One Italian Summer

Calabria

(Work like an old, rusty tractor)

As the train slows I realise that I have too, and my thoughts return to Tuscany. I close my eyes and see Shannon and Stefan, so comfortable in each other’s company, looking over the field that will grow vegetables in the hot months to come. They’re discussing the what, when and where of planting. These decisions will initiate a sequence of activities – in the field and in the house – that will unite the family in purpose, and sustain them in body and spirit until the next time they stand looking over a field deciding what and when and where to plant. It’s the rhythm of life we’re looking for and I can’t wait to know how it plays out on the next farm.

We’re the only people getting off at Zambrone. We dump our packs on the platform and watch the train pull away. It reveals the Mediterranean, a glittering temptation.

‘Can we go to the beach?’ Aidan asks.

‘No, not now,’ I say. ‘The farm isn’t far, so maybe we can come down tomorrow afternoon.’

The beach was one of the reasons we chose this place. We can’t afford a car, so we’ve tried to include farms within walking distance of things to do when we’re not working. ‘Twenty minutes’ walk to the beach,’ the farm guide said, so I arranged to stay for a month – there’ll be plenty of time for swimming.

Aidan loads his pack onto his back without complaint. The sound of waves accompanies us as we leave the platform, and I call the number I’ve been given. Gianni answers, his accented English is warm and welcoming. ‘Buongiorno, welcome. My wife will be there very soon. She has just left.’

I’m looking forward to meeting Lauren – our shared language, the Zen missives she always puts at the ends of her emails, the fact she’s living my dream. When she gets out of an old station wagon, her long cotton skirt and floral headscarf complete a picture that I want to be painted into.

We pile in. There aren’t enough seatbelts, but I’ve learned to accept this sort of thing with a convenient ‘it will never happen to me’ attitude. The only time I waver is when we meet a landslide halfway up the steep and winding road to the farm. It’s on a bend and blocks more than half of the road, so Lauren has to cross to the opposite side to get around it. A collective intake of breath, clenching of buttocks and anticipation of a head-on collision plays out in all our minds. If the car coming the other way is driving with the necessary caution, we might get away with minor cuts and bruises.

The car coming the other way is not driving with the necessary caution, but we’ve just come around the bend when it approaches. I feel we’ve dodged a bullet.

‘When did the landslide happen?’ I ask.

‘Oh, about four months ago.’

‘But it’s so dangerous, why hasn’t it been cleared?’

‘Mafia. None of them live up this way, it’s not a priority.’

‘What have the Mafia got to do with road maintenance?’

‘They’re part of the Comunale,the local government.’

My knowledge of the Mafia comes from 1970s movies. If I think of them at all I see horses’ heads in beds and dark-suited men in fedora hats. The Italy we’ve been travelling in seems a long way from those things, but Lauren, in a matter-of-fact way, is making it clear that the Mafia’s influence is still pervasive.

She manoeuvres the station wagon through a gate and up a dirt road. Vines and vegetables are on our right; chickens can be seen through the trees on the left. The track opens up, and the station wagon comes to a stop.

We take our packs from the back of the car and stand, waiting for direction. Several two-storey buildings are scattered around, bougainvillea clambers their rendered walls, hammocks hang under their eaves. They’re all turned towards the shining sea. A moment of dreaming and I can see the weight of my snoozing body giving shape to a hammock that’s now hanging loose on a second-floor balcony.

The farm is called Pirapora. Gianni and his brother Franco grew up here, and they now live here with their families. Together they run an agriturismo – farm-based accommodation for tourists. They grow organic food, make organic wine, and in the summer they feed and shelter up to forty guests seeking a taste of the good life – here that’s defined as home-grown food, the hot Calabrian sun and long days on the beach.

‘This way,’ says Lauren.

We turn our backs on the view and follow her past a large laundry room, around the back of which is the small house that she shares with Gianni and their two small children, Luca and Sophie. Beside it is our room. Both dwellings face inland, providing a behind-the-scenes look at paradise – tangled weeds and broken masonry, the beginnings of a garden bed, rows of washing-line hung with white sheets.

The room is clean, bright, airy. There’s an empty cupboard, a couple of chairs, bunk beds and a double – we’re expected. Shannon squeezes my hand, I squeeze back. It’s a silent conversation that recalls our first day at Il Mulino. Lauren insists we relax for the rest of the afternoon, and we both release the breath we barely knew we were holding.

We fill empty shelves with clothes, our toilet bag and books. Aidan takes the top bunk, Riley the bottom, their teddies and DSs are carefully arranged. I automatically put my pyjamas and notebook under the pillow on the left side of the bed, Shannon puts the phone, his wallet and the iPod on the chair to the right. I realise I miss nothing from home, none of the things that fill the spaces of our house. I’m not naive enough to think we’d be happy to live like this forever, but since being in Italy, and especially at Il Mulino, I’ve realised that any efforts we’ve made in the past to live with less have been a bit pathetic. Actually, I think the opposite has happened. In Sydney we were constrained by a tiny house with no garage or shed. Since moving to the Adelaide Hills we’ve acquired both. There are so many places to store crap that looked essential to my happiness when I saw it in the shop but turned out not to be. A couple of months ago, replacing a cracked salad bowl would have been the perfect antidote to work stress and a fine way to spend a lunch hour. But the bowl would have one salad day and end up collecting dust in the garage because it was a bit too big for our real needs (and any of our kitchen cupboards). It would be perfect for a dinner party, of course, but I’d have to remember where I’d put it.

‘I love living with so few things,’ I say to Shannon. ‘We should hire a skip when we get home and throw out everything we haven’t used in the past year.’

