pictures

it occured to me that readers without facebook havent been able to see any photos, so i will post a few here.

this is croatia, and a completely easy and lovely way to get down to the water. normally, there was no semblance of a "beach", just jagged, insane, rocky cliffs. FL was a pro, though, and a total boy scout. we did great! little mountain goats, we called ourselves.


dinner at a magnificent restaurant. the old man went out and caught all the fish fresh that morning, some were still breathing. lovely, lovely.


this is FL, sunning himself on a rock like a good italian. he turns the color of melted milk chocolate.


my darling porchis pool, home away from home and safe haven for us raggedy, small-town cormons kids. endless supply of spritz and chupa-chups...



and this is piemonte, e i nostro animali...


our house...


the girls! le belle pastorelle! rachel on the left, nicole on the right...


rachel and i at the start of our movie starlett career...wait for that one...


angela and i at the food festival. my hair is even shorter than that now...


a typical piemontese sunset over the barn...


and finally...

hm. i dont know if there is anyone here who has ever washed a sheep. if so, you can commiserate. in preparation for tomorrow's sheep festival, isa enlisted nicole, claudio, angela and myself to complete this task. she gave us our instructions (vague: "lavate le pecore"), added a bit-too-sweet salutation ("bon divertimente!"), and scampered off. so. we constructed a fence out of crates, got the hose and some brushes, and asked as nicely as we could for the first candidate to please step up. it was the look on that first, maybe-actually-not-as-stupid-as-we-thought little sheep that sealed the knowledge of our fate. the look seemed to say "yeah fuckin' right, dudes", and the games began. sheep wrestling should be a sport, by god. those buggers are strong! the combination of their strength, size, the mud, the faulty fence, and our naivete and good-will-toward-all-of gods-creatures approach to coaxing them into the pen just turned the whole event into a massive, dirty, completely insane mess ("un casino", in italiano). ended up grabbing at their legs and literally dragging them, one by one, with that sort of strength that comes only in moments of desperate need, into the pen, where we tried this weird dance of washing-hugging-chasing-cooing-rinsing each and every one. am now bruised and battered, kicked and filthy, covered in the residue of more sheep feces then is in any way hygenic (have showered, of course, but i can still feel it!), exhausted, and at my wits end with the animals today. the others have gone to pascolo. after this mornings festivities, and then the super fun bath-time episode, and the milking right afterwards of 50 completely panicked animals, i'm through. they better win an award for prettiest or i dont know what. also might need a tetnis shot, as one of the sheep rocketed itself at me, causing me to fall directly into a spiky fence, piercing my back. anyway. one day this will be funny.
oh, but angela got some pictures of me milking (yesterday, not today, so i look sweeter), and ill have her post them asap.

just ate the most wonderful lunch. angela and mike (the new guy from portland) stayed in the kitchen and made lunch, while rachel, nicole, and i got lost in the woods. rachel, being the way-motivated super-suck-up hard-worker that she is (JK! but seriously...)brought up this morning over breakfast (while i was nodding off at the table and cursing the coffee for not boiling fast enough, mind you) that the animals were finding food scarce in our usual fields. we rotate through the days between about 4 different locations for grazing. over pasturing is the leading cause of desertification, this is a fact, but, i mean...it was so early. isa decided then that the best solution would be for us to take the animals al boscolo, to the forest. 2.5 hours later we all returned, sweaty, exhausted, mildly histerical due to each encountering seperate and severe bouts of "oh, shit, im lost!", tanti thorn bushes, and general, every day mountain hiking obstacles. finally drank some coffee, then settled down to watch paul newman be the best man ever in Cool Hand Luke. and lunch...the culinary school alumni made us fresh green beans in a sauce of grilled peaches, white wine, and hazelnuts, eggplant and zucchini risotto, fresh cheeses and salamis, bread, and red wine. lovely.
so yes, new plans. jane is infact not coming, as i should have known. the girl is incapable of keeping plans, even, shockingly, 4 month old plans that have hotels, plane tickets, countless hours of research and thought put into them. so. am fine. actually...am wonderful. now that i dont have to leave for ROMA tomorrow night (odd sentence, coming from me...), i can stay for the famous murazzano sheep festival, in which we bring our little sheep into town for various cheese, milking, and beauty contests. there will be wine, etc, and i am actually really excited to be going with the girls (not angela, she leaves the same as planned because her friend still is coming...hmph...). friday, then, i will reutrn to FL. i mentioned, rather tentitavely, that jane wasnt coming, and his response was, "so you're coming here then, right?". right. ill go back to my boy for a week, and then down to roma, where i have already paid for an apartment for next weekend, and the flight out to marions on monday. so there: best of both worlds!. am really so excited. am tired of piemonte. miss friuli. my friends, the food, the land, the language...a certain pair of dimples. will try and talk him into coming with me to rome next weekend, too. he's never been! and it would be a pity for me to stay at that lovely little apartment with a rooftop balcony view of st. peters all alone (got it on a steal! 50 euro a night, last minute! for two people, that was a damned good deal)...
so there. tuto a posto.
ok, lots to larn and do today, and we have to give all the best looking sheep a bath for tomorrow!

