The Happy Farm

...no seriously, it's actually called The Happy Farm - the translation of Fattoria Della Felicita. And it more than lives up to its name: there are dogs galore, from the tiny whirling dervish-like Jack Russell who has managed to squirm her way into my heart, to the big lumbering dopey eyed Burmese mountain dog to the two hyper-energetic Australian shepherd sisters. Actually, they have all managed to find a special place in our hearts, right next to the real estate occupied by our main canine companion, Hugo!! (We have a video of him on the iPad we watch a couple of times per week).

 The view here is more than incredible, and reminds me of when I lived in Banff in a valley nestled into the mountains. I never tire of the view, and find my mind wandering, seeking routes up the mountain in a mental attempt to try and scale it. I can almost feel the unexpected chill on my face and being completely unable to sign my name in the log book due to said cold the time I managed to scale a mountain in Banff with a ragtag band of misfits from work (the restaurant, not the bank). 

The work is incredibly taxing in terms of the physicality of it, but at the end of the day it is so rewarding. You feel that kind of full body drain you can only feel when you have pushed every muscle to its limit and your complete inability to peel yourself from the chair you're sitting in is all that's preventing you from going to bed about 4 hours early. The funny thing is, I can't even explain why it is so rewarding, I just know that I find myself with an ear to ear grin at least once a day - whether it's when I scratch behind the injured goats ears and he tilts his head back into it like a dog and smiles (I've named him Cervantes) or when Adam (Czech WWOOFer) was completely butchering the Italian language in a hilariously self deprecating way at the dinner table (No problemo, Italiano!) or hacking through a metre of horse shit with the 4 other WWOOFers or pulling up weeds, looking up at the mountains and the surrounding farm and thinking, "This is it. I'm actually in Italy. I'm literally living my dream"

The farm is run by a couple named Stefano and Alice, a veterinarian and dog trainer respectively, who have only been farming for the past 10 years or so, but completely love what they do. In addition to being a farmer and vet, Stefano just happens to run a restaurant on the farm that is open 3 days of the week. He is no slouch in the kitchen, cranking out classic Bergamaschi dishes along side a young cook named Mauro, who is very keen to get out of Italy and do some travelling. Cheeses made. On the Farm by another WWOOFer called Gabri is sold both as part of an antipasto platter and in tiny wheels. He has been with Stefano and Alice for a number of months now and isn't really showing. Ny signs of wanting to move on. 

Gabri is from a small town just outside of Bergamo and is incredibly impassioned about cheese. I have found that this is a very common trait among Italians, and have noticed it with our hosts or people on the farm. There is a reverence for food in Italy that I have never seen before. Gabri has churned out some delicious cheeses - fresh goat cheeses (which he has to actually go out and milk the goats by hand for), aged cow milk cheese, fresh ricotta, a semi soft cheese called formagella which his does with both goat and cows milk. There is another one I am forgetting, but they are all delicious. I have taken a particular shining to the ones that are aged. They are decidedly not for the faint of heart, but have a distinctly nutty and kind of fruity flavour with a texture very similar to Parmigianno Regianno. I have helped him make various cheeses a number of times now, and it's amazing to watch and participate in every time. Every step is taken with diligent care, instruments washed prior to use, and executed as if he were performing a delicate task with a baby farm animal - a look of total concentration yet enjoyment visible on his face. And he is incredibly excited if anyone is interested in his process, getting you to jump in pretty much immediately to help out. If you ask he will even get you to help him milk the cows and goats. 

That all consuming fatigue is starting to swallow me, so we will continue with Gabri and the rest of the cast tomorrow.

ciao for now!!!

Mara

Mara and The Olives

We didn't really know what the expect from the second farm we were about to experience; all we knew was that she loved animals, was vegetarian and owned an olive grove.

