on the bright side

 These are some of the things we like about our first Italian wwoof farm
This time the animals are just dogs, cats, horses and chickens.  The dogs are nice, but dirty (you can actually see the ticks crawling around between the matted burrs).  The real winners are the cats – two adorable barn kittens and one young, hyper-friendly cat named Nina.  She is my favorite cat, after Emo.


I think the horses are actually used for plowing, sometimes.  Unexpectedly, I got to take a brief ride.  I am comically bad at getting on a horse, and this was my first time on without a saddle.  It was amusing.  The guy leading the horse is the grandfather/father who has been extremely nice to us and who talks to us in Italian.  Among ourselves, we call him Tio Pollo because twice he gave us half of a roast chicken, randomly and outside of mealtime.

We also picked grapes with him and pressed them for a slightly fermented juice they use for making preserves, and sometimes for drinking.  Yum.

This is a special grape grower’s vehicle made my Lamborghini.  We filled up the whole red container with grapes in about an hour.  Grapes grow so plentifully that I almost felt like I was taking advantage of the plants.

We’ve learned lots about food crops, just by harvesting them.  For example, neither of us had considered what kind of plant black beans come from, but then we got to shell them.  I also didn’t realize there are so many types of eggplant – they have grown 8 types at various times.  We’ve also harvested 4 kinds of peppers and Jack ate one and learned that it is, in fact, very hot.
<- Jack and the beanstalks
When we’ve had proper meals (see previous post) most of them have been delicious.  A straightforward vegetable stew becomes delicious when you throw in about 10 different types of organic veggies.  I normally hate red peppers, but I learned that that’s just red bell peppers and that other peppers which are red (and cooked) are okay.  We also have a nice room, in a beautiful area.  Today (Sunday) we walked around for about five hours, which seems to be our thing do :)
Below: our room which is the window on the upper right of the house.  That part of the house is 300 years old.


Above: Trisobbio castle, which we walked to our first Sunday, and the moon over the grape vines.