wanted to write earlier, but was in such a pissy mood! went to bed grumpy, woke up grumpy. the weather suited my bad mood: deep clouds of fog and rain, so thick and low that when i looked out of my bedroom window i couldnt even see the other house 50 yards away, just a wall of grey smoke, little whisps filtering in, swirls and puffs. i loved it. i brooded. not sure why i was so grumpy, except that i ate so much and drank so much at the festival yesterday, and then got a call from jane pretty much securing the fact that- surprise!- shes not coming afterall. for some reason this prompted me to call FL, tell him that he needed to buy a house, with a kitchen and a garden and a bathtub, and when he said, "ok, and? give me something serious to do", i hung up on him. was evil and bratty ("caprisciosa", by the way, is the italian word for brat. perhaps you've seen it as an option for pizza with every imaginable topping, for the girl who just cant decide. FL uses it all the time, and for some reason it cracks me up, probobly because i generally always deserve it, yet know hed never mean it seriously. but seriously. im a brat). anyway. am better now. the problem with blogging is that i just dont even know where to begin. i want to give character descriptions of all the people here. we live on a tiny mountain top, in two 700 year old (!!!) farm houses, all on top of each other, no city or town or anything for miles, just us and work and meals day in and day out. the days fly by. it seems its always morning milking, always lunch, always evening pasture, and the all the sudden its dinner and we're all happy and exhausted and thinking, lord, that was quick.
i cut all of my hair off. nicole helped me. it was that horrid mullet-type thing from a while back, and i just got sick of it. now its short and simple and i can run my hand through it and go. a little lopsided. maybe will try and get it shaped up some when im with marion. she has a good hair salon.
on sunday there was a food and wine festival in town, and the whole gang went. we paid a 15 euro cover, then spent the next 5 hours wandering through the cool, cobble stoned streets of the medieval town of Murazzano, stopping at different posts, each offering local wines, cheeses, dishes of meat and vegetables. the best was this miracle of a puff pastry, it seemed like 50 different air-thin layers of soft crunch, and inside was a stuffing of hot, melted blue sheeps cheese. they would fry the pastries right before our eyes, and then lay a rather thick (considering) strip of cured and aged pork fat, pancetta, over the top. the heat from the fresh fried dough would melt the fat, and the whole thing just like, gelled together into one of the most primally delectable bite sized morsels i have ever had the pleasure of craving. it was divine. there was also homemade sage and butter ravioli, fresh hams, roasted sheep, weird grilled cheese sandwiches that were like, beyond what one could hope for alongside a bowl of tomato soup on a rainy day. and the wine...well, i take back my first accusations, that piemontese wines were MERDE. i dont know about the barolo being the King of Italian Wines, but they were pretty danged good. a whole new ball field of grapes and production, so different than friuli, types and history that i had never heard of. wrote simone one of my first days here and told him that friuli wines had spoiled me, and that everything in piemonte so far had been acidic and the color of watered down blood, but of course i was in shock, and my senses were dulled and partial. mario had a stand at the festival where he sold his cheese, and elina, the girl from latvia, was there making her famous sun hats out of grape leaves. she was going to give them away for free with a purchase of cheese (mario encouraged this), but the americans, as capitalists, sai "screw that, lady, you could make a killing!". she sold about 10 hats at 10euro a pop and like, trippled her travel budget. brava. need to learn a skill...
the day was wonderful, and it was so nice hving all of us there. we kept running into each other and splitting into little groups, everyone so happy and comfortable with everyone else. when we got home i made fried green tomatoes for everyone.
so i have leanred to make ravioli, and i have picked up some secrets for the kitchen in general. theres a wonderful recipe that i know my mother will enjoy: mint and ricotta penne with zucchini. my father would be proud: i have been eating lots of beets ("natures candy!); we make a salad out of them with lemon, fresh herbed goat cheese, and hazelnuts. i made pickles and oiled artichokes, preserved anchovies in salt and white wine (anchovies, by the way, might be the only food in the world that i can 100%, officially say that i do not like. they are soooooo fucking gross, actually), fried zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese. i have made soft goat cheese and started the process on aged, hard sheeps milk cheese. shaved truffles and raw veal is now one of my favorite quick-and-easy lunch-time dishes. all in all, id say that i am one spoiled, lucky little caprisciosa. the food here is incredible, but im ready to move on...
so today rachel and i are making nanas carrot cake. im using fresh hazelnuts instead of walnuts, and fresh peaches for the glaze instead of frozen-canned orange juice concentrate, and i think im gona mix some honey and goat cheese into a paste to add a little moisture instead of using so much oil. ill let yall know how it turns out.
love to everyone, ill write again soon!