Mara is kind of like an olive: she may leave a bitter taste in your mouth the first couple of encounters, but once you are exposed to her enough, it turns out she is sweet, incredible and nuanced in ways you didn't previously recognize. She is disorganized to the nth degree, forgetting her keys, or wallet or some bib or bob religiously. She drives an olive green Fiat, which I think was a completely intentional decision, my compatriots not so much. She has no time for bullshit, which sometimes comes across as being pretty abrasive, She drives like an Italian, which is to say like a maniac, especially if she's late for an olive pressing. She will nurture you and conjure up some homeopathic cure if you have a cough, a sniffle or a frog in your throat. She loves to laugh, hang out eating freshly roasted chestnuts around her hearth, chatting about politics or horses or her next big adventure.

And she loves olives. I have never seen someone so singularly dedicated to something in my life. Her day revolves around time in the field, and most appointments seem to be scheduled accordingly. If there are olives on the trees, Mara is there to make sure they find their way into a waiting olive-net. She is fiercely proud of her olives and her oil, telling you with a smile about the time she won 1st prize in an annual olive oil competition in Romagna, and may even produce the card with the judges tasting notes and scores...provided she can find it. The oil IS magnificent, the best I have tasted. It is emerald green, not army green, yellow or any other color. Tell Mara about the oil used back home and she is liable to scrunch up her face, stick out her tongue and "blech!" This year's oil, that we tried about an hour after it was pressed, tasted very grassy and slightly peppery in the finish. It may seem strange talking about olive oil as you would wine, but this stuff has subtleties and notes much like a good glass of wine. Ask Mara if you should use it for cooking and she may very well punch you in the face.

Lynn and I were fortunate enough to accompany Mara to the press one evening, while the other WWOOFers went home to gorge on meat (Mara is vegetarian, but allowed the others to cook meat that particular evening). I think this is when the real bond was forged between us - she saw that WWOOFing was not just about having a place to crash and food for free for Lynn and I; that we cared about the product enough that we passed up this evening of meaty madness and wanted to learn as much as we as we could about olive oil and the process. The olives are first washed and picked through (depending on how scrupulous the oil producer is) for things like snails and large sticks. They make their way up a little olive escalator (not the technical term) and from what I could gather have any errant leaves whisked off by machine and the pits removed. They are then milled into this gross, brown sludge by a giant corkscrew and finally passed through a centrifuge to separate oil from water. Total time for the amount of olives we bring in, which is typically 800kg or so: about 3hours.

When the press guy Marco crunched the numbers for the amount of litres yielded, Mara was ecstatic, clapping her hands and hugged us. 13%, the best anyone got that day. She'll be happy to get over 200L from her olives this year, since that's how much friends have already ordered from her. At 10 euros per litre, she'll make over 2000 euros. Taking into account the month or two spent pruning the trees, the cost of supplies to nourish the trees and pay for the press, and resources to pick the olives, she really doesn't get much back... But she does it anyway.

The Olives

In mid-October we were finally back volunteering on a farm. The one we went to was a small B&B / farm, run by one woman (Mara). The B&B was a former mill, where we all stayed, and every day we drove to her olive fields in another location. That's what we were there for - the olive harvest! There was us, Mara, and three other WWOOFers. Nicky and Janice, 50-some year olds from London, and Martin, a young cook from Germany.

Mara had over 200 olive trees, which we mostly got through in two weeks. It was fairly easy work, with the routine of laying down nets under the tree, then using plastic rakes to comb all the olives off the branches ideally to fall onto the nets. We'd make a couple of trips around the tree to get all the branches, including climbing up the middle (only a couple of metres high) and using longer and electronic rakes (dubbed "the rattlesnake"). When the trees with nets were done, the nets were gathered up and the olives put into crates, which we hauled into the garage every day. At lunch time, we'd gather around a rickety table and eat a picnic, usually a cold pasta or rice dish. Most days were sunny, and the view (especially from up a tree) was off beautiful rolling green hills, with the Adriatic Sea on the horizon.

