FARM. Italian Farming 101.
I am unearthing writing and reflections from ten years ago when I had just graduated college. With great fortune, I ended up on a farm in Tuscany for the Fall season of 2014. I had sent out emails while there to my family and my few closest friends that Fall. I just found out these emails I shared had been forwarded and actually inspired someone to come on my first Bella Vita retreat a decade later to this same farm and experience that was so impactful for me ten years ago. In that light, I have found and am sharing my writing from that Fall, as both a reminder to myself and perhaps something of use to others. These posts are unedited - double spacing after periods and all.
Written: September 03, 2014 / Part 1 of working on an Italian Farm
Spannocchia 1101
I may have just graduated, but that doesn’t mean I need to stop taking classes. I’m just finding them in my own way. This Fall I’m taking Spannocchia 1101, the capstone class to my Nutritional Sciences degree at Cornell. Yes, I did (mostly) love my four years at Cornell, but my major left me thirsting for more. I felt unsatiated and undernourished in knowledge, which, as a nutritional sciences major, is ironic. Where does food come from? How is it produced? When? Are there different varieties? What does a cucumber taste like fresh from the vine? Will I feel differently if I eat these foods directly from the ground? Will my taste buds and olfactory senses be adept enough to tell the difference? I wanted to know these things, smell these things and taste these things. Sure, I can rattle off different stages of the Krebs Cycle and tell you which vitamins are water soluble. For me, I guess I just don’t see the pragmatic application. How are we connected with food?
For my “course,” there is no required reading for the class, though I currently have five books stacked around me: Italian Course Book for language, A Pocket Guide to Plants and Gardening for farming, Slow Food Nation for intellectual fodder, Blue Guide Italy Food Companion to help familiarize me, and The Dirty Life, my pleasure read. Critical thinking is required, including figuring out how to work strange and large locks on paneled wooden doors and how to read a train schedule. Common sense is also necessary for not getting pick pocketed. The ability to think my feet will also be highly developed, deciding in an instant which direction to walk in as to not attract attention to myself as a blonde tourist with two backpacks hanging off of me. And can’t forget the most important part: engaged and applied learning, 30 hours a week, in the field touching, growing and harvesting food. Sure, I may have graduated, but I’m not done learning. In fact, I think this class is going to be the most valuable of all my classes that I have ever taken. Though there are no formal tests, I will be tested. Though there is no formal homework, I will be doing extra reading for my own supplement. Though there is no group project, I will be working with others to learn the language and about organic farming. Though there is no final exam, I am absolute in my belief that I will remember more from these next three months than I retained from any class at school cramming in the library.
Just in my first day, I went from analyzing my US Airways plane meal, complete with tomatoes with no taste, but certainly treated with ethylene (even though tomatoes are in season) and iceberg lettuce that looked pallor, all caged in a plastic container, to then enjoying a glass of regional Terre blanco vino and a salad with crisp, dark green leaves topped with thinly sliced chicken, succulent peaches and drizzled in olive oil in Orvieto, Umbria. In between, wrapped up and entranced in Kristin Kimball’s captivating memoir of her life on a start up farm (The Dirty Life) and Carlo Petrini’s pontifications about the problems with the modern day food industry (Slow Food Nation). I have learned so much, absorbed so much, even while jet lagged and traveling. Despite my confused replies of “Merci” and using scusi much too often, I am learning, growing, cultivating my passion for food - the common denominator that connects and humbles us all.
Italian Word of the Day: domani (tomorrow)
Quote of the Day: “Food is an expression of love - love of life, and love for the people around him - from seed to table.” Kristin Kimball, page 35 of The Dirty Life
Fact of the day: It costs 2 euro per stamp to the US. Ridiculous!
Best food moment of the day: the first bite of that flavorful, sweet peach at dinner
