. For 2 hours we sketched each other, working mainly with continuous line drawing. "Abandon yourself to the line," Pascale instructed. The soundtrack to Amelie played in the background.

Almost energized by the experience, Kate and I bolted to the main dining room of the Villa, to prepare for the dinner service. There are a series of rotating weekly duties for the interns, and dinner is one of them (others include lunch duty, cleaning Pulcinelli, weekly presentations, etc). Dinner duty entails setting the table for however many folks have reserved for the evening (this week we averaged 50 a night, or more, the highest numbers since we've been here), serving each course, keeping water and wine bottles stocked on the tables, cleaning up, and answering odd and annoying questions from guests who often didn't listen the first time, or else hadn't looked around (sorry, but it's true! what about "family-style" don't they understand? sad that "family-style" has become such a relic...?). The blue-ribbon question of the week: " Can we serve the salad course first tomorrow evening, cause I didn't have any room left on my plate, or in my belly." Or something ridiculous like that. Dinner this week passed in a flurry of setting up, serving up, and attempting to shut up (and smile) when questions like that came rolling along. Handing out bottles of wine like candy from a parade float seemed to divert questions and made guests forget that, no, I don't have an extra set of arms to accomodate their passing/fetching needs. I'm really looking forward to just eating next week.

When my weeks are packed tighter than my bags...

2005-10-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

There were no dead birds today.

When I swept the narrow courtyard behind Lucia's office - sweeping being part of the weekly trash & recycling gig - there is usually a lone dead bird, laying amongst the detritus fallen from the tower crenellation above. Back in the far corner of the courtyard, the various droppings and debris, and perhaps a lone dead pigeon mingles in my senses with the smell of the aging prosciutto legs hanging in a room nearby. It can get a bit pungent, though by now, it's a familiar smell, and nearly comforting. Nearly.

No bird suicides this week, though. It's been too beautiful for such nonsense.

Cool mornings, when the fog clings to the hills and wraps around the olive trees, have given way to warm afternoons, those dressed in that orange Tuscan glow and with a visibility beyond the rooftops of Siena. Sweater weather is upon us. Is anyone else wondering how it is October already?

We were lucky to have such amazing weather this week; it is Vendemmia, or grape harvest, at Spannocchia. I was told as much Sunday night, upon my arrival back at the farm after a weekend away at Cinque Terre. Got back from a full weekend, and stumbled into my fullest week here yet (and it just wont end - I have weekend duty...).

Monday brought a full day of work - our usual afternoon Italian class and educational presentation were cancelled as grapes took precedent. Rumor had it that rain might be on the way for later in the week, which would likely worsen a mold (mould, Bruce) problem in the vineyards, and reduce our grape crop this year, so the pressure was really on to complete the Vendemmia. Snip, snip, snip it was in the vineyard, a labor that brought most of the Spannocchia workforce out together in the fields, a really nice change from the norm.

Bilingual conversations streamed forth, as did song, and squeals when spiders or wasps fled the grape clusters we held in our hands. Fingers turned purple and sticky. My knees grew tired. Our orange buckets filled quickly as we traversed the rows in a buddy system: one person on either side, no row left uncut. We were joined in the vineyard by a photography class on Monday, and a painting group on Tuesday. On Wednesday, gray clouds rolled in just before lunch, and so we picked up the pace, dodging the raindrops that began to fall. It poured rain while we were inside eating, but the sun was out an hour later, the normal start of the afternoon work period. We waited a short time for the moisture to evaporate, and then were back out. My shoes formerly known as Gore Tex champions now get wet in the morning (and afternoon) dew, and I've taken to wearing (and LOVING) tall Wellies. Can't wait to add some to the ol' shoe collection.