The days that were rainy were our days off. The first of these was a lot of fun, since the other WWOOFers had cars and took us all to a few scenic towns. We also had a massive lunch together with lots of local specialty foods, including strozzapretti ("the priest strangler", pasta spitefully served to a greedy priest). Anyway, our harmony with the other WWOOFers sadly deteriorated a fair bit by the end of two weeks. They started to complain a lot about the work, muttering about Mara's decisions, and even often bringing up the lack of meat, though the farm was advertised as fervently vegetarian. In the end, the difference in us and them endeared us to Mara more ("you are the true WWOOFers!") and we parted very warmly.

We did also get to watch the olives get turned into oil at a local press, but I think Matt described that for another post.

Bergamo

Our final visit before we started up on farms again was Bergamo, home of the pastas scarpinocc and casonsei. Being a city in the north of Italy, polenta was also in plentiful supply. We arrived on time, but were greeted by our airbnb host late and with the news of our accommodations not actually being where they were stated on the website. After a 15 minute journey even further away from the city we arrived at our palace and immediately decided to find some dinner.

While searching for a place that served authentic cucina povera we meandered straight into an international (mostly) food market - German sausages, Greek gyros, Italian piadine, deliciously pillowy salty yet somewhat sweet pretzels, roast pork, amazing ginger snaps, beautiful handmade wooden products for the kitchen, PORCHETTA, artisanal sausages both dry and fresh with the farmer cutting off slices giving them to people to try, tiroli being boiled and fried right before your eyes and so much more. We opted for a plate of roast pork with roasted veg in drippings. As the trend seems to be in Italy, the veg stole the show. So deliciously sweet from the slow caramelization, yet salty, sweet and packed full of meaty from the (you guessed it) roasting pork.

Fast foward to the following day: we fuel up on cappuccino and pastry and beeline it to a little one way tram ,that takes you to the Upper City, called the Funicolare. (Who put the "fun" in Fun-i-co-lare?!). Once up there we leisurely strolled around the stone streets, taking in the old buildings and Italian-ness of it all. Upon entering a typical piazza we decided to check out a basilica, as Italy typically has at least one per city and they rarely disappoint. This one far exceeded any expectations I have had for any of these ornate structures. There was so much beautiful art all over the place. It was as if a medieval tattoo artist was let loose on a church and just told to go wild. Murals on the roof bled into each other, albeit it in a very cohesive manner, and statues dotted the church. It was a lot. It was too much to take in. Ocular overload in a magnificently glorious way.

Once our eyes had recovered and brain caught up processing what we had seen we decided on lunch. Much debate ensured, but we settled on a pretty nondescript looking cafe that served one of Bergamo's beloved pastas: CASONSEI. Now going into this I was determined to discern the difference between scarpinocc (Bergamo's other most well known pasta) and casonsei. From what I thought scarpinocc was supposed to resemble a shoe (scarpe), but as it panned out and we visited more and more pasticcherias, it appeared casonsei also bore a strong resemblance to a shoe. Working up the guts to try and butcher my way through an Italian sentence I asked a few people what the difference is. The response: the filling. They all said that the shape is interchangeable, but casonsei will always have a meat filling; scarpinocc, a cheese based one. Our casonsei was sensational. It was accompanied by a locally brewed stout, which again was magnificent. As it turns out, the craft beer game in Bergamo is exceptionally strong. That tiny city is churning out some delicious beers. Moretti and Peroni move over, there's a shitload of NKOTB.

The afternoon was spent trying to avoid sporadic bouts of rain. We sought shelter in what we thought was the Botanical Gardens, but turned out to be a children's playground. Either we can't read or the sign was so very wrong.

Skip to dinner and we find ourselves once again in Citta Alta at a restaurant with copper pots, swords and medieval kitsch hanging all about. We had what we would find to be very common dishes in the north of Italy  (and delicious at that): polenta and roasted meat, and polenta and braised meat.

