Mange, Mange, Mange!

It's hard to believe that we have already been at out first farm for over a week now!  We have so much to tell and not much time to do so so bare with us.

The farm: The farm, Il Sentiero Del Riccio, meaning the Way of the Hedgehog, is located outside Salerno about thirty miles.  Named so because, Gianpaulo, the owner of the farm, discovered many hedgehogs on the farm many years ago. Unfortunately, hedgehogs are hybernating at this time so we have yet to see any.  The farm sits at the bottom of the beautiful, ever so cold looking, Alburni Mountains in a village called Zupino.  Main production off the farm includes wine, olive oil and honey.  All of which are harvested, made and bottled on the farm.  We are happy to annouce that we get an endless bounty of all of the above.

The farm is owned by Gianpaulo, who is considered the brains of the operation, and mostly worked by a man named Salvatore.  There is also a family that has lived on the farm for over fiftty years who cooks us lunch every day.  The family includes: Geussapinna, her mother and father and two neices.  Geussapinna stands about four foot three inches, speaks zero English (along with the rest of her family and Salvatore), is very fiesty and likes to tell Maggie that she is going to cut her head off (in a lovingly sort of way...we hope!).  Haha.  Communication is interesting, fun, involves a lot of hand gestures,  and our 6 euro pocket dictionary that goes every where with us! 

Every morning Salvatore (or his wife, or his mother) picks us up in Sicignano (where we live...we'll get to that later) around nine thirty and takes us to the farm, which is about two miles away.  Once we get the farm the work begins!  So far we have shoveled manure throughout 2 to 3 acres of vineyard, cut firewood from pruned trees with machetes (quite interesting), and washed and reorganized the wine cellar.  This next week Gianpaulo is suppossed to get in a order of over 1000 white grape plants that we will be planting!  They will be mature and ready to produce wine in two to three years so we are already planning our trip to come back to help bottle and drink the first batch. 

Sicignano:  Our house in located in a tiny mountain village called Sicignano which sits up higher than Zuppeno at the base of the Alburni Mountains.  It is beautiful and incidentally located about twenty yards away from a giant castle.  It's pretty awesome and very telling of our first five days at the house during which we had no hot water, only one small wall heater and a fire place for heat.  It was pretty cold considering temperatures are falling below zero at night, and we were pretty stinky as we didn't have a proper shower for five days.  We felt pretty old school heating up water on the stove to take a sponge bath, but now we have running hot water and an extra propane heater so life is good!

Everyone is so friendly in Zuppeno and Sicignano and everyone seems to know about our every move.  For example, our first day there we went to the small market across the street from our farm and bought some eggs, butter, milk, yogurt...we put our groceries in the lab while we finished work for the day.  When we came back at the end of the day we walked into the lab to find one of the dogs had eaten all our eggs, a whole brick of butter, and some chocolate candies.  The next day we went back to the market and everyone knew about the dogs eating our groceries and had a good laugh about it.  We have met quite a few people around town and surrounding farms and everyone has been very welcoming.  We get many offers for cafe' and chocolate and even when we say no thank you they bring it out anyway.  Wherever we eat, people want to feed us until we are about to pop.  Food keeps appearing on the table and when you think there wont be any more someone brings out another dish and meals are always finished off with coffee.  Mange, mange, mange...or eat, eat, eat was probably one of the first words that we learned!

We are pretty sure we have found the king of all pizzerias in Sicignano and it's no coincideince that the owners name is Luigi.  Luigi's pizzeria is everything you would dream of in a pizzeria.  Inside you are greeted be wood ceilings, arched stone pilars, a big brick oven and the smell of dough being tossed in the air.  Ah alas, Luigi is already married...darn!  Although, conveniently his pizzeria is less than a two minute walk down the hill from our castle.  Ah, sweet bliss.

Our plans for the future are some what up in the air...we will probably be here through the week and are thinking we might head south to Sicily.  More south equals more warmth.  Any suggestions and or recommendations on where to go are welcome.  We will try to post more soon, although it's difficult in Sicignano because there is no internet.  Pictures hopefully to come soon as well...


Hope you are all doing well and are keeping warm...we hear you are getting lots of snow!

Ciao ciao!