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"The
Good Ole Days" My
husband Pino and I moved to the land here in Umbria in 1975, with
very little money but alot of determination and will. We wanted to
work the land, experience rural Umbria. We rented an old stone farrmhouse
with a terracotta roof on 8 acres of land behind Mt. Subasio which
backdrops Assisi (what views!).The road up to the house through our woods was impassable, after years of abandon. We parked our old Gilera 150 motorcyle down at the bottom of the hill and walked up with the groceries on our shoulders. The house had no electricity (which we put in after a month), no indoor bathroom and no running hot water. No central heating - just a huge fireplace (big enough to sit in- benches built into the niches) in the kitchen. A wood-burning stove supplemented the kitchen heat - and we cooked on it. No heat in the bedrooms so bedwarmers took the icy chill off the sheets in the winter. Our first animal was a pregnant sheep, my birthday present from Pino. She was old, lame, arthritic... and cheap. From our farm neighbor, Peppe, came the first chicken - as thanks for helping him prune his vineyard (which is how we learned to prune ours). Marino gave us a pregnant rabbit (that led to alot of rabbits!) as thanks for helping him prune his olive grove (...and so we learnt to prune ours). Each season had its tasks. Every spring, we sheared our sheep and I washed the wool down in the creek with my farm women neighbors. After the wool was carded in Assisi, a neighbor made our quilts, mattresses and pillows. Every January, the butcher came and one of the pigs was turned into prosciutto, capocollo, sausages, salami, lard (see Zsa zsa's story). My neighbors made their soap from the lard... Pino plowed and planted all our land, chopped the firewood, milked the goats and sheep to make the cheeses. Feeding and caring for them - and the fowl, rabbits, pigs - was one of my jobs, along with the splitting of firewood, making of the pasta and putting up what came out of the vegetable garden... We both had outside jobs to supplement our lack of income from the land. Pino went to work with the stonemasons - and is now considered the best in Assisi in the restoration of rural architecture - has a team of 14 who work with him (Happy ending: we're restoring the farmhouse - Pino's skills are evident). I started teaching English... Our businesses grew, 3 children came along... and the animals gradually "disappeared". Only regret: too tired at night in those days to keep a diary as "Under the Umbrian Moon" would have been a good read! Other Memoirs of Rural Life articles. |
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