First days on the farm

8 luglio

This posting is long, and describes my first couple days at Spannocchia. The Spannocchia.com or .org websites are excellent with loads of information.

My third day at Spannocchia. I slept the best I have since arriving in Italy. I woke, as I did yesterday, at around 5:45 to the sound of cars and trucks and tractors as the workers either arrived, or started their machinery for their daily farm work. It’s not an unpleasant way to wake up because people are calm and quiet, with no yelling, no frenzied pace.

My room has two doors, both of which stay closed during the day to keep out the sun and the heat. Even doors and windows that are shaded are kept closed because it helps to keep the cool in and the heat out. It is a beautiful way to wake up, although somewhat exposed as my room is on the back corner of Pulcinelli which is a main work and maintenance building. One door has a teeny balcony—really just a cut through the 2’ thick stone wall with an iron railing. The other is actually a large window with a 2’ deep window seat faced in brick.

My bathroom faces the back, same as the door, and up until an hour ago the two large windows opened to the driveway and pool with no covering… I found an apron or something—it’s a rectangle of patterned fabric with two long ties—and rigged it up so it would cover the window but still let in light, and still allow me to open the windows.

Spannocchia Doorway

I am sitting in the “secret garden” a beautiful set of terraces with a wall running n/s on the east side. It is very steep here, hence the terraces. The area where I am sitting is surrounded by tall, trees, perfectly spaced, with bare trunks and branches starting about 20-30 feet up, so it’s an open meadow, with great views out to the surrounding hills which I think are part of this Spannocchia land. There is one bench, on which I am sitting, that is the perfect height for typing on computer on lap.

The air is perfect here—still a little hot, but so shaded with a nice breeze. The only sounds are birds, flies, bugs, and other flying things, and cars in the distance on the main road. I just went to visit the main garden—there are more smaller ones on the property—and it is just magnificent. I walked down one row with one of the interns, Sheila, and saw the things that had been planted just today. The gardens supply most—if not all—of the produce for the property and all the guests, interns, residents—tutti! There are dozens of heads of wonderful green leaf lettuce that are ready or almost ready—we have salad with every dinner, and the guests have it for lunch as well. It’s served just lettuce, which you dress with olive oil and vinegar (both produced here) and salt and pepper. There’s not a better salad. The terrace that I walked on was bordered with lavender and sage, and full of butterflies. There was a persimmon tree, tomatoes in a greenhouse below, big, purple onions that are ready to be harvested, row upon row of basil, carrots, leeks, peas, arugula, and more that I can’t think of. Garlic was just harvested and is drying in a low rock building. We’ve been eating small, oblong yellow creamy potatoes, roasted with salt. And throughout the garden are zinnas, mums, roses, more lavender… it’s just a miracle to see it all. Sheila and Jeri are on the garden crew and work every day in some capacity in the food gardens.

Il Orto (the garden--but just a tiny part of it)

There are 8 interns—the youngest 18, and the oldest in their early 20s. I am staying in Pulcinella with them, where we have a communal kitchen, and where they share a few bathrooms. They are 2 to a room on twin beds. I am in the lap of luxury with my very basic room with a double bed, side table, writing table and chair, and built in shelves and drawers—plus my own bath and shower, and a closet.

We eat whatever for breakfast—there is communal food in a cupboard and one refrigerator, then a second fridge for personal food, and each intern has a wooden crate on a shelf for their personal food. We receive all of the dinner leftovers and eat those for lunch—the interns have a schedule where two of them are on lunch duty for a week, and they come in at noon to prepare lunch for the group, while everyone else works until 1:00. Last night was pizza night (that will take a couple paragraphs to explain!) so we had lots of leftover pizza, warmed in the oven, and salad—plus the leftover caffe gelato that graciella—the incredible cook—made for dessert.

This arrangement reminds me of when I was about 21 and Mike and I moved to Angels Camp, where all of the young boatmen and women had a communal house with kitchen. I spent little time there because Mike and I had the stepvan with our little kitchen, and which was parked in a beautiful treed meadow with all the other strange and wonderful hippie vehicles. I remember not really liking the whole communal food/cooking/cleaning thing then, and I must say I am not crazy about it now. I am not very comfortable with the lack of cleanliness, but hope that my system is hardy enough to withstand the change in bacteria… I just hope that nothing really breaks out in this group. I spent so many years working on the river, and all of us were really cognisant about the need for sanitation when you have so many people in close quarters. I’ll try to relax and hope for the best. Now, I want to write down the daily details, then about the work that I am doing.

Everyone eats dinner together. There are guests who are staying in the Villa, which is caty-corner to Pulcinelli, and that looks out to a common driveway and entry. Part of the building is a set of rooms where groups stay—one group at a time—who are here for a workshop or class, or such. These are all listed in the Spannocchia website. There is also a group of rooms that are simpler, where student groups can stay, or individuals can rent rooms—I think there are one or two families there now. They have a kitchen where they can prepare meals.