In the three and a half days of Vendemmia, we harvested four types of grapes total - two white, the primary one being Trebbiano, and two red, the primary one being Sangiovese. There are other assorted grapes growing at Spannocchia that are used for eating and cooking, we found out on Thursday, when we had the Vendemmia pranzo. This special lunch celebrated the harvest in general and the close of our harvesting work specifically. Two long tables were set up outside for all us purple-stained staff. We ate fried polenta slices topped with gorgonzola cheese, vegetarian lasagne, cabbage with olives (some of the best cabbage I have had ever...), beef cooked with fragolina grapes ("little strawberries"), salad, and schiacciata con l'uva - a traditional Tuscan flat cake with grapes baked in it. These were courses of food, by the way, not things offered in a buffet. Whew! Red and white wines were passed, along with fresh pressed grape juice. A Tuscan glutton, I continue to overeat.

Ahhhh, Rommmma

2005-09-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

Hey All,

Just wanted to let you know that I've added some photos to the site, so check back at the beginning for some interesting visuals (I am thinking you don't want to miss the dolce dentures, yes?).

I've been in Rome this weekend, tripping through the city with my friend Paul (Anya, you are sooo missed! You'd better be making some good stuff in that pastry course to have missed being here with us...). We are headed to the Pantheon this morning, then on to test our moral mettle at the Bocca della Verita.

Enjoy the pics, don't know that there will be many more, at least not soon....it's been a decidedly trying process, argh.

Love to all, E

Castiglione di Pescaia

2005-09-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

The girls at the Spiaggia Privato (whoops - who, us on a private beach?):

MY weekend...MINE!

2005-09-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, Saturday. Day of farm rest.

Slept in until 8am, had some horrendous saltless Tuscan bread made palatable with Rosia melon jam (which I helped make yesterday), and am sipping coffee (ristretto - yow!). I'm happy to once again embrace weekends for what they should be - nothing, and yet somehow everything. Irreplaceable rest. Pace slowed to match whatever personal exploration I feel up to on that day. Today: reading, writing, and, with one more cup of coffee, a run over this hilly, rocky terrain. Like the electrical voltage here in Italy, the caffeine (wine, too?) runs at a higher voltage. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Speaking of voltage, I finally located a converter and adapter for my dying computer. The red battery light on the side of the keyboard is continually flashing in panic, but the external battery pack should continue to deliver me the juice I need - knock on wood. It feels AWFUL guuud to be typing at leisure, rather than at frantic-crane-your-head-to-hear-anyone-approaching-the-communal-computer-cough-out-loud-
so’s-to-aurally-inform-them-that-the-communal-computer-is-occupied-and-so-not-to-come-in-
and-express-your-impatience-with-this-blog-typing-fool. Leisure is luxury. And nothing like the familiar clickety-clack of my keyboard. Another sip of coffee, and a head nod in time with Al Green on the EECpod.

This week is nearly a blur. My early onset Alzheimer's is worsening with the addition of daily physical fatigue. What did I do yesterday? Uhhh...worked hard, like the day before, specifics no longer known...? There are so many highlights and hard work in each day that it's simply difficult to keep track of it all; life marches on, not so much in repetition but in indifference to the pace of my digestion of it. Here are some highlights of late that I simply haven’t had the time to divulge before now:

(PS - I’m wearing my sparkly black Milan shoes, the muses they are. Seems they make good writing wear!)

Pastorella Plus, Or Dumpster Diving in Italy
The life of pastorella is not all sun-dappled hillsides and smiling wooly friends.

I am Pastorella Plus, expanding on my master-of-none-ness with tasks as various as pruning shrubs and climbing ivy, sorting and stacking wood, making jam, and gathering trash and recycling for disposal at the nearby collection site. And I'm getting something out of each task: from pruning fig trees I was left with red welts up and down my arms (the burning sensation evolved to blisters evolved to itchy scabs, which is where I am now. Bastardo fico!), from my woodworking I feel certain I have a future in bodybuilding, from making jam I have the taste of sweet cinnamony goodness on my morning bread, mid-day cookie, and evening biscuit - fuel for my muscle-building, no?

