It was early afternoon when we disembarked the plain onto the sunny Italian tarmac. As we watched the last of the luggage being swept off of carousel 2 our facial expressions slowly changed from generally tired to generally concerned; the loading door was shut, the carousel came to a stop and our bags were obviously still in Munich.
We decided (somewhat naively we were later told) to trust the woman behind the lost luggage window when she told us that our bags would be delivered to our destination "tomorrow". Partially relieved to be walking around without our backpacks we made our way to the train station and a few hours later to Borgo Val Di Taro. As the train rolled further and further away from Bologna Centrale I wondered if I'd ever see my red backpack again…
"Excuse me, but by chance are you wwoofers?" A thick Check accent picked us out of the dwindling crowd. "I am Klara", said our new wwoof coordinator and quickly introduced us to our hosts Iris and Geanluca. I could tell we were all tired after a long day. We hopped into a big yellow van and were off to Casa Lanzarotti. It was just after 10 p.m.
Two days later to everyone's amazement a Hertz rental truck bumped it's way down the driveway. "Leah! Ryon! Your bags!!" we heard Iris shout. And there they were, along with a hand-full of other abandoned suitcases, being fished out of a mountain of bread rolls. "In the morning he delivers bread and in the afternoon he delivers lost luggage" Iris translated for us. The bread crates had toppled over as the truck came down the hill (or too fast around a curve, more likely) covering our bags with a dusting of the finest Italian flour. Diligently resourceful, Iris pulled some bread rolls out of the truck and fed them to the sheep.
Over the next two weeks we ate prosciutto with fresh melon, drank milk from the dairy up the road, minestrone soup with fresh everything, cured meats of all sorts, mushrooms from the woods just past the house, cheeses galore including parmagean from neighboring Parma, wine with every meal, espresso on demand, nettle pesto, plum tarts, cherries, quince jam, plum jam, cherry jam, dandelion chutney, fresh strawberries, wood fire baked bread, sausages from their pigs, a roast from their cows, salads from their garden, and the pastas, O! The pastas….
In between meals we earned our keep helping to set up the farm for another bountiful autumn harvest. We planted chard, peppers, squash, and of course basil. We thinned the carrot patch, weeded the peas, leeks and harvested a great many strawberries- making sure to check for quality along the way. Our fingers were stained red. Ryan's weed wippin' skills were promptly put to use as we helped to spruce up the place for the coming agritourismo guests. Each morning, before our daily fresh cereals-milk-homemade bread and jam festival, we walked up the hill to cut grass with a scythe for the 5 sheep and 1 old horse who spent their days in harmony overlooking a picture postcard valley.
After lunch you could find us fast asleep in our caravan (wine with lunch is not my general M.O.- but it could be...) or on warmer days down by the Taro River. To get to the river we'd walk through fields of grass and wild flowers down to the shady wooded road, through the one horse town of Gotra, passed the café'/ gelateria- I meant, into the café'/ gelateria and eventually down to the river.
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