Munich Surprise!

Saying goodbye to Italy and gelato, we flew to our connecting flight in Munich.

Little did I know that Theo is excellent at sniffing out deals and before I knew it, we were staying in Munich for the night since they overbooked our return flight.

It was a whirlwind of a trip but also exciting to get to visit a whole new city and country than we were counting on.

Pigs are Delicious

As an educational/ eco-tourism farm, Spannochia focuses on what they call their 'Noah's Ark' project. They raise Cinta Senese pigs which are an ancient Tuscan breed in an effort to keep them from dying out. They're characterized by their white band across their backs, they long snouts, floppy ears and one curl in their tails. They're also delicious.

We had a pork tasting class which started with talking about the live pigs and moved on to curing their meat. Spannochia does all the cutting and curing themselves and it was pretty cool to see all the steps in the process. These are legs of proscuitto that have beneficial mold growing on them.

We tried a number of different cured meats including lardo (salted lard), proscuitto, capicola, pancetta and a few others which I didn't write down (but admittedly should have).

We even had a boar's head watching the proceedings and ensuring we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Wine Part 2

The second day we worked with the wine was equally exciting (mostly because it was pouring rain outside and we got to be dry for the morning). Every evening before dinner we had wine time at 7pm and the vino kept flowing throughout the night. Needless to say, we had to occasionally bottle more.

We got to use the nifty bottling machine to fill the bottles with red wine.

Ever wonder how corks get into the bottle? At Spannochia they had this mechanism that as you pulled down on the lever, it compressed the cork and forced it into the next of the bottle where it expanded again.

We filled 57 bottles of red wine.

And of course, we got to try some.

A Weekend in Florence

We spent a weekend in Florence towards the beginning of the trip and then returned for our last day in Italy before flying out. We went to the Duomo and Theo had the bright idea of climbing the dome. It was beautiful inside it once we got up there- a huge mural that covered the whole structure that was right above the walkway. I'm afraid of heights so I didn't have the best time.

Theo climbed the last bit by himself while I awkwardly waited in the tiny hall. He got some spectacular pictures of the city.

We walked all over the city and ended up by the Ponte Vecchio, an incredibly old bridge with an incredibly good gelato shop next to it.

When we came back at the end of the trip the weather was much nicer and Theo, Emily and I took a bus to Fiesole. It is the 'old' Florence, or the Etruscan settlement before the city grew and moved down to the valley.

We enjoyed the view and ate a delicious picnic of pecorino cheese, olives, wild boar salami, fresh bread, oranges and chocolate. Life doesn't really get much better.

Wine Part 1

Theo and I were stacking wood one day (like many days) when Angelo walked by and said he wanted help in the cantina. Little did we know it was going to be the coolest thing ever.

We started by aerating the wine to release the carbon dioxide that had built up during fermentation. There were lots of buckets and tubes and pumps involved but we eventually managed to transfer the wine from its giant tank that it had been sitting in.

Next, I climbed up on one of the scariest ladders in existence and used a hose to spray all the sediment out of the tank.

It was pretty wet, nasty work but also incredibly awesome.

We felt really, really lucky to get to be a part of all this!

Montalcino

Since there wasn't a ton of work to do at the farm, we spent an afternoon visiting the beautiful hilltop town of Montalcino.

Besides their epic view, epic fort and epic churches, they make some pretty serious wine. We went to an enoteca, or wine bar, and drank some brunellos and super tuscans. They're both excellent wines and it was quite the picturesque setting for a sunny, spring afternoon.

Wood Stacking

The whole point of our Tuscan February get-away was that there wasn't much to do on our farm that time of year. What we didn't know is that there's not much to do on most farms that time of year and going all the way to Italy doesn't necessarily solve that problem. We had a few great days working with the wine and in the vineyards but the bulk of the work was stacking wood. I can't (and don't want to) count the hours per week that we did this but as an illustrator I really really hurt my shoulder from overuse.

The Italians have a very strange way of managing their wood supply. They cut it down in their forests, chop it into lengths a bit more than a meter and then load it onto their tractor. They drive it back to the farm and dump it in huge piles which they leave uncovered and sitting in the mud so it all begins to rot. This said, they need this wood for their furnaces which supply all the heat and hot water for everybody living and staying on the farm.

They have us neatly stack the wood into long rows that are slightly raised. No tarps needed, apparently, despite the drenching rain all winter.

They mostly burn chestnut and mixed in with all this is corbezzolo. This wood is quite valuable as fuel for pizza ovens so we separate it out. First, we make massive piles of it. Then, we take wood from those piles and throw it over a wall.

Then, I imagine, the next round of volunteers (thankfully not us) stack it into yet another pile. Amidst all this, if it's too small they sell it, so we make a pile of that. Then we move that pile into a different pile in a different place.

Needless to say, when I have my own farm someday, I might improve upon this system.