‘Okay …’ he says, in that drawn out way that means he thinks I haven’t thought it through. ‘You’ll get no argument from me, but I think you might have forgotten the last time we hired a skip?’

I look at him blankly while I forage around in my mind for the memory.

‘We spent all day filling it with junk and you snuck back in the evening to save a whole box of useless stuff.’

It’s coming back to me now. ‘How did you know?’

‘I found the box.’

‘And what did you do with it?’

‘Chucked it back in the skip.’

‘But all that stuff meant something to me.’

‘Pip, that was two years ago and you didn’t even know it was missing.’ He flops onto the bed and lies back with his hands behind his head and an expression of amused satisfaction.

It’s time to change the subject. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ I ask.

The goat track from our door joins a paved path that leads us to the farm restaurant. It’s a large room with lots of windows and a shiny stainless steel kitchen behind swinging double doors. There’s also an outdoor pizza oven, a small green lawn and a view of the volcanic island of Stromboli. It’s smoking.

Stromboli is the kind of volcano a child would draw – a perfect triangle with the top sliced off and a vertical plume of smoke dividing the sky. It sits clearly on the horizon, and in the foreground the sea undulates towards the Calabrian coast. We’re not the only ones captivated by the sight. A young couple sit on a bench, their gaze shifting between the volcano and their toddling daughter. Three others have paused their game of cards and stand at the edge of the garden to watch Stromboli breathe. All of them are speaking German.

‘Will it erupt?’ asks Riley.

‘I hope so,’ says Aidan, almost to himself. He’s mesmerised. It’s as if he’s following the trace of a firework climbing into the sky – he believes something extraordinary might happen.

The couple with the baby introduce themselves, in English, as Bianca and Horst, then ask us where we’re from, how long we’ll be staying. There’s no expectation that we should speak their language, but I still wish we’d enrolled in ‘ German for Fun and Travel’ before our journey. Our conversation draws the others closer, turns their faces inland. We’re a curiosity, and Stromboli isn’t going anywhere.

‘And how is it that you can take the children out of school for so long?’ someone asks.

‘It wasn’t a problem. The teachers know they’ll learn from travelling, they just asked them to keep a journal and do a bit of maths and English.’

‘That is all? In Germany it could not be done, you would not be allowed.’ We’ve heard this before – from Germans, Italians, other Europeans. They envy this freedom we have to roam with our children. Some have called us brave, hinting that there’s something dangerous about stepping off the treadmill, even if only for a short time. It’s as if we’re breaking some societal rule. I wonder what they fear most: an unscripted life, or the possibility they’ll love it but inevitably have to go back to the real world? I’ve feared the first, but now that we’ve taken the plunge I have no intention of stepping back on the treadmill when I get home, so I don’t expect the second.

Others beam, wanting to know as much as we can tell. Bianca and Horst are like this.

‘Do it,’ I say. ‘It’s the best thing we’ve ever done as a family.’ As the words come out I realise how true they are. There’s nothing in the history of our family that I’m more grateful for than this time we’re spending together.

‘And you, Shannon. Is it something you would recommend?’ Horst asks.

‘It’s a great experience for all of us, but mostly it’s a chance to get some perspective. That’s never a bad thing.’

When their daughter’s tired grizzles pull them away, we wander back up the path for a rest.

The bell for dinner pulls us from sleep or fiction and into our new world. I look at my watch and share the good news with Shannon.

‘It’s only seven o clock,’ I say. Our bag of emergency food won’t be needed.

We amble down the path to the restaurant where we’ll eat breakfast and dinner each day. Gianni’s broad smile beckons us in. When I ask if there’s anything we can help with he insists that tonight we do nothing. Then he points towards the back of the room. Amongst all the tables with white linen coverings, glasses for wine and water, and small vases of flowers, sits a plain wooden table, unadorned and looking a little forlorn.

‘That is your table, and everything you need for eating you will find in here.’ Gianni opens the doors of a large wooden cupboard to reveal all manner of crockery and cutlery and little wire baskets containing small bottles of vinegar and oil, then he leaves to check on something in the kitchen.

We lay our table with everything we think we need (no linen table cloth) then take our seats. Paying guests start to arrive. Those we didn’t meet earlier look a little confused when they scan our impoverished table, while others acknowledge us with a slightly uncomfortable nod. Bianca and Horst come over and invite us to join them at their table.

‘I don’t think we can,’ I say to them, and we arrange to catch up for a drink at the end of the meal.

The last of the guests has been served and the boys have started to complain that they’re hungry, ‘It’s a bit Upstairs, Downstairs,’ I whisper to Shannon.

‘Maybe the waitress can’t see us back here; it’s pretty dim,’ he says.

‘Maybe we’re supposed to serve ourselves,’ I say.

I’m about to get up to enquire when Gianni comes out of the kitchen with a tray of food.

‘After today, you can help yourselves from the kitchen,’ he says. ‘But now, I will serve you.’

With a huge smile he puts a basket of sourdough in the middle of the table and places a large bowl of porcini risotto in front of each of us. There is only water for the boys, but he offers Shannon and me wine or beer – both made on the farm, and tells us where we can find more if our glasses run dry.

Aidan is halfway through his risotto before Gianni has even left our table. Riley would rather eat dirty socks than anything with mushrooms in it so he pushes his bowl towards his brother and soaks a thick slice of bread in olive oil. Shannon and I try to show mature restraint, but within minutes all four bowls are empty. When Gianni notices, he comes around with the pot and refills them.

‘I bet the serving classes never ate this well,’ Shannon says when he finishes his second helping.