Above all, though, trash duty delivers a bounty. I get to kick it closer to the main Fattoria property (a break from the long bike ride), I get the satisfaction of cleaning and seeing the visual result of my work, I get to break glass (yeah!), I get to drive (yeah, yeah! - pimping in a Big Blue Van, over roads I would scarcely think my Forester could handle), and I get a little closer to knowing those that stay here. By going through their trash. And setting aside the good bits.

Yes, I'm dumpster diving in Italy. My first task when I enter the Trash & Recycling Room, after donning rubber work gloves, is to begin cleaning up a bit after everyone who left their trash and recycling in not quite the right place. Trash goes with trash, recycling is divided into paper (do people really think Kleenex can be recycled??), and glass-plastic-tetrapak. Not too hard to understand, and yet somehow it is. Mixed bags litter every corner of the room. My knee-jerk organizational skills flare up and I get to work.

Inevitably, I find items too good to toss out: art supplies like a pad of cardstock postcards awaiting decoration, a perfectly good Frisbee (what, is exercise and fun not necessary here, in the land of saltless bread over-consumption?), cute little Campari bottles (great vases), and various pieces of scrap metal that I hope to weld into a sculpture by the end of my time here. And it's only week two of Ranger G(arbage) duty! ;-)

Dad must be so proud.

Driving on the Right Side of the Road
I don’t just drive bins of trash and bags of tetrapak around. People sometimes passenge into the equation as well. Eight other interns makes for a full Big Blue Van. And sometimes, chaos.

Four of the ten of us volunteered to be drivers while here. In Italy, we drive on the right side of the road, as we do in the states, so there was no major challenge there (except maybe for Kirsty, our token Brit intern). And thanks to my Dad, who trained me at 15 in large work vehicles (Hey Honey, how about backing up and parallel parking in this here 20 person van, F250 diesel truck, etc??), I don’t mind the size of the Big Blue Van, it’s lack of power steering, or even the fact that I should have a phone book or two behind my back to reach the pedals (the seat only goes UP or DOWN, not FORWARD or BACK).

The only challenges I really face with this baby are tight spaces - driving and parking, which are, of course, the norm here - and, sometimes, thinking and driving on the unfamiliar Italian roads with 8 backseat drivers trying to reach consensus on a decision. Comically, we often defer in our decision-making to the youngest of the intern brood: Russell, 18, and fresh out of high school in NYC. Russell has been coming to Spannocchia for vacation with his family for the past 11 years, and can often answer our most basic questions (Q: So, what can you do in Rosia [where we go when we "go into town"]?? Russell: Buy beer and walk around). Even when he doesn't know the answer, he is getting accustomed to being our Questions Man (somebody's got to do it), and is honing his fact fabrication skills. Me? I’m just the driver.

We do take turns behind the wheel. Returning to the farm from a field trip in Siena last week, it was suggested that one of the intern drivers take the reins; Deanna stepped up to the challenge. Pressure was on for this early driving experience, as each step seemed part of an obstacle course in a Candid Camera skit. Back the Big Blue Beast from a matchbook parking space into a circle of traffic, make the correct turn away from the city center (who has the right of way?? I like to think it is always the Big Blue Van, always...), don't nick any small building or cars on the way out, what does that flashing light mean?, how to turn off the rear wiper whose blade has slipped off creating a metal on glass screech every three seconds?, navigate the roundabout correctly, are the lights on?, bear our collective intern groan over the screeeech screeeech, enlist another intern to locate the off switch for the rear wiper as all buttons so far have only succeeded in turning on the front wipers and doing unnoticed other effects, to encourage or not to encourage Seth to continue climbing out a rear window to pull off the rear wiper?, are we still able to see the car we are supposed to be following?? Russell, which way should be go from here???

Deanna was stoic, keeping us between the road's lines, if not in line ourselves. Once we were through the thick of the confusion, we erupted in laughter, the old van shaking along with us. We were on our way home. We stopped in Rosia, for beer and a short walk around.

