A WWOOFing day at Pulicaro

Here's how a typical wwoofing day at Pulicaro unfolds:

• 6:30AM: Simple breakfast of toast, jams, yogurt, and cereal with hosts Marco and Chiara in their kitchen where the radio plays LOUDLY and it's EARLY (I always thought it was stuck on the max volume, but, as it turns out, it's just the really passionate Italian newscaster detailing the morning weather and traffic like it's the World Cup finale, every morning). Nonetheless, with that and an espresso, and Marco and Chiara's ever cheerfulness, we're ready to go.

• 7 - 11:30AM: I'd say about 80% work and the rest idle time that we use to weed or pass the soccer ball. The idle time stems from a busy farmer (or any employer) taking a wwoofer (or intern) for two weeks. Certain tasks are completed with common sense and a bit of that university knowledge (farm animals enjoy food and water each day!), but many projects require Q&A sessions with said busy, though patient and didactic in our case, farmer. The work consists of turning the soil, preparing drip irrigation, planting some vegetables, and harvesting other vegetables under a sun that's already too strong at 9AM. It's hot, sweaty, physically demanding. It's a farm. For city folk like me, it's a free, long, edible morning session at the gym, plus a tan. Not bad.

• 11:30 - 1:30PM: Clean up the work area and help with miscellaneous tasks like carrying the harvest to the house and playing with the dogs. Wash up, daily nap vs. 2nd espresso decision, and then help with lunch.

Naps usually win.
• 1:30 - 2:30PM: Lunch under the mulberry tree with Marco, Chiara, and Chiara's parents. On a 90 degree day I'd usually say no thanks to a bowl of warm pasta for lunch. But I'm usually not in Italy, and usually not offered pasta fresca from an Italian, and never exercising for extended hours in the morning, so the bowl of pasta is perfect. Sometimes served with a side of courgette (zucchini), sometimes with tomatoes and mozzarella, and always peppered by more passionate Italian conversations ranging from the scum of Berlusconi to, in all seriousness, how long to cook the pasta.

• 2:30 - 5:00PM: The heat forces us all indoors. If someone goes to work in the kitchen (prepare pasta and gnocchi, butcher wild boar), we'll happily help. If not, we'll spend time reading or working on our netbooks to answer emails, update blog posts and pictures, research the next leg of the trip, check headlines. I thought, after all this time away on farms, that I would not want to spend too much time on the internet. But Chiara, a farmer with an iPhone, connected to both her land and the world, tells me that it's all good, that I don't have a problem when I'm busy looking up where to eat in Rome or refreshing espn.com to see where Lebron landed.

• 5:00 - 7:30PM: Feed and water the 5 goats, 50ish rabbits, 100ish ducks and turkeys and geese, and 250ish chickens. Just thinking about what to write here makes me tired. If you're thinking about starting an animal farm (because who isn't thinking about starting an animal farm), then here is my advice: start with rabbits as they're friendly, clean, quiet, quite reproductive, delicious, and slowly jumping onto menus in America; raise some cute ducklings and, when you're girlfriend isn't looking, rub their bellies and livers in an excited, mad scientist manner; keep a dozen hens and two roosters (breeding purposes) for the sole purpose of eating their eggs; think long and hard as a small-scale farmer if you'd like to not vacation, even for a weekend, as the animals are a 365 day responsibility. So, unless you're like Marco, whose love of animals transcends a job title and results in well raised livestock, proceed with caution.

Larissa giving water to the chickens

• 7:30 - 9PM: Shower, play soccer, read, help with dinner.

• 9:00 - 10:30PM: Dinner. Same as lunch, throw in some goose or chicken, and end with Gigi's (Chiara's father) homemade gelato. He, along with his wife, owned the oldest gelato shop in Milan -- "Orsi" ...He'll use apricots and strawberries from the garden, and it's amazing.
  

• 10:30 - 6:30AM: Sleep.