I have to agree. It looks like our lowly position in the dining room hierarchy entitles us to the leftovers. Now that I’ve tasted Gianni’s cooking I’m not only happy to forgo a table cloth and waiter service, but I’d willingly eat sitting on the floor with a paper plate and plastic fork.

Then a second course arrives. We didn’t expect it, and have filled up on bread and risotto. But we don’t send it back – thick slices of eggplant, grilled and layered with homemade tomato sauce and topped with a parmesan crust: parmigiana the way it was always meant to be, and a far cry from the Thursday night special at our local pub. When I’ve finished what’s on my plate I lean towards Riley’s.

‘We can’t send it back untouched, sweetheart, he might be offended.’ I raise a full fork to his mouth, but he clamps it shut. In a practised move, perfected during his infancy, the fork makes a U-turn and lands comfortably on my tongue. I realise I’ve started something I may not have the willpower to stop.

‘Shannon, take the fork before I go too far.’

He takes the fork, just as Gianni delivers dessert: four hefty portions of tiramisu. A dilemma.

After my slide down Mount Vesuvius I stood in front of the mirror to examine the damage to my favourite jeans. It was little more than a smudge of dirt, but closer inspection revealed more than I expected – much more.

Shannon laughed. He was looking at me looking at my bum in the mirror, ‘It looks pretty good to me,’ he said.

‘You always say that.’

‘It always looks good.’

‘Did we use hot water the last time we washed clothes?’

‘Those jeans haven’t seen a washing machine since we left Adelaide.’

That fact should have been the most disturbing thing about our conversation, but it wasn’t. ‘So why are they so tight? I can’t even do them up properly.’

‘It’s getting warmer, you won’t need to wear them soon.’

‘So you agree, my bum is getting bigger?’

‘Maybe a bit, but it’s just more to love.’

‘Right then, no more pastries, no matter how small they are. And definitely no more tiramisu.’

Now Shannon is looking at me, his smirk reminding me of my declaration. He knows it’s beyond my powers to push the dessert away, but he’s curious about how long it’ll take me to cave in.

I stick my tongue out at him and have a small taste. It’s sublime. All hope of a speedy reconciliation with my jeans is abandoned as I begin spooning it into my mouth. When I agree to seconds – or have I just crawled into the kitchen with my empty plate and begged for more? – the love I once had for my jeans becomes a distant memory, and I have to accept that it’s time we go our separate ways.

Dishes done, Shannon and the boys roll me up the path to our room. We’re tired, and full, and delighted. When the light goes out we chatter in the dark, tell stories about the boys from when they can’t remember. They love to hear them, over and over, and we have all the time in the world to tell them. That’s the gift of a shared room without a television or internet. It’s a gift we’ve unwrapped almost every night since we arrived in Italy.

The morning after our arrival, we’re running late.

Lauren told us last night that we were to start work at half past eight in the morning, but at half past seven I lost the soap. One minute it was under my right armpit, the next it was in the toilet. When I leaned over the bowl to try to locate it, the water cascading off my breasts churned the surface and I couldn’t see a thing. Had I flushed? I couldn’t remember, but I did recall thinking there would be no point, as I’d have to flush later. The shower is located just above the toilet, an afterthought probably, but I could see its multi-task potential, and even though the time-hungry demon that lurks inside me has been tamed over the past month, I couldn’t help but admire the design – until I lost the soap.

After a silent debate I took the plunge, swished my hand around in the mire and pulled out my treasure: it was soft, and a little slimy. Hoping that this was nothing more than the effects of immersion, I rinsed it until the skin on my fingers was puckered and pale. By the time I’d finished showering; dried myself; wiped down the walls, sink and toilet seat; and dressed in the mostly-dry clothes that I’d hung out the bathroom window for safe-keeping, the hour for breakfast was almost over.

Now it’s just after eight, and we’re sitting alone in the farm restaurant – the guests are all sleeping in. I hurry the boys to eat up, but something about my tone transports me six thousand kilometres to a place where school and work hold sway over us. We’ve come too far for this, I think, so I back off.

‘What time would it be at home?’ Riley asks.

‘About 5.30 in the afternoon,’ I say. ‘I’d be stuck in traffic right now. I’ve probably just called someone a dingbat for not knowing how to merge.’

‘That’s not the word you’d use,’ says Aidan.

‘No, it’s not,’ agrees Shannon, and Aidan gives him a strawberry-jam smile.

‘You guys would probably be doing homework,’ I say.

‘This is way better than doing homework,’ Aidan says.

‘What would you be doing, Dad?’ Riley asks.

‘Pruning our apple trees. I should have done it before we left, but I ran out of time.’

The boys get a second helping of sourdough and jam, Shannon has a second coffee, and I drizzle oil on bits of torn up mozzarella.

We amble back up to our room to find Lauren waiting and looking at her watch.

‘I wanted to get down to the vines before it got too late,’ she says. ‘You’ll need boots.’

I want, more than anything, to get on with Lauren and be privy to the secrets of her good life, so I negotiate a quick division of labour with Shannon. He already has his boots on so he’ll follow Lauren while I sort out the kids. He grabs a water bottle and strides out. Lauren is halfway down the path. I look at my own watch – it’s 8.25.

My resolve not to rush the kids suddenly dissolves. I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs; a ticking clock elicits an automatic panic response that involves various entreaties to the boys to ‘help me out’ and a whole vocabulary of small noises indicating that their efforts are not up to standard. While I tie my bootlaces I issue directives for teeth cleaning and school work, and suggest a number of other activities that might fill the five hours between now and when we stop for lunch. No DS until this afternoon, once we’ve checked their maths, and no fighting – we’ll be too far away to save them from each other.

