Farmer Mario, who tends one of our fields, is outside with the engine of his tractor rumbling.  This winter the field was left fallow, so that by May, it’s a huge tangle of shoulder high wildflowers, grasses, and let’s face it, weeds.  It’s time to cut. 

Our farmer friend is accompanied by 2 of his young sons, who unlike other teenagers who zip around on Vespas, seem to love driving agricultural machines.  They take turns cutting, and warning each other of big rocks looming beneath the vegetation. The cut grasses are left to dry “for as long as it takes” says Mario, as they all drive away with a wave.

After however long it takes passes, another piece of equipment shows up which gathers the dried grasses in long rows, ready for the baling machine, which arrives a few days later. The baling machine comes with a couple of other people I have never met, because it usually breaks down once or twice and they know how to fix it, so another day passes before this phase is finally done.  In the meantime, Emanuele watches from the window, and bets me a dinner for guessing the number of bales that will be made.  I come closest to the 6, and look forward to choosing an expensive restaurant.  

All the while, Mario is thinking differently. He’s got 40 cows and 100 sheep to feed, along with a brood of 8 kids.  These 6 hay bales will come in handy.

Mario treats us a bit like curious bystanders, assuming we know nothing about farming, which is essentially true.  We grow useless things like roses and geraniums. We have handed this field over to a farmer because we are not farmers, and have no equipment that breaks down or not. We shook hands, and no money is exchanged. Mario rarely phones before coming – then is surprised and a little offended if he finds us gone and the gate locked, as if we have purposely shut him out.  I guess on a real farm, someone is always home.

Mario does not feel the need to communicate with us about what he is doing with this field – one year he plants hay, the next wheat.  When I ask him why he replies “Do you eat the same thing every day? No? Well, the earth is the same way.”   But that was before the cheese. 

“Signora, Signora!” I hear a voice shouting outside.  I open the front door to find Mario smiling shyly, and clutching a plastic bag.  “Una cosa per voi” – something for you, he says.   I hesitate – the last time he gave us a gift it was a freshly butchered goat – and am relieved to find that inside the bag is a huge caciocavallo cheese.  It must weigh 15 lbs.  “Bellissimo”  I say, quite pleased, while realizing that now we will be eating the same thing every day. 

I stick my head into the bag with the cheese and inhale deeply – it smells like warm milk, overripe fruit, and sweaty feet.  I suppress a gag, and quickly come up for air.  I politely try to conjure up a pleased expression on my face, as Mario beams.  It’s better than goat, I remind myself. 

Caciocavallo cheese in Modica, Sicily is made from cow’s milk, and the cows graze on rough pastures of spontaneous forage, otherwise known as weeds. It is one of Sicily’s oldest cheeses, and historical records note that it was exempt from tax back in the late 1400’s during the reign of Ferdinand II,  who apparently had a benevolent moment in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition.  It is traditionally worked with wooden utensils, before being shaped in a rectangular wooden mold stamped with the producer’s name, and finally brined in salt water.  It can be eaten fresh or aged for up to a year. The term caciocavallo – cheese on horseback – comes from the practice of tying a rope around the middle of 2 rectangular cheeses, then hanging them over a beam to age – reminiscent of being astride a horse. 

The appearance of Mario’s  caciocavallo  is definitely handmade, with the “i” from his name barely visible, so it looks like “Mar o.”  Our first taste of “Mar o’s” caciocavallo is a bit disappointing, as we find it overly salty.  We plot about offloading a hunk to various people – Emanuele’s sister, a neighbor, my hairdresser.  We wonder if we keep it in a cool place to age, it will lose some of its saltiness, but don’t relish the idea of sharing a closet with it.  We cut the cheese in half and find the center to be pale and soft, with  a pleasantly grassy aroma – the sweaty sock syndrome seems to have disappeared – and a good nutty taste. By now it seems a lot less salty, or maybe that’s because we’ve eaten so much of it we can’t tell any more.  In any case, weeds for cheese is not a bad deal. 

If you’d like to see firsthand what’s happening on our non-farm, book a 1-day tour in Sicily, or explore the area in depth on our Walking & Cooking in Eastern Sicily tour. 

The hay has just been cut in the fields surrounding my house in Sicily, and lies in straw-colored piles drying in the sun.  At first glance, it looks like the colorful wildflower season is done.  But if you look closely at the edges of the fields and rocky sections too rough to plow, you’ll find wildflowers still reign.  A short walk through my backyard on the first day of May revealed a great variety of wildflowers to pick and choose from in making a  wildflower bouquet. 