Smoking in the Bosco
Earlier this week, after a morning sheep duties, I was instructed to join Roberto (Italian worker) and Seth (intern) to help with the boscaiolo (woodsman) efforts. This sounded great, as I was eager to see the for-profit side of the farm's operation closer-up, and to work with Roberto.

Roberto is as wiry as they come, with tattoos blanketing his muscular forearms, and wire-rimmed glasses that, taken with his quiet nature and searching eyes, make him appear something of an academic. He's an attractive man, with calm, well-proportioned features. One ear is pierced with a small diamond stud. His clothes are trim and well-fitted, and his shirt is always tucked in, his pants belted. He stays amazingly clean with ease. Roberto, who I would guess is in his mid-to-late 40s, joins the interns in the Pulcinelli kitchen for lunch every work day, where he eats from our buffet (a combination of leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, and whatever else we have to fill in with) and drinks, without fail, white wine poured from an old water bottle he brings each day. He talks little, even to those who speak Italian, though I have a feeling he could cut up and carry on if the opportunity presented itself.

When I joined the boscaioli, rain was falling in a drizzle, the sound amplified by the corrugated tin roof under which we were working. Our task was to trim and stack longer pieces of wood to 90cm, the length of wood used to fuel the caldaia – the farm’s source of hot water heat. Seth and I pulled wood from a huge pile, creating small stacks that Roberto then trimmed with his chainsaw, and split with another machine, when necessary.

If my work with the sheep is slippery and carefree, then this work was satisfyingly decisive, especially on that first day: the rain pounded down, the diesel-fueled splitter cracked through wide logs, the chainsaw screamed through wood leaving a half-inch gap in its wake, Seth and I slapped down cut logs onto the ever-growing cord, we chucked the log ends into a mountainous scrap pile. The experience was aural, kinetic, visual (each piece of wood as unique as people - different grains, colors, weights, shapes), and, my favorite, olfactory: the wood smell was strong, sawdust perfumed the air, diesel mingled its sharpness in my nose along with wet earth...Roberto lit a cigarette, and the tobacco aroma just fit. I was blissful. When Roberto offered me una sigaretta, I had to join him; it was an opportunity for a partnership of sorts and a synergy I couldn’t pass up. Smoking in the bosco, with Roberto.

I Want to Be Like Common (Closet) People
In getting familiar with Pulcinelli, our dorm-like home away from home, the ten of us poked through every nook and cranny. I like to think we are investigators, researchers on what has come before us, but we are just nosy and curious. The Find, the booty, came via the Common Closet. The CC is a large armoire in the Common Room (aka living room - 5 couches, fireplace, stocked bookshelf), chock full of clothes, accessories, and accoutremont mista from previous interns and who knows where (I mean, the jock strap? Is that a joke someone planted?). The CC gives and gives. It clothes us, it entertains us, it feeds our creativity.

On Day One, we pored through the CC as a group, holding up and commenting on every item in the closet. Some pieces were scored (me: pants-convertible-shorts of a really nice quality). Nearly everyone had at least one item on or in their hands that night. Future Dress Up For Fun from the closet seemed inevitable.

Day Two: As a gift to Nick, the only intern celebrating a birthday while we are here, we decided to give him free rein to dress another intern solely from the CC for the entirety of his birth day. We played it fair, with Nick handing out playing cards to each intern, leaving one aside for Kate who was checking her email. Whoever had the lowest card "won" the costume contest. Kate won.

Nick, ever fair and fun, and apparently costume-challenged, let each of the other interns select their own piece from the CC, for consideration in Kate’s outfit; Nick had the final vote from this pre-selected wardrobe. I have to say, Kate looked mighty fetching in her purple fish-print dress, yellow pants, and pink-flowered shoulder bag (my pick!). She carried a pink and white striped parasol all day. Thank goodness it was a Sunday, and not a normal work day; she works for the guest services side of the farm.