Shannon is half a kilometre away, near the bottom of the steep, overgrown escarpment. There’s no path as far as I can see, though my search is a bit frenetic. I take a deep breath and raise my gaze from the scrub to the Mediterranean. The sea is calm around Stromboli, and she’s breathing lightly, barely a wisp. How I’d love to take Aidan there. That I’m calmed by a volcano makes me laugh. I take another look for the path and there it is, right in front of me.

I slip twice and arrive at the vines panting and rubbing my bum. Shannon looks at me as if to say, ‘Again? You’re kidding me.’ I can only shrug. Lauren is explaining that three rows of grapes need to be pulled out, a white variety that isn’t suited to the climate.

‘You should get all the stakes out before lunch,’ she says.

Her demonstration indicates this might be ambitious: the ground is dry and hard, and the first three stakes refuse to budge. But the fourth yields, and she’s convinced the rest will follow.

Just before leaving us she points towards the industrial kitchen built on the edge of the escarpment, ‘I’ll be up the top working in the laboratorio. I’ll pop out every now and then to see how you’re going.’ She turns to go back up the slope, then stops; she has one more bit of advice. ‘By the way, the escarpment has great acoustics, so be careful what you say.’

Over the next couple of hours, Shannon and I speak only in whispers.

When we finally start the climb back up, I’m nervous – the boys have been alone for nearly five hours. It’s the same feeling I used to get when they were babies and had slept longer than usual; reason told me there was no need to panic, but as I walked towards the room where they slept I’d begin to sweat. My heartbeat wouldn’t slow until I held them against me, warm and alive. It’s like that now, and I chastise myself for not coming up to check on them earlier.

They’re building Lego with Luca on the unfinished patio. They’ve survived our neglect. I bend to kiss their heads and slow my heart.

Shannon and I go to wash the vines and escarpment from our hands, but the soap is much reduced since the toilet fiasco and doesn’t produce any lather. I go and find Lauren, who is in her tiny kitchen gathering plates and cutlery to lay the table for our lunch.

‘Lauren, can we have some more soap?’ I ask.

Her knitted eyebrows question why I would need more soap when she gave me a new block yesterday.

‘I dropped it in the toilet,’ I say.

The news doesn’t seem to surprise her. She goes to the cupboard and brings out a box. Different shapes, colours and scents.

‘Do you make it?’ I ask.

‘Carluccia taught me, Gianni’s mum. She’s always made her own soap. We’ll be making some tomorrow if you want to help.’

When we started planning this wwoofing life, I imagined a lot more making and a lot less weeding. I wanted our souvenirs of Italy to be knowledge and skills, not blisters and sore backs. Shannon knew better. He’s closer to the daily slog of growing vegetables and keeping the weeds at bay on our own block. I remember him putting a hand gently on my shoulder as I read out descriptions of farms who listed baking and cheese-making among their activities.

‘You know, Pip, it’s more likely we’ll be doing the hard, dirty, boring stuff.’

I declared it would be a joy to be outdoors, working with my body instead of stuck in front of a computer all day, but in truth I knew my body might not be up to it, and my mind would want for more. So I continued to imagine myself as an apprentice to Italian traditions. At Il Mulino I made some adjustments to the dream, so this morning’s job of pulling wooden stakes from the unyielding earth was a good fit with my new expectations; our hard work was making room for a variety of grape far better suited to the climate. I began thinking of row after row of shiraz, then bottle after bottle, then glass after glass – I was quite tipsy by the time I pulled out the last stake. But now, the prospect of making soap rekindles something. I have goosebumps.

Gianni comes up from the restaurant with left-overs from last night and some spicy sausage he made a few months ago. The chairs beside our beds are borrowed for extra seating, and we all gather around the table on the patio for our first family meal.

This is what wwoofing is all about: sharing food and time, culture and ideas. These hours were our favourites at Il Mulino; the long unwind from a morning of activity.

Gianni pours wine into our glasses. We help ourselves to food. Riley declines the offer of risotto and starts nibbling on a slice of bread.

‘You no like?’ Gianni asks him.

He shakes his head.

‘But you like pasta, yes?’

With a nod from Riley, Gianni disappears into the house and returns ten minutes later with a bowl of penne mixed with tomato sauce. Riley’s smile meets his. Gianni is animated in his pleasure. Feeding people, I think, is what makes his life good.

We start to eat. I’ve been looking forward to relaxing with our hosts and getting to know them.

‘Stromboli looks so close, is it possible to go there?’ I ask.

Aidan’s fork stops halfway to his mouth and doesn’t resume until Gianni starts to answer.

‘Yes, of course, it is only a few hours. But if you want to climb to the crater, you must stay overnight.’ Gianni leans across the table and fills Riley’s plate with more pasta. ‘I have a friend with a boat who could take you.’

Aidan is bopping up and down on his chair asking what day we can go.

‘I will talk to him and let you know,’ says Gianni.

It doesn’t take long for last night’s leftovers to disappear into our appreciative stomachs and my glass to empty of wine. I pour another in anticipation of a long chat – we don’t have to work again until it’s time to wash up after dinner, and our afternoon has taken on the glorious dimensions of a long stretch of golden sand.

This is not, unfortunately, the reality for our hosts. Luca and Sophie are fighting, like small children do, and Lauren is distracted. It’s reason enough to clear the table, and before it really starts, the conversation comes to an end.

Carluccia doesn’t speak English, but her smile welcomes me into her kitchen and sits me at a large wooden table. There’s a worn sofa facing a television and a couple of plain cabinets holding stuff of the everyday. There’s nothing irrelevant or ornamental.

