My final farm :(

I arrived at Il Cavicchio last week and am thrilled with my final pick for WWOOF’ing in Italy. It’s a small agriturismo, run by Federico by himself – a daunting task as there is much to do. He has 5 beautiful rooms, each with a private bath – serving breakfast for all his guests and dinner many nights per week. He is often full and does an amazing job keeping the property beautiful and well maintained. He has ample land filled with vegetables, herbs and fruit trees – making a large amount of the food served here from the land. The land must be mowed, weeded, planted, harvested and then of course, the food must be processed as it gets ripe and ready.

On the night that I arrived, Federico was fast at work producing jams that will be served for breakfast through the coming year – we worked on a fig jam and he showed me the apple, watermelon and lemon jam he had completed just before my arrival. The following morning, we started bright and early at 6:30am – it was a day to make pomodoro salsa – a thick tomato sauce made just with tomato pulp and a bit of salt. He said that we would be assisted by an 85 year old friend – in fact, the former owner of the farm - Tacchini. Federico started the process of buying the property 8 years ago, he explained that you must first develop the land and enter a contract before completing the sale – something that happened 3 years later.

The land had formerly been just farm land –used mostly for cattle, with vegetables, grapes for wine and fruit trees; where the house now stands was stables and a barn. The property has now been developed with a beautiful house; the agriturismo with the 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, a large dining room for guests, an office and a commercial kitchen – mostly used for processing of fruits and vegetables from the farm. The adjoining house lives atop the agriturismo, with a beautiful grand room that overlooks the field – used for cooking, eating and relaxing and of course a bathroom. The top floor has another 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms. In the basement are multiple rooms for storage and a rec room for Federico’s 4 kids - ranging from 12-30 years and 2 grandkids.  This area was greatly ravaged during World War II – 90% of the structures destroyed in skirmishes. A small portion of a wall remains on Federico’s property from some structure from that era. In the hills above the house, we spotted a large hole in the ground where a US bomb had landed - the property stands at a division where US soldiers fought the Germans for six months during the war. The former owner purchased the land with a group of friends hoping to develop and build there homes on it; but instead farmed the land for many years with grapes and cattle and as each friend passed on, he was the sole owner when his children convinced him to sell it as he was getting on in years.

When Federico started working the land, the former owner was only too happy to help – he is now a regular part of the landscape here. One morning, I noticed him out picking tomatoes on his own; getting things ready for our next sauce making exercise. He is a fascinating old man – taking me gently by the arm and showing me his secrets of sauce making and picking vegetables. He explained his theory that you should never plant cucumbers near the melons as the cukes will lack flavor.  On the day we made sauce, he showed me how to mix the tomatoes and how to work the machine that we used to separate the pulp from the seeds and skin – making a crude joke (in Italian of course) that somehow referred to the art being in getting it in the hole. When Federico explained, we all laughed as I called him a dirty old man. Making the sauce involved cooking the whole tomatoes (about 200 pounds worth) in water in  gigantic copper pot until they were softened and the skin had begun to fall off (about 2 hours). From there, we drained all of the water off and placed the pulp into a machine that resembles a sausage grinder – pushing the tomato pulp into the hole as the pulp fell to one area and the seeds and skin filtered off to another. When Tacchini was a child, they had one machine for this process and it was operated by hand – it was shared by the whole village. Today, Federico has his own electric version, only lending it to Tacchini for his production. It is amazing how the world has changed. As a young man, Tacchini was captured by the Germans during the war and held in an internment camp for 1 ½ years. He complains to Federico when he allows a crop to get overripe on the vine or fruit to fall to ground – in his day, food was a struggle and they used everything regardless of their preferences. Today, Federico has more fruit than he knows what to do with and sometimes just does not have the time or the need to harvest everything.