I still wonder what Kate would have done with the single purple sock that was Aubrey's pick.

Day Three: As it became apparent to Aubrey that her lost luggage wasn't going to make its way to Spannocchia, at least not in the promised two days, the CC took on new depth. We returned to delving deep into its offerings, and Aubrey’s been dressed in dry, clean clothing since. Grandmother's Chest meets The Real World.

So That's What It's Like When It Rains Here

2005-09-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Katrina Jr hit Spannocchia Friday, bringing thunder and rains, and lightning on occasion, from pre-dawn to late-afternoon. Any questions about whether we work in the rain were answered thoroughly, as we each trudged out to our duties across the farm.

The beauty of the rain wasn't diminished, but, literally, amplified for me as I drove out to Casseta to see to the sheep. Rain beat on the tin roof of the Macchina Rossa, and we splashed through puddles along the dirt and gravel road. Emily G. was with me, learning about the sheep in preparation for her animal care weekend duty. It was nice, and later necessary, to have her company.

In driving rain, we let the sheep out into the main pasture. The sheep must not be fans of the rain; there was considerably less bleating than usual. Emily and I then prepped the now-empty evening stall, dropping fresh straw, filling the water tub with fresh suds, and clearing out damp hay from the feeding trough. Wet straw clung to our clothes, and I noticed a big blue stain across my orange jacket, smeared on me from the neck of a wounded sheep that I had dressed earlier with the colorful anti-fly spray. I was suddenly aware of how sheep-y I smelled, and how my rain pants had ceased to be waterproof; both pair of pants clung heavily to my legs. Thunder cracked loudly, and the rain picked up.

Emily and I, now yelling to be heard to one another over the roar of the rain, set to changing the day pen (the pens that I move, that change from week to week), flipping up one "L" side of fencing from the previous week's pen to meet up with the already-in-place "L" of fencing for the next week's pen. I went looking for the mallet in the barn, which was no longer there. Of course. Hollering instructions to Emily to pull up the stakes from the mud and roll up the fencing, clean and prepare the water bin for the day pen, I took off in the truck to get the missing mallets. The windshield fogged behind my breath, and the driver’s side window repeatedly fell open. I reached through the panel-less door to push the glass up from the bottom.

Returning from the farm, Emily and I first dragged the sheep's shade tent from last week's pen UP UP UP to this week's pen, stopping several times to adjust our grip, rest our arms, and gripe at the mud, which was sucking at our shoes with each step. Using all my reserve of strength (it had been a looong week), we groaned and pulled the long metal frame just into the new pen, accidentally hooking it on a rock. Great spot to leave it, we decided.

We unrolled the wire fencing and began driving the metal stakes through it and into the ground, about every 8-10 feet. My first pole, a bent one, broke at its weak point as I was hammering it in. I ran down to the sheep’s evening pen to grab an extra one from the pile, and trotted back up the hill, avoiding no puddles, but somehow keeping my shoes on (Gore Tex? What Gore Tex?). As thunder boomed and lightning crackled in the sky, Emily and I exchanged wide-eyed looks. She yelled, "Should we really be running around with metal stakes right now?" I half-laughed, half-shrugged and hammered harder. Funny how a fast heart rate and adrenaline can get things done; in no time, the fencing was up, and we had only to round up the sheep and get them into the day pen. "Only" - from the delights of the pasture "buffet" to the day pen "cornerstore," if you will, in the hard, driving rain, using only the blue bribery bucket of oats and our collective wits.

I took off for the far, far stretch of pasture where the sheep had resorted to. They seemed more confused than uncooperative, when I approached them talking. "Andiamo, pecore!" Arms up, I ran to the rear of the flock, racing left and right, to move them forward as a group. "Vai! Vai!" At the front of the pack, Emily shook the bucket of grain back and forth as we do to give the aural signal of "Follow Me" to the sheep. We might as well have been whispering. My wet, wooly friends wandered this way and that, but more often stood still or walked slowly in every direction. "Vai!" I pushed a lot of sheep bums that day, which seemed to be the winning strategy. Vai, push, Vai, push.