Roman Road Are Better Than Ours

We spent a morning clearing trails down to an abandoned monastery. Betsy found what she was sure was an Etruscan wall and wanted very much to restore it with the rock she's holding.

We wanted to make the trail, which was a bit undefined in places, easy to see. Luckily there were pieces of marble all over so we made beautiful curbs for hikers to follow.

As we got to the bottom of the hill, however, we realized the Romans did it better. When the Pope was in Avignon, pilgrims from Rome headed north through Siena and the road they built was still a commonly used trail.

They also built this beautiful bridge over a small river.

Once we reached it, the monastery was beautiful and still fairly intact. Fun fact? Eating olive oil fell out of fashion for a while and the only reason the tradition remained at all was that nuns and monks kept pressing it to use for anointments.

The Creatures of Tuscany

Little did we know as we set out for a walk one day, that the Tuscan hills are covered in animals. We found two chingiale (wild boars):

Some deer/lama/whatevers:

A porcupine:

And a bird/duck/something:

I'm sure they were pretty vicious if provoked, so we hurried along as quick as possible.

Italian Cooking!

We had a cooking class with some of the cooks who work at Spannochia. It was, as you can see, a serious operation.

It was pretty fun to see how all the meals that we were eating were put together. When we had first come to Maggie's Farm in October, Christina (who was on this trip to Italy with us), had given us a two day cooking class so that we were all up to speed. Every rule that she told us about putting dry meat into a pan with hot oil, or not over crowding what we were cooking was thrown out the window.

We made stuffed chicken breasts, braised leeks, gnocchi and salami dolce. The salami dolce is a cute take on salami: they melt chocolate and crunch up cookies before mixing them together and forming it into a log. When you cut into it it looks just like a meat salami. Very delicious.

We had a lot of fun making gnocchi even though our pieces were constantly too big or too small.

It was really fun to spend a day in the kitchen and then eat all our wonderful food!

Vineyards

Our first day of work in Italy, we woke up, stumbled towards the coffee and were relieved to not have to wear the layers and layers of clothing that New England demanded. The weather was beautiful and the grass was green. We assembled to get our assignments for the day and enjoyed watching the Italian farmers argue over where we were needed (or, rather, who got stuck with the Americans). Theo, Betsy and myself were chosen to work in the vineyards, so you can imagine our surprise when Angelo led us over to a woodpile and started setting sheets of paper on fire. Through much pointing, we understood that we were supposed to add kindling and then bigger logs until we had a smoking, flaming pile of coals. He then left (which we soon got used to as all the Italians seemed to wander away for no real reason and for varying lengths of time) and we stood around and wondered what we were supposed to do.

It turned out that we were charring the ends of posts for trellises for the grapes. Burned wood lasts longer and resists rot, so once Angelo sawed a point on a pole, we put it in the fire long enough to turn it black. With a pile of smoking, pointed logs and a tower in the background, it felt a lot like we were about to go into a medieval battle.

We then headed down the hill to the vineyard, which was about as picturesque and beautiful as you can imagine. When we got there in the morning it was covered in fog with the Tuscan hills in the background. We had a great time fixing the trellises and, through broken English and Italian, learning about grapes.

Sheep Farm Visit!

We had a number of food classes while in Italy and one of them was a visit to a farm where they make cheese from sheep's milk. It was really neat to eat fresh sheep's cheese since it's so heavily regulated in the US that you can't buy unpasteurized cheese aged less that 60 days. And, they had the cutest lambs!

We had quite the spread of cheeses and it was absolutely delicious.

They also had a white board with this drawn on it:

Translation? Apparently, this sheep is thinking that as long as there is grass, there's hope. He's, of course, lucky to be an Italian sheep. Our sheep have two feet of snow between them and grass.

Siena

The farm is near the town of Siena, which is about an hour south of Florence. It never grew as large as Florence and retains a lot of its medieval charm. We spent a few lovely afternoons walking around the city. Perhaps what's most important is that they sell deep fried rice balls. Delicious.

Spannochia

Well, we just got back from Italy last night. I'm pretty tired and we're all adjusting to life back at the farm school which means a lack of tuscan dinners every night and a plethora of creature comforts like internet and cell phones. We had a pretty good trip (details of which I'll post in the coming days). It was fun to spend so much time in Italy, although we weren't totally enamored of the farm. They raise a lot of pigs for cured meat (delicious!) and they were treated really well. The beef cows, donkeys and horses didn't have such a great life. They hay was a bit questionable and their living conditions weren't great.

We had some days of doing really neat work in the vineyards and making wine but most days were spent simply stacking wood. On the one hand this was fine, but on the other I'm not sure we totally understood before going that the curriculum wasn't going to be as fully fleshed out as we were used to.

All told, however, I'm really glad I went. We were living in a freaking castle (with the coolest tower ever) and there were stunning views of the countryside from every angle.