oh no, we have to kill the baby pistolino...such a cute little boy goat (si chiama 'pistolino' because he's such a little pistol...also for anotomic reasons). we were joking at lunch today about how we didnt have anything here for dinner, and mario and isa are getting tired of eating WWOOFers. mario tossed out nonchalantly, "well thats fine, pistolino will make for great goat and beans", and we all laughed, until we realised he was serious. am a tad horror struck...but also intrigued by this age-old recipe of piemonte, the goat and beans, so...you know, its tough. starting to get attached to the little devils, quite honestly.
everything here is running smoothly. angela has gone through a transformation of sorts, in manner of butterfly emerging from coccoon, after her wee-morning-hours kiss from the cute italian. she came here as sort of a last-resort grab-for-faith, as she was stuck in a crappy relationship, endless schooling, piles of debt (hell, if you cant pay it off, may as well have fun and avoid it for a while), and just as sour a mood and deep a funk as i had ever seen her in. have been witnessing before my eyes the process of getting-over-evil-boy-who-left-one-broken hearted, and i must say, escaping the country and finding yourself elbow deep in sheep manure, delicious food, blue eyed boys, and copious amounts of wine, not to mention wonderful girls with which to bond and giggle, is a miraculous solution. her mood is jubilent and it makes me happy. for the first couple of weeks here she stuck to the kitchen chores, rarely emerging from the casa. lately, however, shes been accompanying us to pasture, where she is getting more friendly with the animals, and i watch her charge at them, rediculously, at full gait, her staff extended like a sword, shouting "an'damo! doop doop doop!". the animals obey more out of shock and confusion then anything else, but i love it.
feel like im gaining weight, dont know how i couldnt be. the work is still hard, but doesnt seem daunting now, and its much more fun. nicole is going to cut my hair today, and tell me stories about her grandfather, a revolutionary film maker who snuck to cuba in the 1960s to make documentaries on the government, among other adventures. he is deeply loathed by the CIA. her father followed suit and went to join a band in nicaragua during the revolution in the 1980s, singing protest songs and compiling exposes. he met her mother, a nicaraguan dancer, in the USSR. they returned to nicaragua, did their best, and raised nicole there until she was 14.
damned flies. theres always one that continuously lands on my head while im trying to sleep. anyway, the rent is free and the knowledge is priceless. roma soon, though, where i can take a hot shower, wash my clothes properly, sleep without being awoken by the mooooooing of animals at ungodly hours, and see JANE.
love!