Carluccia and Lauren embrace, laughing at something the older woman has said as the words flow between them. The tension Lauren seemed to be holding in her shoulders before we walked through the door has loosened, and she moves with an easy grace around the kitchen, filling a pot with water, collecting bowls and forks and glasses, an onion and a knife. She touches Carluccia’s arm and asks for something. Carluccia smiles at her daughter-in-law, then crosses to the storeroom on the other side of the hallway. She brings back pasta sauce and a bottle of wine.

By the time Carluccia has poured three glasses, the room has filled with the aroma of onion and garlic sizzling in olive oil. It never fails to make my mouth water. I sip the wine: it’s rough, not made for celebrating but for nourishment. I love this about Italy – the ordinariness of wine, and of good food. I have another sip and consider the scene. I wouldn’t find it in Home Beautiful, or a glossy tourist mag about Italy, but there’s an essential beauty brought to it by these two women, the shared preparation of a meal, their warm affection for each other.

We eat. I smile a lot and use the few Italian words at my disposal to flatter the meal and Carluccia’s hospitality. Then we go outside to make soap.

A large cauldron, blackened and beaten, sits above a fire pit in what I’m told is the old smoke-house. It’s a small shed with broken shelves and rusted hooks, filled with bits of junk held together by cobwebs. When Carluccia lights the wood pile, we begin to choke. Smoke fills the small space, and Lauren and I move into the fresh air beyond the doors. Carluccia stays where she is, just inside the doorway, fanning the flames.

Water is the first ingredient. Lauren and I bring buckets, filled to the top, and Carluccia pours them into the cauldron. After that it all becomes a bit Shakespearian. Carluccia motions for us to start adding elderflowers. The delicate white clusters wilt and grey as they hit the surface of the water and, just as it’s beginning to move with heat, Carluccia uses an enormous wooden ladle to push them under. All three of us lean over to watch.

Carluccia’s neighbour joins us. He’s brought a bucket of pigs’ lard and a barrel of rancid olive oil. The old woman grabs great handfuls of the fat and adds it to the potion. She instructs her neighbour to pour in oil while she adds more wood to the fire. Flames lick the cauldron and smoke rises. She stirs, both hands holding the ladle, her whole body pushing it around. Cracked lips move, and I hear a murmured spell.

‘She’s trying to work out how much caustic soda to add,’ says Lauren.

The murmuring stops. Boxes of caustic soda are dragged from a back corner of the smoke-house, they’re damp, their contents clumping like old baking powder. Carluccia puts on rubber gloves and opens the first box. She empties it into the cauldron to combine with the fat and the flowers. Steam rises, and I wonder at the state of her lungs.

More flowers are needed. They seem out of place amongst the other ingredients, and I guess out loud that they might be for scent.

‘No,’ says Lauren. ‘The flowers contain saponins, chemicals needed to make soap. She usually uses ivy, but the elderberry is in bloom, so she thought she’d try it.’

The blossoms go in, more lard, more rancid olive oil, more caustic soda. Carluccia stirs, never tiring. She utters more spells, this time calling for salt and ash. The ash has been sifted until it’s as fine as flour. When she throws it into the cauldron it catches in the rising steam and a black cloak settles on her head and shoulders. The ladle moves around and around. The rest of us stand mute and transfixed.

The cauldron bubbles. The potion begins to thicken. Every now and then Carluccia scoops up a ladle-full and examines it. She is not yet satisfied.

‘She wants it to become a bit glutinous before she lets the fire die,’ Lauren tells me.

Hours after she started, Carluccia removes her gloves. She’s seen a change in her concoction and scoops some out, holding it in the ladle for a minute to cool. A thick, work-worn finger dips into the tacky substance. She smears it on the back of her other hand, nods, then sets the ladle down.

The cauldron of soap will now be left overnight to cool and solidify, but Carluccia must do one more thing to ensure its success. From the basket of kindling used to feed the fire, two twigs are chosen, one placed across the other, and the symbol rested carefully on top of the soap. The spell is cast.

Lauren issues instructions each day, with priorities identified and tight timelines emphasised. She wants the fence around the chicken-run finished by the end of the week.

Large rolls of chicken wire lie around the perimeter of the area to be fenced. It’s vast, about fifty metres square, with a scattering of fruit trees and a mesh of runner grass covering the surface. This grass is the reason for the fence. Like kikuyu – that hardy, drought-tolerant grass of the suburban Australian lawn – this Italian version creeps ever forward, its blind tendrils searching for purchase and strangling everything in its path. It’s a food grower’s nightmare: no barrier can contain it, no poison keeps it down. We feel at one with Lauren as she describes her fight with this horticultural foe. As a last stand she’s decided to capture it, cage it, and hand it over to the chickens. It will take a long time, but Lauren thinks that eventually the grass will be beaten, the cage will be removed and food will grow. We’ll be her mercenaries: Lauren gives her orders and leaves us to begin the battle.

Shannon swings the mattock and cracks the ground. I follow with the shovel and dig out the loosened clods of earth. It’s a dense clay soil that sticks to our boots and makes them heavy.

We settle into a sustainable pace, begin to sweat, start talking about how we could use chickens to kill the kikuyu threatening our veggie patch at home. After only half an hour and four metres of trench, Lauren returns and tells us to down tools. We need to go to the laboratorio – Franco has decided to start bottling the wine.

The laboratorio is where fruit is preserved and wine is fermented, bottled and stored. It’s large and modern, clean and organised. We’re led through the preserving room to the wine room, where four shining vats stand tall in the centre. There’s a long bench supporting a bottling machine, and shelves line the walls. Most are packed with empty green bottles placed so precisely that they’re like infantry waiting to be deployed.

Franco is fiddling with the filtering machine.