Tips on Making a Wildflower Bouquet

• Pick a variety of shapes and colors.
• Add some white flowers – this brings light into the bouquet.
• Poppies are pretty, but they wilt almost immediately, so I usually just enjoy these in the fields.
• Some wildflowers open with the sunlight and close in the dark.  Put your vase of wildflowers in a sunny spot in the house so that the flowers will be open during the day.
• Pick something feathery to fill out the edges of the bouquet.  Arrange the bouquet with some of the shortest flowers near the base.
• Tie the bouquet together with a twist tie, trim off any foliage below the water line, and cut the bottom stems the same length before placing in the vase.
• Since many wildflowers are short, they look best in a small vase with a narrow neck.
• Change the water in the vase daily and your bouquet will last longer.  

Here is a wildflower bouquet I picked this morning during a short walk in my backyard in Sicily.

Daisies, gladiola, tassel hyacinth, love in a mist (nigella), wild onion & carrot, mallow, fumitory, thistle, salsify.

Dawn in the garden with a huge moon hanging in the sky, wet grass cool under my feet. I feel like I’m the only person awake in the world. The day, like the garden, feels full of promise. In other words, it’s before I check my e-mail. 

A soft night rain has been kind to the garden, which is drinking in the wetness, grateful for this last bit of refreshment before the hot summer sets in.  A few perfect roses are in bloom, with hundreds of buds awaiting their moment to burst open, while the lavender and orange thyme are giddy with blossoms. 

Join me on a little tour of my garden in Sicily.  Put on your flip-flops and let your toes get wet in the grass.  Listen to the bees buzzing in the sage blossoms, and the birds chirping in the almond tree.  Actually they are making quite a racket, it’s a serious bird argument and I’d wish they’d keep it down.  They are wrecking this peaceful mood.

Look around. An apricot is ripening. Fat figs sit on a branch soaking up the sun’s first rays, carob pods dangle in the breeze, poppies nod sleepily in the morning sun, and even the palm tree is in flower. Little pears and plums are taking shape.  The succulents are pleasantly plump.  Notice the teeny tiny flowers on the olive tree, the capers stretching out their first dark leaves, the geraniums bursting from their pots.  Prick your finger on an artichoke. Ignore the weeds.

Pick a sprig of mint, a twig of rosemary and a laurel leaf and crush them in your hand, releasing a spicy perfume good enough to bottle.  Step on the creeping thyme as you walk beneath the arbor, and really take time to smell those roses.  Brush against the lemon verbena, sharp and pure against the scent of jasmine as thick and sweet as honey.  Pick a lemon wet with dew and breathe in the intoxicating fragrance of zagare – citrus blossoms that are the essence of Sicily in April.  Ouch, don’t touch the nettles.

I drink a cappuccino sitting on the stoop. I want this garden to be my entire day, but have yet to win the lottery.  Slowly,  I turn my back on the garden, on the real world, and head to the virtual world of my computer. See you there.

Emanuele staggers into the kitchen, pouring sweat.

“You’ll never have to worry that I’ll murder you and hide your body in a pit in the garden” he gasps, as he swigs down a liter of water.  Rather than a strange Sicilian declaration of love, this is a gardener’s realization that between wanting and having a garden there is a whole lot of backache.

After various attempts at planting things that dry up within minutes under the intense Sicilian sun, we have settled on a drought-resistant creeping rosemary to be planted in a neglected section of the garden.  We buy a dozen plants, and the next morning, I get up early to dig holes.  It is mid-April, but the earth is already baked dry. It looks like something from a drought-stricken desert, but with more rocks. 

My first energetic lunge with the hoe knocks me off balance with the impact, and leaves a small dent in the earth and a much larger one on my self-image as a strong competent woman.  Another whack with a hoe hits a rock, and I spend 10 minutes wrestling the thing out.  By the time I have managed to dig one hole, I am breathing heavily and cursing, and by the third one, I’ve collected a bushel of rocks and crabgrass and am ready to break for lunch. 

What ever possessed us to buy 12 of these damn things?  3 days of digging later, I have a crippling backache and barely enough strength to open the bottle of Ibuprofen.  But the rosemary plants are in and watered. Fingers crossed that they grow!