There are also individual houses, and the people staying in those have the choice of eating with the group for a fee, or not. All of us in Pulcinelli and the Villa, plus various residents, the owners, the education director Katie, eat dinner together each night. First, there is wine on the terrace, which is on the front of the Villa, right around the corner from the main entrance. The front of the villa is gorgeous with a door leading out to staircases on either side, with wisteria and rose vines covering the walls.

We have the excellent Spannocchia table wine—both white and red—each evening and with dinner. The dinners are made completely by this incredible woman, Graciella, who was raised on the property, moved away (I’m not sure how far) and now lives in Rosia which is the closest town, just a few km. away. She makes all the dinners except Saturday when people are on their own. She’s amazing. Last night she let me help her to pat and form the individual pizza dough balls, after she had done the work of mixing it into the most perfect dough, with silky, perfect consistency. She does get help from the interns, but it seems like she does almost all of the work herself.

The kitchen, like ours in Pulcinelli, has all marble counters, with industrial sink, dishwasher, fridge, and with an 8-burner stove. There is a huge marble-topped island in the middle. It is a dream kitchen.

I made my arrangements to stay here by email with Katie, the education director. She has just completed her masters in food culture and communication with the slow food university, has lived in Italy for 1 ½ years, is from Ireland, and is very well versed in the details of Italian food and wine. She is in charge of the interns, and gives classes to them and to the groups that are staying in the Villa, and generally works all day from sun up through dinner, and most likely into the evening at her office. She has given the group staying in the Villa a class on pasta and an olive oil and wine tasting class. She directs the interns regarding their daily work-tasks, although the staff in charge of each area also gives direction.

The interns work about 40 hours a week, but this includes some language classes and other cultural classes in the afternoons. They work very, very hard, and the phrase that I have heard from the beginning is that this wonderful, complex place would not be possible without the interns, volunteers, and woofers over many years. The 8 interns one cohort that is here for 3-months. There are also volunteers who come for 2-week stints, but none are here now. I am a special case, and for that I am thankful—I am here as a visiting scholar, with time for my research and writing and other academic work, but am also volunteering some hours to help pay my board. I am paying a very reasonable rate for my room, and am using my volunteer hours to pay for my board—which is basically the 22 euro per dinner, for 6 nights a week.

I think we are all getting a good deal—me because I get to experience this place and learn about life on a Tuscan farm, and them because I am working 3 mornings a week from 7:00-1:00, and am working my butt off! The interns meet at the low wall behind Pulcinelli every morning, Mon-Fri, at 7:00 am, where they are given their assignments for the morning. They are broken up into 3 or 4 groups—I may be missing one. There are the animali, who look after the cinte sienese—the Sienese banded pigs. Cinta means belt, and these pigs have a brown band around their bellies. They are the traditional pig of the area, and there are 150 of them here now. They are raised, butchered off property, then brought back in two halves to be processed into a variety of products—generally called salumi. I’m not even sure of the variety, but there are prosciutto (the prosciutto aging room must have over 50 hangning right now) salami, pepperoni, lardo (which I haven’t tried) and probably pancetta, and more… I need to see about giancale—that yummy pork product that I tasted in my fava bean and pasta dish at Pasta Bar in Phoenix!

The other crews are the two who work in the gardens, and “tutti fare” which means doing everything, and this is the crew I have worked with yesterday and today.

Yesterday morning I helped Erica to move wine around in the cantina (the cellar where the wine is made and stored) and to bring bottles into the cupboard off of the main kitchen to refill the daily stash. Then, she and Andrew and I went in one of the small electric trucks to Nuovo vineyard—one of four. The vines have been trimmed and trained up to this point, and now they are at the stage where they needed to be trimmed and tied again. Here’s the deal—the vines grow vertically for about 3 feet, then are trained to turn at a sharp right angle, and grow horizontal to the ground. These make up the permanent trunks of the plants. The new growth is trained to grow vertically, to about as high as I can hold my hand up over my head on tiptoes. To do this there are thick, vertical posts of tree trunks or branches along the rows, about 20 feet apart. There are two rows of wire strung from pole to pole—one row at about 3 ½ feet up, and one about 5 ½ feet up. The new growth is trained to grow up in between each set of wires. The grapes grow along the lower level, right at the horizontal trunk area. There are really no grapes above that level. So, the branches grow up, but want to grow in any direction. Erica and Andrew had alreasy been through this vineyard a month ago, and now were on their second pass. Angelo, the Italian winemaker and vineyard manager, has likely been through himself, and I am not sure if there are other workers who work on these vineyards as well. Anyway, the two have been working their way through the rows and there were 7 left to do. We did 2 yesterday.