‘Hello, hello. You are welcome, come in.’ He straightens up, his whole face smiling, large black-rimmed glasses falling down his nose. He pushes them up. ‘We have a problem,’ he says, though his smile indicates otherwise. ‘The machine, it is not working. Maybe, Shannon, you can help me.’

Shannon tries, while I stand useless. ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’ I suggest. It seems to work with computers.

They look at me like I’ve just sneezed, then turn back to the machine. An hour passes. Gianni comes in and confidently tries everything that Franco has already tried. Then in a lightbulb moment (I can see it on his face) he turns the machine off.

My heart is beating as they stand silent for a minute or two, giving the machine time to consider its future. Then Gianni leans down and flicks the switch to turn it on again. Nothing happens.

‘It was worth a try,’ Shannon says, with a quick wink in my direction.

The three of them fiddle a bit more, then stand back and contemplate the mystery of the machine. I’m reminded of my baking day at Il Mulino, and of Stefan. Finally, Gianni does something with a wing nut, and wine from the closest vat flows through. There’s much celebration, and Franco embraces Shannon. We’re in business.

Four empty bottles are attached to the bottling machine, ready to receive the filtered wine. They begin to fill, and Franco tells us that the machine is designed to cut the flow when the wine is an inch from the top.

‘This is the first year we have used this machine, last year it was much slower.’

The smile hasn’t left his face, and it’s contagious. Gianni shows me how to attach the bottle tops, stressing the importance of getting the angle right so that air doesn’t get in and spoil the wine. Franco passes over the first full bottle, then the second. The third overflows, washing red over the bench and floor. Franco detaches the bottle and lifts the valve so the wine stops flowing.

‘Not perfect.’ He grins. ‘We will watch that one.’

Confident in my technique, Gianni returns to the restaurant to prepare for dinner. Shannon takes over the bottling, and Franco makes adjustments to the filtering machine. I’m nervous of spoiling the wine, and the bottles pile up.

‘It’s okay, take your time, you’ll get used it.’ Franco says.

It doesn’t take long for our movements to become practised and automatic. We fall into step and begin talking. Franco is interested in what we think about farming and politics and people. His own thoughts bounce off ours. About Berlusconi, he’s animated in his disdain and excited about the swing to the left in recent local elections – ‘it might be portentous,’ he says. About farming, he humbly bows to the seasons, makes tentative plans and expects them to change. About people, he repeats his last point. Franco thinks we are similar to plants.

‘If we fail to thrive we should change the conditions we live in,’ he says. But he admits that some people are like plants that have been grown indoors. ‘Their stems are weak and they are easily bruised; achieving their potential growth is difficult.’

As he talks, I’m wondering if I’m one of those people who’ve spent too long indoors, been fed and watered too regularly.

When Lauren arrives, Franco and I are stacking a shelf with wine and singing ‘ Ten Green Bottles’ – my contribution to our wide-ranging discussion. We’ve achieved less than she had hoped.

‘I think the filter is slow, I don’t know why,’ says Franco in response to her concern.

Lauren suggests the job only needs two people, and when Franco leaves she dismisses Shannon back to the trenches. I’m sorry to see them go.

Lauren is frustrated by the filter. ‘It will take days at this rate,’ she says, surveying the set-up with her hands on her hips.

I imagine her schedule of tasks is being compromised. I’m no stranger to this state of mind, but I’m disappointed to find it here. When I think about it, my life has been all about productive efficiency ever since Aidan was born. He was five weeks old when I went back to work. It was just ten hours a week from home, but a lack of paid maternity leave made it necessary. I thought it would be easy to find ten hours in the week to focus on something other than a newborn … what an idiot. I couldn’t manage breakfast let alone report writing. Whenever I sat down to either, Aidan demanded to be fed. One morning, Shannon noticed my cereal going soggy and started spoon-feeding me: two tasks got done at once. I calculated a time saving of about ten minutes that I could now allocate to the report. After that I became a bit obsessed with finding ways to save time (Weet-Bix on the loo was a breakthrough, but also an early sign that one day I’d need to see a psychologist).

Moving to the Adelaide Hills should have cured me of this work ethic – multi-tasking seemed incongruous with the slow lane we thought we’d changed into – but adding fruit trees and chickens to a four-day working week, a degree and the needs of small children seemed to intensify it. I never felt we were getting enough done, and out of habit I hurried everyone along.

I want to share this with Lauren, find out if her anxieties are similar to mine, tell her about Ulrike’s daily repose. But she’s in such a hurry that it doesn’t feel like the right time.

After lunch, Lauren asks if we’d like a lift to the beach.

‘We’d love a lift.’ I’m acutely aware that our promise to the boys that we’d go swimming every afternoon has been well and truly broken.

‘Do you mind taking Luca and Sophie with you?’

Neither Shan nor I answer immediately. I’m reviewing the image I had of the four of us walking along the shore, the boys picking up shells and interesting bits of driftwood.

‘Of course not.’ I say. To my ears, it’s unconvincing.

‘Could you make sure they put on sunscreen? Luca got quite burnt the other day. Have you got sunscreen?’

I nod.

From the farm, the ribbon of sand outlining the coast looks clean and unmarked by the feet of summer holiday makers. They’ll arrive in droves, but not for another few weeks, and I’ve been looking forward to leaving the first prints on this stretch of beach. But when we arrive, it’s hard to see the sand for the debris, and as Lauren drives off I regret that the children aren’t wearing shoes.

‘Be careful of all the glass, kids, and try not to step on anything rusty.’

