La cicoria d’autunno is not the most tender, Peppa explained to me as we gathered wild chicory today in our field up behind the donkey pen. “Quella di maggio e’ la migliore”,…
July 26th isn’t my birthday but farm friends will be calling in any case to wish me “auguri, Anna” on my onomastico (name day): July 26th is the Festa di Sant’Anna, the…
“Giugno, la falce in pugno” (“June, the scythe in the fist”), says an old Italian proverb, re-echoing the days of scything hay manually. Times have changed: at Peppe and Gentile’s farm two…
Passione takes hold of one early in Italy: passione for good food, for soccer, for the frescoes in your town church, for music, for one’s village festival – and even for flowers.…
Our beloved San Francesco di Assisi might be revered as the patron saint of animals in other countries but certainly not here in Italy: Sant’Antonio Abate, 4th-century hermit saint who lived in…
Onions and salt to predict the weather in the New Year? Over our years on the land, I’ve learned how farm women can take off il malocchio, how St. Anthony’s image in…
Our final tour together, the Rural Life Revisited tour, might have been the highlight of the Italy stay of this San Diego family. Chiarina won over little Van when she made us…
“A blood relative or not, he’s my relative. Pasquale’s everybody’s relative: he’s “il nonno di Ustica.” Nonno Pasquale’s blue eyes – the same color as Ustica’s sea – twinkle at friend Gaetano’s…
Italians relax under umbrellas on sandy Adriatic beaches in the hot summer months. Under blistering sun, Moroccans, Tunisians, Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerians, Senegalese, Bangladeshi – to name a few of the immigrant vendors…
Farmwoman Novella had a couple tempting bunches of wild asparagus at her vegetable box (to call it a “stand” would be an exaggeration) in the Assisi “piazzetta” the other morning. I stopped…