I hobble over to the part of the garden that is thriving, and gain strength as I admire the lavender in bloom and the hedge of thyme in a spectacular moment of blooming perfection.  A cat joins me to relax amongst the thyme, taking all our work for granted. A garden is not made overnight, I remind myself – we made this beautiful space from a plot of weeds. Then I limp back to the kitchen for a glass of wine.

I am asleep in a tiny farmhouse on the top of hill in the middle of postcard-perfect Tuscany, the scent of lavender floating in the air, when suddenly I am awakened by the sound of a loud motor and the stench of diesel fumes wafting into my bedroom.  I stumble to the window to see what is disturbing my little corner of paradise. There is a backhoe down in the driveway.  The driver leaps out of the cab, and flips back his long sun-bleached hair.  He’s wearing a pair of tiny shorts made from a scrap of denim, and his well-toned muscles are bulging from a torn shirt. He appears to be Tarzan with a driving license.  “Buongiorno,” he shouts up to me. “I’m here to look for il pozzo nero – the black well. 

It all started a week ago, when I noticed a brown smelly liquid oozing out from under an iron grate a few feet from my front door. My corner of this farmhouse was restored before I moved in, so I know only the basics of the working of its plumbing system.  For instance, when I flush the toilet, the water goes away, into the ominous sounding black well.  Before the oozing started, the black well was hardly a focus of my life, but that’s about to change.

At least I do know the location of the pozzo nero, since it was pointed out to me when I moved in by Vasco, who owns the house behind me and shares this same pozzo nero.  When Vasco showed me its location, next to a newly planted rosemary bush, he took a rock and scraped an X onto the top of the stone wall, to mark the spot.  That was 2 years ago.  Since then the rosemary has grown to be huge, along with the nearby lavender and fig tree.  They all seem to like living in proximity to the black well.   

When I phone Vasco to discuss the smelly brown liquid, I ask, “Could the pozzo nero be full?”  “Impossibile” he  says.  Vasco explains that it is a kind of system that decomposes and assures me that “it never needs to be emptied.”   “Mai?” I ask suspiciously.  “No, never,” he insists, and comes to take a look. 

Vasco surveys the garden and his gaze falls upon my beautiful lavender in full bloom. “It is most likely the roots of this lavender that you planted” he says accusingly.   I tell Vasco that he showed me the location of the black well when I moved in, and it was just to the right of the rosemary bush, and that he marked it with a scraped X.  “Non ti ricordi?”    He looks at me as if I have just made up a preposterous lie.  “No,” he says, he does not recall this.  To prove my point, I ask Vasco to lift the rosemary branches, and I crawl under them, searching for his scraped marking, which not surprisingly, I do not find.   I crawl back out, smelling like the preparations for a roast chicken. “Sicuramente it’s your lavender bush”, he says, jabbing a finger into my forearm.  He shakes his head. “I’ll have to call for help.” 

Help turns out to be Tarzan.  Vasco directs Tarzan to where he believes the posso nero is located, underneath the culprit lavender.  The back hoe’s claw takes a big bite out of the earth and pulls up my beautiful lavender bush, breaking the thick roots at their base.  This is the first, but not the last casualty of Tarzan and Vasco’s campaign.  When they find no pipe there, never mind a clogged one, I helpfully suggest that the pozzo nero is near the rosemary bush. Tarzan shakes his head and says “No, it’s not in line with the other pipes.”  “Oh”, I say, encouraged by this observation, “do you have a copy of the plumbing plans?”  Tarzan looks at me like he has just noticed that I am a strange alien being.  “Ah,” he chuckles, “a lot of foreigners ask for those.”

Next they decide to dig around the base of the fig tree, crushing and discarding my iris bulbs.  Niente – nothing. Another idea occurs to Vasco, and they dig a rectangular ditch in the lawn, to see if they can find a cross section of piping.  Niente.  Then Vasco remembers that they had to put a lot of extra dirt on top of this lawn area to level it out, so he suggests they dig deeper.  Niente.  The ditch looks like a tomb.  Tarzan piles the dirt roughly back in the tomb, so it has a mound on top.  I wonder if I could pass it off as Etruscan and charge admission.  

