Hey team, the past couple of weeks have been pretty busy around here so I haven’t had time to put together any more posts. Much to my chagrin, I’m only going to be staying on my current farm for a little more than week. I need to be out of Europe by mid August for visa reasons, and I’d like to try and see a little more of Italy before I leave. The good news though is, that I’m planning on holing up on the Amalfi Coast for a week just to write. Hopefully this will result in a coule more posts popping up while I’m there. Anyway, I wrote this a little while back, it’s not complete but I hope it paints a good picture of the farm for everyone:
Our property rests along 20 acres of hillside in the Taro Valley, 60 km south of Parma. The steep incline of the hill effectively divides our farm into two parts, an upper and a lower half. The house, workshop, and trailer that I live in all sit on the upper end of the hill, while the fields, bees, and greenhouse we’ve been working on lie below. The Taro River runs along the bottom edge of the hill and marks the edge of our land. Over time the river has left the soil of the lower fields rocky and dry, making it difficult to plant in. Right along the river sits our largest field, where we have strawberries, tomatoes, squash, and zucchini. Just across the way from this, lies another smaller field further away from the river and its rocky soil. In this field we grow potatoes, onions, beans and other vegetables which don’t require as much water. Above these fields lies a grove of saplings, planted last year, which will eventually bear apples, lemons, apricots and other fruits. Below these are our beehives, and just a little further down the path heading back towards the house lie the beginnings of the greenhouse.
The rest of the hill is divided into two large pastures, the one further to the right when looking downhill is shared by Elio, our donkey, and two horses, while the other field to the left has been let to grow out and is where I go to cut grass for the animals (Since I first wrote this it has been mowed and bailed into neat little boxes). A path between the pastures has been beaten down by the tractor and leads up the hill to the house and our third garden where we grow herbs, lettuce, tomatoes and other foods which we use regularly in the kitchen. Near the house is a workshop as well as a gravelled patio with tables and chairs that overlook the rest of the property. At the end of the patio there’s an old stone oven for baking bread and foccaccia. The view from the patio looks out across at the hill on the opposite side of the valley. To the west sit two other farms before the hill slopes down into Pieve di Campi, the one street town below, which has half a dozen houses, a church, a World War II monument, and the belltower that chimes out the time as we work throughout the day. To the east the hills are covered in forest and slope up higher into what becomes the Apennines. Over the hills, low mountains shadow the edge of the horizon and add a hazy blue to the sunbeaten yellows and verdant greens of the less distant hills. For the past couple nights, the full moon has risen centered perfectly over this panorama casting a haunting, yellow pallor through the thick fog over the mountains. On rainy days, we can lose all but the nearest hill in this fog, and it stretches up into the dark clouds that coat the sky. The mountains play a large role in the weather here. Being on the edge of the Apennines, the weather changes quickly and we always find ourselves on the cusp of a front. Storms come and go in the mid-afternoon, showing up on a whim, raging for twenty minutes, and then dispersing without leaving a trace in the sky, only the fresh droplets that coat every surface in sight. At the higher altitude the effects of the sun alsoseem stronger, and during the days it can get insufferably hot, while at night the thin air makes it very chilly and I find myself having to bundle up tightly to fall asleep in my trailer. This still hasn’t stopped me from sleeping in the nude, but I’ve gotten in the habit of sleeping with both my blankets and a sleeping bag.
My trailer sits down a little path removed from the patio and the rest of the living space. I have a bed, two closets, and a sink without running water. There’s a small stovetop which I use as a nightstand since I take all of my meals in teh house and can use the kitchen when I cook. My living space is small with barely room for two people to stand, but it’s comfortable and I spend little time there during the day, when the trailer cooks in the sun, and it’s more pleasant to be on the porch or in the hammock which sits on the hill above my trailer. At nights when it rains the splattering of the drops on my roof is deafening and somehow manages to both excite me and then gently lull me to sleep.
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