happy anniversary!

it is the one year anniversary of my arrival in italy! a year ago today i arrived in rome, fresh faced, excited, having absolutely no idea what to expect yet being full to the gills with expectations. i reread my blog from that day, out loud, to angela. its beautiful. i wrote so well, i was feeling so much! little me, so sweet and young and full of life! and look at me now...still the same in all of those aspects, but i feel like i know so much more, like i have seen so many things and yet...as they say, the more i know, the more i know how little i know. what an incredible adventure this has been, and it just keeps going. i think back to everything that has happened in this past year, all the places ive gone and people ive met and little things ive learned and fought for and the tiny battles and losses and the amazing miracles and wins, and i dont know that a year of my life has ever gone by faster. i feel like those first days in rome are in my heart and on top of my mind, always. i can remember how i looked and what i was thinking and the way the air smelled. i remember the first friends i made and the first time i spoke italian to "an actual italian". i remember not having any clue what i was doing. i still dont. but thank god i did it. its so weird when you think back on things that you had expectations about. like when you imagine the way a certain city is for years, and then you go there, and you cant remember what it was you thought it was going to be like. i dont know what i thought all of this would be like for all of those years i longed for it. like this, i guess. i dont know that i could ask for anything more. i miss the me i was then; so much to look forward to, so afraid but so goddamned brave. i think i miss her, but then i realise that im exactly the same. i didnt know then what was going to happen, but it did. i dont know now what is going to happen now...but the lesson here: if you let it, it will. if you ask for it, put it out there, give it a good shot, screw up, be as terrified as you want in your head but never in your heart, the adventures will come to you in waves. so heres to me a year ago, a little me with bangs and such lovely clothes and nothing but vision over blindness and a job to do, and heres to me a year from today. i dont know who shell be, but considering the way things have been going, i imagine shes gonna kick ass, too. so cheers! and cheers to all of yall, dear readers, who have stuck with me and laughed with me and talked me through my confusions and sadnesses and celebrated my victories. cin cin, and a glass of Gewurztraminer to all!

allorah...so everything at the farm has mellowed out into a lovely, exciiting, exhausting-in-a-good-way experience. the WOOFERs all sat down the other night and made up a schedule, transforming the casino-like atmosphere of 7 people running amuck into a diligent, functioning machine. we listed all the different daily duties, time slots, and a little place to initial. a sign-up sheet. after that, it has been smooth sailing. the girls are wonderful. god, it feels so nice to have girl friends again! everyone is so smart and kind and funny, interesting backgrounds and talents. nicole, from san francisco, is a beautiful nicaraguan girl, whose mother was a dancer and whose father was a singer of political ballads during the nicaraguan revolution in the 1980s. shes fluent in spanish and italian, plays the guitar and sings, tells hilarious stories and makes homemade tortillas. rachel recites poems. well be in the pature, up on a hill, overlooking all of piemonte. the sun will be setting, the animals eating, the tranquil sounds of collective chewing lulling us all into a meditative state...and over comes rachel, without fail. "want to hear a poem?", she asks, and off she goes. she laughs easily, talks about anything and everything, spins about the room to songs in her head. the atmosphere is fun now, jovial and comfortable. i just sort of ignore the owners...
im collecting recipes, my loves, so many recipes! everything is made from scratch, the pasta and bread, the meat is always fresh from that morning, and the cheese...we harvest vegetables, hazelnuts, hunt for truffles. i talk to the animals like they are people and it cracks claudio, the italian boy, up. he loves coming to milk with me, we've got a rapport going. there are always guests coming and going, which makes each night sort of exciting. i swear, my only real complaint is the wine. its suppose to be perfect here, supposedly "the best" in italy, but piemontese vini sono merde! give me friuli whites or give me death! cannot believe how much i miss friuli, its hilarious.
speaking of...FL! was expecting him around 2pm, so when i heard, from a distance, the roar of his motorcycle around noon saturday, my stomach dropped out of my butt and i let out a screech and ran to the window, just in time to see him fly in, all mel gibson in Mad Max, but prettier. god, has he gotten prettier! his dimples are deeper and hes even more tanned and his arms are all muscley and his eyes more blue...bah! i felt both too nervous to look him in the eye and unable to not look him in the eye and like i couldnt sit still and stop fidgeting but like a big weight had been lifted off of me, just by the sight of him. we ate lunch and i introduced him around, and then claudio announced that i was officially on 24 hours leave and id better be off. we rode away, in manner of excape! was incredible! found our bed and breakfast, a beautiful little place with a winery outside of Barolo...tasted some wines, slept a bit, ate good food. was like not a day had gone by. sadly, however, my italian has gotten a little worse, due to the fact that there are suddenly so many english speakers to talk to. promised i would get back on my game. he brought me back the next day, to much surprise; apparently there had been a bet going as to whether i would come back or just ride off into the sunset, back to friuli.
so now i am here, and he has gone. two more weeks here, then a week with jane in calabria, some time with marion, and then back to cormons to wrap up some lose ends with school, write research papers, and attend the Friuli DOC festival. after that...not sure. we're searching for farms in sicily, so wish us luck!