It’s a mystery.  Vasco and Tarzan scratch their heads and wonder what to do next.  Before they decide to knock the house down, I sweetly ask, if, just to be nice and humor a strange foreigner, they could dig by the rosemary bush.  Tarzan shrugs and acquiesces. After all, he’s there to dig.  The metal claw hits the dirt and immediately a loud clang resounds – it’s the cover of the black well, which was apparently quite close to the surface.   Tarzan removes the cover and an overwhelming stench sends me into a gagging fit.  “It’s full” he pronounces. Tarzan replaces the cover, swings back into the cab, and drives away in a surge of diesel fumes.

Vasco says I need to call a spurgo.  This is a new word for me, so I first look in the dictionary.  I learn that the verb spurgare means to purge, to bleed, to expectorate, while the reflexive verb spurgarsi, means to clear one’s throat and spit.  I decide to consult the Yellow Pages instead.  There are a surprising number of listings for “Spurgo Pozzi Neri”, a service for the emptying and cleaning of black wells.  I call most of them before I find one open in August. 

The spurgo service man arrives on the hottest day of the year at high noon, with the August sun beating down like a merciless tyrant. He has a truck with a big tank and a machine that sucks up the contents of the black well. I barricade myself inside, with all the windows shut against the roar of the machinery, the heat, and the unbearable stench.  Finally the motor cuts off and I hear a voice calling “Signora! Signora!” I venture outside, trying not to breathe through my nose, where I find Spurgo-man covered with sweat and asking for water.  I give him a tall glass of cool mineral water, which he gulps down like a man lost in the desert.  He plunks down the glass, and informs me that the pipes leading into the house need to be cleaned out or nothing will work right. It seems they are partially blocked with “residue”.  “It’s necessary to use pressure” he says.  He tells me he has the equipment, and  will do this right away if I give him another glass of water.  I give him the bottle.

I am back inside when the motor roars into action and then I hear a loud gushing sound coming from the bathroom. Curious, I open the bathroom door and find a shit-geyser shooting up from the toilet and spewing across the walls.  Apparently the toilet has decided to clear its throat and spit the  “residue” all over the bathroom.

I scream in horror and rush outside yelling “fermo! fermo!” to Spurgo-man who is happily engrossed in his pressure machine.  He does not hear me until I am next to him tugging on his sleeve, which I nearly rip off.  “Stop, stop, fermo fermo, it’s spraying out all over the bathroom”, I plead frantically, aware that I am hopping up and down.  Spurgo-man shuts off the machine and simply replies  “Allora, I said it was necessary to use pressure”.  I must have looked like I was capable of murder, as he says he’s finished anyway.  He quickly packs up his equipment, puts the cover back on the black well, and asks me where to leave the bill.  Before I can tell Spurgo-man to shove it up his culo, he lays the bill on the stone wall and drives away.

I, too, want to drive away, and never return.  Why not?  Everyone else is doing it.  I could just drive away and keep going, never looking back.  I sit in the shade drinking a bottle of water while I mull over this appealing idea, and then realize that I have to pee, but can’t use the residue-covered bathroom.  I walk into the vineyards and squat behind a grapevine, wondering if I will lend a special flavor to this year’s Chianti. 

In the end, I decide to stay. After all, there are the cats to think about.  I mix up a deadly concoction of bleach and 3 kinds of floor cleaner, pull on some rubber gloves, and madly scrub until I have the cleanest bathroom in Chianti.  Then I say a little prayer to the patron saint of plumbers, and flush the toilet. The water goes away, down into the pipes, across my front garden, past the Etruscan tomb, and just to the right of the rosemary bush, it settles down into the black well.

I have several types of lavender in my garden in Sicily that I think of as “the survivors”- the ones that stoically shiver through the winter frosts, and then refuse to keel over and die under the brutal August sun.  Usually my lavandula stoechas, commonly known as French Lavender, is in full bloom in May.  I am sure of this because there is a wonderful period in May when the roses are in bloom along with the lavender, and this glorious period makes me forget all the hell and sweat it took to get there.

This year, the French Lavender started blooming in February, and today (March 11), it is in full bloom.  Perhaps this is because we had such a wet winter, but then why did the nursery tell me  to water it sparingly? Anyone else have this experience?  Or maybe I should stop asking questions and just enjoy it!

I intend to cut off the old blooms (tedious work) in hopes that it will bloom again in May, but more likely, when my hands get cramped I’ll just heartlessly prune the whole thing and hope it blooms again this spring.  I will not bore you with the details of my many attempts at trying to understand how best to care for this rather fickle variety of lavender, but when it does bloom, it’s bellissimo. 