We made our way towards the day pen, Emily now crouching down at the front of the pack, not wanting to be a tall point in a large open field with a lightning storm raging. Belle, the dominant sheep, took the opportunity to dip her head into the lowered bucket, and Emily struggled to wrestle it away. We moved like this, lurching and hiccupping all the way up the hill and, miraculously, into the day pen. I bellowed to Emily to drop the oats all the way in the back of the pen, moving the sheep deeper into the pen, and away from the door. One renegade lamb didn't make it with the crush of white bodies through the open gate, but he was an easy scoop up and drop into the pen. I counted the wet, miserable sheep backs (28), and we splashed our way down to the car. The rain was thrilling, the air electric. The thunder boomed through my body. I was grateful to be outside.

I couldn't see through the fogged windows of the Macchina Rossa as we jostled back along the watery road to the farm. When I killed the ignition, I remembered that my work gloves were lying on the wire fencing of the pen. Another day. TGIF. I spent the rest of the day in tall rubber boots, making cinnamon-spiked jam, grateful for the discovery of fire.

Hog-Tied and Milking It

2005-09-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

In this last week, I've helped catch and hog-tie a ram, milk a mama sheep, and bottle feed and give meds to a sick lamb. Pastorella Plustest.

Last week, we noticed that one of the lambs wasn't kicking along with his cohorts. He was lethargic, lagging behind the pack, and struggling to breathe. His nose was running. Pretty soon the entire flock's noses were running, and approaching their pen in the mornings was like visiting a grade-school classroom in late November. Wet sniffs, snotty noses, innocent faces.

Lamb little, dubbed Coco Bello, worsened. One morning, after successfully leading the whole flock into their day pen, I came up in my count with one lamb short. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five...? The little ones are sometimes hard to spot from behind the big bellies of wool... One, two, three, four, five. Little one down??!

I looked up, scanning the field from where we had all just come. My eyes alighted on a small speck of white, and I took off for it. Coco Bello was lying in a ditch on his side, breathing in shallow, labored lamb heaves; he didn't lift his head when I dropped to my knees next to him, and he didn't respond at all to my touch. An ambulance alarm went off in my head. I told him I'd be right back with help (Do I leave him? Move him? Where do I move him?), and I jumped in the Macchina Rossa and beat it for the farm.

I was looking for Nikki, and luckily came across her on the road, where she was driving out to meet me, with some new meds for the lamb. I gave her his update, which she took in stride. She calmly told me she'd give him his first dose of medicine, and that I could continue to my other work back at the farm. Perhaps a cute little curly-haired, sweet-faced lamb couldn't perish from a trifling cold?? Coco Bello gave her a show, though - when she found him in the ditch, he had changed position so that his four little hoofed legs were all pointing skyward. (Did he smile when she wasn't looking?)

Part of caring for Coco, who had stopped nursing, was to milk his mom and bottle feed him. I learned from Nikki that to do this, I first had to embrace a full-sized sheep, reaching around the belly to squeeze the udder, then pull on the teat. If I was successful, a good tablespoon full or so of sheep's milk would splatter into our pot. After laboring over two squirming mamas, we managed to get about a half cup of milk. We gathered Coco Bello and headed up to the farm, where bottle and sick bed were waiting. He occasionally lifted his head from my lap on the bumpy ride up the hill and looked around wide-eyed, as if to ask, Where have all the other sheep gone? They are a pack creature, for sure.

Bottle-feeding is easy. As in milking, you have to hug the lamb, though this time it's around the neck, rather than around the rear (attenzione!), and you have to hold both the bottle and the lamb's neck at an angle. Adorable. The medicines we've been giving him - crushed pills and drops, diluted in water, given via syringe - have helped tremendously, and after four days of indoor(ish) confinement with his mom, he's been reunited with the group. Fris-ky!