It’s warm, but the beach is deserted. Resorts snooze along the shoreline, waiting for the tourist season to start, oblivious to the rubbish and the drifts of grey, polluted sand. There’s nowhere we want to lay our towels, but we choose a spot just in front of a sand hill littered with old tires and bits of timber. Luca and Sophie strip down to their underpants. They’re brown and chubby: suntanned cherubs. Aidan and Riley are in broad-brimmed hats, long shorts and rashies with sleeves to their elbows. I can imagine what Franco would say if he saw them: ‘Nothing will grow well without a good amount of sunshine.’ Ah, for a Mediterranean complexion. I make my kids submit to sunscreen on all exposed skin, then call to Luca.

‘Luca, come over here for a minute. Your mum wants me to put sunscreen on you.’

‘No.’

‘Come on. You’ll get burnt if you don’t.’

‘No.’

‘Well, you’ll have to put your T-shirt back on if you don’t want sunscreen.’

‘No.’

I have to admit, I’m thrown. Luca is running circles around me, literally. He laughs each time he comes close, it’s a kind of taunt. I want to reach out and grab his chubby arm, hold him still until his back is white with sunscreen, but I’m afraid to manhandle someone else’s child. Shannon is no more successful, and when our store of mild threats and unconvincing bribes is exhausted (we only have apples and a few dry biscuits), we give up. Sophie is more pliant. She sits quietly in my lap and lets me rub the cream over her skin. With her finger she begins drawing in the sand.

The surf is rough, and there’s a rip. None of the children are good swimmers, so we tell them not to go in. Aidan and Riley understand why and begin building a sand fort. Sophie is only interested in the patterns she’s making. With these three, I can relax. But Luca wants to feel his heart beating. He’s taken up the challenge of the sea and runs towards the waves, a little deeper each time. I have to call him back over and over. I feel myself frowning, and I resent it. This is more work than weeding or pulling stakes out of the ground.

Salvation comes from the mound of debris behind us. Aidan is looking for treasures and has decided to dig out one of the old tyres. Shannon is about to tell him to stay clear of the junk when the tyre comes rolling down the hill towards Luca.

‘Look out, Luca,’ Shannon calls.

Luca turns, and from that moment the waves lose their appeal. All three boys spend the next hour dragging tyres up the beach and rolling them down to the shore. Shannon supervises, while I draw starfish in the sand for Sophie. Any thoughts of tetanus are pushed, kicking and screaming, to the back of my mind.

Shadows stretch across the beach as black clouds move in from offshore. Fat drops of rain begin to fall. We abandon the tires, pack up the towels and hurry the children into T-shirts. I’m hoping Lauren has noticed the weather and is on her way to pick us up. We wait in the rain for ten minutes before she arrives.

‘Have a good time?’ she asks.

I lie and say yes, but I’m wondering if these hours of childcare will be counted towards our daily work quota. It’s not a thought I would have had at Il Mulino, but I’m feeling miserly as I wait for Lauren to thank us for looking after her children.

‘Aidan, your mum told me you like to cook. Would you like to help make the marmalade tomorrow?’

A kindness – now I don’t know what to think.

We meet Lauren, and Franco’s wife, Rosie, in the laboratorio at half past eight the next morning. Two stainless steel benches are set up at a right angle. There’s a meat slicer and electric juicer on one, a chopping board and several large bowls on the other. Boxes of oranges are on the floor. We are each given a starched white apron and hair net.

Our tasks are decided: I’ll wash the oranges, Lauren will cut them in half, Rosie will slice one half and pass the other to Aidan, whose job it will be to juice them. He is splendid in his whites; dimples accentuate his smile like speech marks – ‘This is so great,’ they say.

The process begins. Aidan retrieves his first half-orange, positions it on the tip of the juicer then flicks on the power. The motor screams. Aidan’s dimples disappear in a frown of concentration, both hands pushing down on the orange to squeeze out every drop. When the bowl is full of juice, he pours it into the bucket with orange slices then returns to squeeze some more. It’s a choreographed dance, the drone of the juicer setting our pace.

Then the acrid smell of burning. Lauren tells Aidan to stop, ‘We’ll have to let it cool for half an hour before we start again,’ she says.

Aidan and I sit on old crates just outside the laboratorio.

‘It looks like a shadow today,’ Aidan says.

‘What does?’

‘Stromboli. Compared to when we arrived, it looks like a shadow.’

‘It does, you’re right. We’re looking at it through the sea haze.’

‘I can’t even see the smoke.’ He leans forward, as if it will help.

‘Me neither. I think the longer I stare at it the less visible it becomes.’

‘You should look away for a while. Then you’ll be able to see it again.’ He’s right. And for a while we turn our heads from Stromboli to the beach, Stromboli to the beach.

‘Can we go to Stromboli tomorrow?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart. The haze might be a problem, but we’ll ask Gianni.’

‘If we can’t go there, can we go to the beach?’

‘Maybe,’ I say.

‘Without Luca and Sophie?’ He says it quietly, into the flesh of my arm.

There’s so much they don’t say. Yesterday, at the beach, I thought it was just Shannon and me who felt the intrusion. But now, with his hand in mine and his cheek against my arm, Aidan is asking if he and Riley can have us all to themselves.

‘Of course we’ll go to the beach,’ I say. ‘But let’s not wait till tomorrow. Let’s go this afternoon. We could go to the little cove you saw when we got off the train. It’s a bit of a hike, but that’ll be part of the fun.’ I won’t break this promise. After all, we’re free to do what we want.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ he says, wrapping both arms around me and squeezing tight.

Not for the first time, I wish we could afford to hire a car – it would make our freedom more convincing.

Soon the acrid smell has left through the open doors and the juicer is rested. Aidan takes his place, and our production line resumes. By one o’clock we have filled two large tubs with slices of fruit and juice. Rosie weighs them then measures out the sugar – about forty per cent of the weight of the fruit. She adds the sugar to the buckets and tells us they need to sit overnight.

