Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [130]
In a vegetable garden near the main house an elderly farm worker walked slowly along on his knees, planting lettuces. When he finished his row he came over to talk with us, making agreeable use of his one word of English, “Yes!” Nevertheless we managed to spend an hour asking him questions; he was patient with the linguistically challenged, and his knowledge was encyclopedic. It takes 100 kilograms of olives to make 14 kilos of oil. The pH is extremely important. The quality of olives grown on this farm were (naturally) the best, with some of the lowest acid levels in all the world’s olive oil. This farm also produced a nationally famous label of wine, along with beef and other products. I was curious about wintertime temperatures here, which he said rarely dropped lower than freezing, although in ’87 a Siberian wind brought temperatures of –9°F, killing olive trees all over central Italy. On this farm they’d had no harvest for six years afterward, but because they had a very old, established orchard, it recovered.
All the olives here were harvested by hand. Elsewhere, in much of Italy, older trees have been replaced in the last two decades by younger orchards trimmed into small, neat box shapes for machine harvest. Mechanization obviously increases productivity, but the Italian government is now making an effort to preserve old olive orchards like the ones on this farm, considering their twisted trunks and spreading crowns to be a classic part of the nation’s cultural heritage.
Our new tour guide was named Amico. We seemed to be working our way through the alphabet of colorful Italian patriarchs. And if Amadeo was poetically devout, Amico really was Friendship personified. He showed us the field of saffron crocuses, an ancient and nearly extinct Tuscan crop that is recently being revived. Next came the vineyards. I asked how they protected the grapes from birds. He answered, by protecting their predators: civet cats, falcons, and owls patrol the farm by turns, day and night. Amico was also a big fan of bats, which keep down the insects, and of beneficial ladybugs. And he really loved the swallows that build their mud nests in the barns. They are marvelous birds, he insisted, rolling his eyes heavenward and cupping a hand over his heart. His other deepest passion appeared to be Cavolo Nero de Toscana—Tuscan black kale. He gave us an envelope of its tiny seeds, along with careful instructions for growing and cooking it. We were going to have Tuscan kale soup for supper that very night, a secret he disclosed with one of those long Italian-guy sighs.
At dinnertime, we were surprised when Amico took his place at the head of the table. He introduced himself to the rest of the guests, opening his arms wide to declare, “Amico de tutti!” This kind old man in dirty jeans we had taken that afternoon for a field hand was in fact the owner of this substantial estate. I took stock of my assumptions about farmers and landowners, modesty and self-importance. I’m accustomed to a culture in which farmers are either invisible, or a joke. From the moment I’d spied draft horses turning the soil of a glamorous city’s outskirts, Italy just kept surprising me.
That does it, I told Steven later that night, retrieving our well-traveled Zucche de Chioggia from the car. They’re not going to kick us out of this place for possession of pumpkin with agricultural intent. At worst they might tell us it’s doo-doo because it was grown in a different province. But no, the housekeeper admired it the next morning, and the kitchen staff without hesitation handed over an enormous knife and spoon. They suggested we butcher it down by the chicken and pig pens, where any fallout would be appreciated.
Indeed, the enormous pink pigs sniffed the air, snorted, and squealed as we whacked open our prize. Its thick flesh was custardy yellow, with a small