Besides studying the local pastas, we also did some shopping in Bergamo. On a fair weather day, we  took the train to Lake Como, one of Italy's largest and most famous lakes. When we got to Como we  pretty much hopped right on a ferry, to enjoy the lake. The trip up the lake and back ended up taking  up most of the afternoon, but we did fit in a stop in the town of Bellaggio, and got a good look at George Clooney's multi-million dollar lakefront property. The last train of the day to Bergamo was then caught with enough time for Matt to first stop on the way to get a high five from a giant hand statue.

The remainder of our time in Bergamo was comprised of pretty much exploring Citta Bassa and returning to Citta Alta to eat. A delicious and beautiful city!!

Florence

The flight we had back from San Sebastián landed in Pisa, where we spent part of a day first walking around before taking a short train ride to Florence. Nothing stood out too much about Pisa, besides the swarm of tourists around the leaning tower. Matt expressed the desire to go up to one of the people doing the pose for a picture pretending to hold up the tower, and high five their extended hand. Fortunately we witnessed another guy do that.

We stayed in Florence for something like 9 days. Time went towards finding decent Tuscan restaurants (almost all catered to and were full of tourists), and some time was also eaten up recovering from a bad cold, on my part. But around the city, we walked around a lot, went in the duomo and up the attached tower, to a Leonardo da Vinci museum (re-creations of his machines), to the city food market, and around the leather market. One of our first days was on a pre-booked day tour, which took us on a bus to Siena, montecino, montepulciano, piensa, and the val d'orcia. Brown empty fields weren't quite what I expected when I earlier saw photos of the lush green valley online, but I guess we went at the wrong time of year. The tour also stopped at a winery specializing in brunello. Matt didn't get the full experience, being on antibiotics and unable to have any samples, but he did get a kick out of the 80 year old Italian owner who kissed and pinched cheeks of the women on the tour. Another day, we navigated confusing bus routes and took a trip to San Gimignano, the medieval New York City with several towers in its centre. Overall the sites in Tuscany were very picturesque but completely overrun by tourists. In fact we found the scenery of Molise around Giovanni's farm to be more stunning. We had some good Tuscan food though. (Bistecca alla fiorentina, ribollita, trippa alla fiorentina, polpette, etc)

Venice

After Florence we stayed in Venice for 3 days with an airbnb host who was a poet/author, who met up with us on our way in to help navigate down the narrow maze-like streets to his apartment (which smelled of fish, but was right on a canal). The highlight of our visit was Burano, a smaller (quieter) town accessible by water bus that was full of very pretty, brightly painted houses of all different colours. It's known for its lacemaking, and besides a picnic we spent most of our time looking through shops. While in Venice, Matt made a point of trying cicchetti, but our favourite culinary activity was to take bread, cheese and fruit, and eat them on an empty dock on the grand canal at sunset. Besides a fishing boat coming into dock (slamming into it) then leaving, it was very peaceful. We also made it into several Asian tourists' photos, who thought us picturesque as they were driven past on gondolas.

Bologna

 8 days back in bologna provided us with a bit of a reprieve from the packing-unpacking-packing routine we had been enduring every 3 days or so. Even though we had ended up in Bologna unexpectedly previously, we were overjoyed to return to our favourite Italian city and it's dense population of doxies and delicious eateries. While we were there Matt's parents visited and time was spent going to a greatest hits of restaurants we had previously discovered. So basically the week was just lots of delicious food. It was also a nice break, since our airbnb lodgings was an entire apartment to ourselves.

Bergamo

Our final visit before we started up on farms again was Bergamo, home of the pastas scarpinocc and casonsei. Being a city in the north of Italy, polenta was also in plentiful supply. We arrived on time, but were greeted by our airbnb host late and with the news of our accommodations not actually being where they were stated on the website. After a 15 minute journey even further away from the city we arrived at our palace and immediately decided to find some dinner. After much searching we settled on a cafe