At this point most of the vines have cleared the first set of wires, so you go through and thread the ones that are outside through the top wires. Then you clip the vines about as high as I can reach. I didn’t have clippers until the very end, so spent most of the morning pushing the vines up and through. Then you clip the lower vines. At the point where the new vines grow from the old trunk there is a lumpy node. There should only be two vines growing out of that node—otherwise there are too many vines and grape clusters. You want to concentrate the clusters, and not let too many grow. There were only a few where a third vine was growing out of the node—most are developed nicely with one or two strong vines.

Then, because these vines have grown past the point of the top row of wires, you go along and use twist-ties to tie the bottom and top rows of wires together at 4 spots between each supporting pole. This helps to stabilize the whole thing, and new vines growing up just hold on with their tendrils, making the long line of vines strong and stable.

It was very beautiful to see the contrast between the rows that had just been trimmed and tied, and the ones that were still ungainly, with vines sticking up and out at all angles, with many going to the ground. We didn’t go out again today, since we were put on the Limonaia cleaning, so I hope to go out again to help with the remaining 5 rows. I imagine that there will be more opportunities, since there are 4 vineyards! I also didn’t have my camera, but might walk down there later just to sit and enjoy the incredible view and the silence of the vineyard.  There are a couple of guest houses there at the edge of the property, and it’s just ridiculously picturesque. I was in shorts and a tank top, so going down one side of the vines I got sun all along my back, and then my front on the other side. By 1:00 the sun was directly overhead, and it was definitely time to go back to P. for lunch. The interns take off from 1:00 to 3:00 with free time, and it’s really needed. It has been very hot—not unseasonably hot for June-July but just darned hot when you are out in full sun.

Today I worked with Erica and Oliver—Erica is an intern, but Oliver isn’t—he is the son of a woman who works here. There is a huge room that is a level down from Pulcinelli and the Villa—there is a narrow staircase that you can’t see until you are on top of it that goes down from the parking area. This building is the Limonaia, which is the place where the lemon and other citrus trees, and any other frost-sensitive plants are stored in the winter. I think that they usually have a lot of windows, more like a conservatory, but am not exactly sure. This is a beautiful space, with a very tall, arched roof. There are two big doors with large windows on either side, and another window that looks out to the valley below. The room was filled with stuff—tables, artists easels, some miscellaneous junk and chairs and stuff… plus four cars that were pulled by one or two animals—horses? Oxen? Donkeys? that seat two people. These carts were pushed out to the large grassy area along the driveway, alongside the Villa. All of the other stuff was loaded up and taken to a storage building (the laboratoria, another huge building with lots of stuff in it, and a caged off area with banks of drawers with seeds? Soil? and where the two washing machines are that we use).

The Limonaia

The limonaia and all of the grounds around the front of the property, and the front of the Villa are getting a good spring cleaning, and a man with a mechanical bucket for tree trimming has been here for two days, trimming all of the tall pines, the junipers, and all of the vines that climb up the buildings—the transformation has been very beautiful. I didn’t notice that anything needed trimming until he would finish with each tree or vine, and it was a really nice
difference.

Tenuta di Spannocchia

We did some work outside, then by 8:00 started whitewashing the Limonaia walls. First we scraped the flaky parts with sandpaper, then we brushed the walls, then we swept, then we cleaned the baseboards so the tape would stick. Then we taped dropcloths, then we whitewashed. The whitewash is a thin paint-like substance that you mix 2:1 with water. You use these big, chunky brushes, and you do more dabbing and smooshing the whitewash into all the crevices and holes than actual painting. It doesn’t cover completely, and we had to go over the parts that had flaked down to the gray plaster a couple times. But when we were finished, all the walls looked really great, and the old, yellowing whitewash had been transformed! We only worked up to the trim at high-arms length, and the manager was deciding if they would come back and do the two semi-circular arcs at either end of the room. I finished up by going around and washing the paint (ours and past painters’!) from the plastic baseboard. Next, the brick floors need to be completely swept, and washed down, and the Limonaia will be ready for the wedding that will take place there a week from Saturday!

It’s 4:40, and I am going to see if the computer (there is one for all interns and guests with no wireless. That’s a bit painful—it wouldn’t be an issue if I were simply relaxing and recreating, but I’m struggling with the lack of internet to do my research. I really want to get on to the ASU library website, and also access some papers from my class websites, but that will have to wait. I am going to go into Siena over the weekend, and stay there Saturday night, so that will give me a chance to get caught up. I’ll be there all day Saturday, returning here Sunday, which works well because everyone is on their own for the weekend, and there is no dinner on Saturday.

Ciao tutti!