But on to hog-tying and the Ram that got away. The ladies of the flock are entering breeding time, and part of the process involves a new diet of oats (rather than the de rigeuer barley) and separation from the ram (aka Rambo). Separation of the ram from the group involves catching him, laying him on the ground, and folding his legs in proper hog-tie fashion. Nikki and I wanted an extra challenge from this experience, so we made sure that it rained the day before making pasture really muddy, and we parked a goodly distance away from the tie spot.

I truly hope that gripping his wool like I did doesn't hurt him! Nikki tied his legs - after we got him to the ground, everything was cake - and we dug in to his thick cover for the slippery walk to the car. Another bumpy ride up to the farm from the Casseta property, and we untied Rambo in his new pen, a rather small and incredibly solitary home just behind the main farm buildings. Wide-eyed and quiet, Rambo seemed unimpressed and unhappy. I made a mental promise to visit him whenever I could.

Perhaps the trauma of the hog-tying got to him, or maybe he missed his harem, but Rambo made his feelings about confinement known later that afternoon, when he rushed the door, pushing past Nikki who was bringing straw for the pen floor. His nimbleness out-performed her leap, and he escaped into the forest. Searches for him later in the day proved futile. As with the pigs, that escaped their pen days before, we decided ("decided") it best to let him have his roam time.

We picked up the search, unintentionally, when we were all setting out for another group project the next day. His flash of white caught someone's eye, and we scattered, dropping tools, trying to corral him into a fenced pig pen. This particular breed of sheep are superior jumpers, as we witnessed. With some interns on Pig Hill Road, some on the upper piano, and the rest of us in the pig pen (pig pen proper?), we tried to slowly advance in silence, as best at 10 excited interns could. Rambo was freeeeeeeaked out, and proceeded to try to run with the pack of piglets that lived in this particular pen. Pack creatures, I tell you. It was hilarious.

At one point, someone got too close for Rambo, and he bolted past them, jumping UP to a higher piano, then racing out to Pig Hill Road. "He's coming out to the road," someone bellowed, to alert the other interns. "He's heading towards the officina!" "He’s by the pool!" Our chase continued around the farm, with sightings of white, hollered instructions on his whereabouts, and only two near catches - one being a bit of a ram by the Ram, into Nick. After about 30 minutes of sustained high heart rate activity, and fewer ram sightings, we dropped back into our original work plan, and gave up. Rambo, where are you?

Good Eats, Part I

2005-09-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

Do you think it's weird I haven't talked about food at all? Well, it's good. Tuscan food, at its best. Nothing transcendental (yet), but nothing bad has crossed these lips. Coffee is spectacular, veggies as fresh as you can get them, meat harvested from the farm...the other night we had 2 courses in a single meal that both featured wild boar (cinghiale). It was some of the most delicious meat I have ever had, masterfully prepared by the farm's two cooks, Graziella and Gaetana. These white-uniformed, smiling-faced round women churn out four-course meals daily. Our first courses, in typical fashion, tend to be pastas or soups, the second feature meat and a veggie, the third is always a simple salad, and the fourth a delicious homemade dessert (pineapple cake, almond past truffles, etc). The farm's red and white wines are passed at the table, as are the farm's own olive oil and vinegar. Our saltless Tuscan bread is bought in town.

I'm slowly learning vocab in order to interact with the cooks - to thank them for all the good eats! They don't speak English (Brad, you talked with a cook the other night, when your call was automatically routed to the Villa during our dinner - sorry! I wonder who was more confused by the conversation!).

Things I'm not finding at the tiny store in Rosia when we buy our own grocery stash: peanut butter, a nice french baguette (saaaaalty bread), cheddar cheese, good whole-grain mustard....well, the list could go on. It's a small shop. My diet is Tuscan for the foreseeable future, which makes having cravings like I did last week (Indian food) all the more difficult to bear. Did I just say "Tuscan food" and "difficult to bear" in the same sentence???? Shame, shame!