1. When anything goes wrong with your house restoration, it is your fault.  

Example:  The newly installed shower stall has a 2 inch gap between the bottom of the shower door and the porcelain platform, which results in substantial flooding of the bathroom every time anyone uses the shower for its intended purpose. 

When pointing this out to the plumber who installed it, he responds that the floor is not level. The stone mason who laid the floor says that this is an old house and nothing is level.  In the end they both agree, that if you want something level, you buy a new house.  Result: It is your fault because you bought an old house.

2. Beware of professional landscape gardeners and experts on local plants.  

Example: On the advice of our local nursery we plant 2 myrtle trees, one of which soon turns yellow.  We ask the professional landscaper who planted it what is wrong.  After a close inspection, he says: “Water it.”  Two weeks and several waterings later, the myrtle tree looks worse, and we consult another professional gardener.  We tell him we have been watering it regularly. He gasps in horror. “No!” he pleads, “you mustn’t water it!  The roots will rot!”  We stop watering it.  Three days later, the tree is officially dead. 

We re-consult both gardeners who individually inspect the dead tree and give their  professional opinion. The first one says it is because we didn’t water it enough.  The second one says it was because we watered it too much.  We take a leaf to the nursery where we bought the tree, whose professional opinion is that the tree was diseased.  When we point out that we bought the tree there, we are told that the disease probably came from our garden.  Result: We do not know why the tree died, but we do know that the tree’s demise is our fault on all three counts. (PS. The other tree is thriving, though neither of us will admit to watering it or not.)

3. If a tradesman suggests doing something that he claims will turn out bello, it will be brutto.

Example: I want to have an iron gate made, and install it near our old stone house.  The purpose of the gate is to keep the neighbor’s sheep and cows from ravaging our garden and shitting on our doorstep. I explain to the fabbro that I want the gate to be as simple as possible.  I sketch a simple gate, which he says is brutto.  The fabbro suggests that I add decorative elements, which is a nice bello touch, and if we paint those decorative elements in gold metallic paint, the gate will be bellissimo.  We have been at this house restoration thing for 2 years now, so I dig in my heels and repeat that I want a simple gate. The fabbro sighs, and motions me into his car. 

I drive around with the fabbro looking at houses with gates.  He points out how bello everything is that I think is brutto. In the end, I let him put one tiny decorative element on the gate.  Result:  Aside from the decorative element, which I think is a tiny brutto mistake, the gate looks pretty nice.  “Bello,” I say to the fabbro.  He shrugs and says  “It’s not too late to paint it gold.”

Before you plunk down 1 Euro to buy a house in Sicily, you should know that the idea to sell off these crumbling ruins was the brainchild of Oliviero Toscani, a marketing genius famous for his Benetton ad campaign. When announced by the mayor, it seemed like an innovative solution to rebuilding the town center, still in ruins from an earthquake in 1968. The first clue as to whether this project will come to quick fruition ought to be obvious here: 1968. It’s taken 40 years just to get to this point! Nonetheless, the 1 euro houses for sale in Sicily brought a flood of offers from would-be buyers, but the project is still stalled, as a multitude of other problems have come up, such as the lack of city sewer lines.

Before you consider buying and restoring a house in Italy, I recommend that you rent in the area first, to experience what it’s really like to live in a particular area of Italy. If you plan to live in Italy year round, you need to consider the climate and seasonal changes. The best views in Tuscany may be from a lofty hilltop that’s idyllic in summer, but winter will bring strong cold winds that rattle the terracotta roof tiles for days on end. Think of being driven mad like Van Gogh. Down in the valley an old mill house won’t be windy but it will be dark, moldy and subject to flooding (I lived in an old mill house and came to understand the true meaning of “going through the mill.”) In either case, you’ll stay fit by hauling wood to stoke up the wood stove to keep warm. If you smugly choose gas-fired radiators over a wood stove, you will simply go bankrupt.

In Sicily, if you choose a seaside villa, you’ll find vast seasonal differences in day to day life. The coast swarms with Italians in the hot summer with lots of restaurants and bars open late, while in winter coastal towns will be tightly shuttered and you’ll be alone with the seagulls looking for fresh fish.

If you crave the city life of art exhibits, theatre and shopping, then you may not adjust well to life in the Italian countryside where your nearest neighbors are sheep, and a night out is a walk to the garden gate to lock it.