up and down. up and down. normal.
things on the farm are spinning from mindnumbing frustration, exhaustion, and outright annoyance, to comfort, friendship, and relaxation. not really getting along great with the proprietors of the place. its not outwardly bad, but sort of this tense misunderstanding. constantly feel like im doing things wrong, not doing enough, in trouble, in the way, and the lady lets me know it. regardless of the fact that i have been working so hard i cant get my rings off over my swollen fingers, my back looks like the surface of the moon from knots in my muscles, and i smell like GOAT from milking every day and night, i just cant seem to please her. he just ignores me. yesterday was pretty bleak, and i finally just cried for a bit. went to hide in the caseficio, the cheese lab, to let it all out. rachel, an amazing girl from california, was in there, and talked me through it. shes been here over a month off and on, and said that her first two weeks were much like mine: miscommunication, frustration, distance. she stuck it out, though, and now this place is like her home. dont know if ill ever get that far, but it certainly helped to hear that. as far as shes seen, most people go through this around here. i calmed down and have just decided to do my best and not worry about it.
so yes, here to my delight are four other amazing girls: three from california, all who went, coincidentaly, to the same college, and a beautiful girl from latvia. they are all creative, intelligent, funny, kind, and i can feel bonds beginning to blossom already, especially with rachel. the girl form latvia, ilina, is wonderful, a baby (18!), and just a happy, easy person. theres also a guy from piemonte, here for some sort of spiritual exploration. hes incredibly nice and speaks great english. the guests at the inn include an old man from tuscany who is completely insane and speaks in a dialect i can never understand and makes hilarious jokes, a younger guy who reads David Foster Wallace and works on his bike all day, and an incredibly old lady who sort of hobbles about and smiles and eats lunch with us and tells us stories about when she ran off to live in buenos aires and africa in the 1940s. us, plus mario and isa, are the current inhabitants of this strange little farm house on the hill. we eat all meals together, shoot the shit in the sunshine together, the girls and i spend hours out at pasture with the animals...at times, its a lovely experience. and the weather is incredible.
have been making cheese and learning lots of secrets, harvesting lots of vegetables, spending alot of time with the animals, and trying to nap when i can. the cheese is great! we take the fresh milk that we get every morning and work with it in the afternoons. spent all day today giving a bath to the older cheeses, washing away all the monthes worth of mold. the cheeses are beautiful. it feel significant to see something i admire so much up close, in all its stages, from the beginning, to the nasty, to the tenderness, to the final product. regardless of the stage, regardless of how smelly or raw or aged or difficult, the more i learn, the more i love it, and the more i want to just eat it. ill take photos and give yall a step by step next week once i get the details down.
have to go eat fresh pizza!
oh, and guess what! FL is riding over here tomorrow and whisking me away for a night of romance at a beautiful country cottage! la la la escape! my hero!