‘Tomorrow we will cook the fruit and put the marmalade in jars. You can come back and help with that if you like.’

When we arrive the next morning, Rosie is stirring the marmalade. Her long wooden spoon reminds me of Carluccia, but Rosie is no potion-maker. Her cauldron is an industrial double boiler, stainless steel with a temperature gauge and heavy, airtight lid. There’s a release valve for steam and a ceiling exhaust to take it all away. I can’t imagine pig fat or a vat of rancid olive oil being stored anywhere on these premises.

The marmalade has been cooking for about twenty minutes when Lauren smears a small amount onto a hand-held device called a refractometer.

‘We have to put the sugar content on the labels. It also helps us decide how much pectin we need to use.’

She records the reading in an exercise book, then gets out a calculator and enters all the relevant numbers. The amount of pectin is decided, mixed with a little sugar and added to the boiler. Exactly three minutes later the boiler is turned off and we are put to work pouring the hot marmalade into sterilised jars. Thin crescents of orange are held in a glassy jelly.

Aidan has been attentive and diligent and useful. Before we leave the laboratorio,Lauren presents him with the last jar of marmalade, three-quarters full.

‘Your own private jar,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to share it with anyone.’

When we head to the beach Aidan’s face is sticky with a marmalade smile. It takes an hour, but when we reach the little cove we’re delighted. The beach is an undeveloped oasis embraced by craggy outcrops of black volcanic rock. Underfoot it’s more sand than shell, and – except for us – it’s deserted.

Shannon and I lay down towels and collapse onto them, wriggling to create the most comfortable contours. There will be no anxious watching. Between swims and snacks the boys build a fortress of sand and rock. They dare the calm sea to rise up and challenge them, but the sea is in no mood for combat. It retreats inch by inch, marking time along the shore, and the fortress grows ever larger.

‘You need to work like a tractor.’

Lauren is telling us how to weed between the strawberries. Loosen, pull, loosen, pull. She’ll be disappointed if we don’t get through the patch by lunchtime. The trowel is driven into the ground. Soil rises, releases its hold. With deft fingers, Lauren pulls the weeds free and throws them in a pile.

‘It’s not that hard, but the last wwoofers would take half a day to do a single row.’

She’s told us this before. The last wwoofers worked in slow motion, she doesn’t want us to form the same habit.

I bite my lip, and take a deep breath – we’re being performance managed. Despite this, I’m looking forward to the job. Lipstick-red, the strawberries are sweeter than any we’ve had back home. When the boys have written in their journals they’ll join us.

The strawberry patch is hidden behind tall shrubs, and we’re grateful for it when Lauren leaves.

‘What kind of tractors should we be?’ Shannon asks.

‘Oh, I think you have the potential to be a mega horse-power John Deere, but I’m more like one of those rusty old farm relics that constantly needs to stop for a bit of mechanical tinkering.’

‘Can I do the tinkering?’

‘It’ll slow you down.’

‘That’s why we’re here isn’t it?’

This is becoming a pattern. Lauren explains our task for the day, impresses upon us the need for speed, and then leaves us to wonder why she’s in such a rush. Yesterday, it was the carrot seedlings. We needed to clear the beds of weeds, leaving only the carrot tops. It sounded easy, but then we saw the beds. The carrots were still tiny, and they shared the soil with thousands of juvenile weeds: same height, same colour, slightly different leaf – though you wouldn’t know that unless you carried a magnifying glass and a heavy tome on botany. We hadn’t packed either.

‘If we don’t get rid of the weeds, they’ll smother the carrots,’ she told us. ‘It shouldn’t take you too long.’

The tip of my nose brushed the ground as I examined the first weed. After half an hour I’d pulled out fifteen carrot seedlings along with approximately three hundred and seventeen weeds. When I got up to stretch my aching back, I looked along the length of the twenty-metre bed and realised I’d travelled no more than a metre.

Then I fell over.

I told Shannon it was from the shock, but in all honesty it was just the bending and stretching. Luckily I landed on my bum, but unluckily I landed on the carrots seedlings I’d just rescued.

‘Wouldn’t it make sense to let it all grow a bit taller and then weed around the seedlings?’ I suggested to Shannon as he got me comfortable in the shade of a tree. ‘These weeds have only been out of the ground for a day; there’ll probably be three times as many next week.’ If there’s nothing I like more than innovative multi-tasking, there’s nothing I like less than wasted effort.

‘The good thing about wwoofing, Pip, is that by the time the weeds we can’t see have grown, we’ll be gone.’

But I wasn’t so sure. We had another two-and-a-half weeks – plenty of time to find ourselves sitting here again, remembering this conversation and feeling like we were nothing more than farm machinery, broken down and unreliable, perhaps, but farm machinery all the same.

Today, the boys find us sitting in the dirt eating strawberries as big as golf balls. I rub the flesh against my lips and pucker, Shannon obliges, and the boys groan. We show them how to pull the weeds without dislodging the fruit. Riley reminds us that they’re too young to be wwoofers, so they tiptoe through the strawberry patch instead, picking the best of the crop.

‘We should never have told them they didn’t have to work,’ I say to Shannon.

‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind subcontracting every now and then.’

Aidan plonks himself at the end of a row, a half-eaten strawberry staining his hands. ‘When will we go to Stromboli?’ he asks.

‘Gianni said the sea was too rough last week. His friend’s boat needs calm weather to get there safely.’ Shannon says it with an optimistic tone, but throws me a sceptical look. Every few days he has asked Gianni about going to Stromboli. Every few days there’s been a reason it can’t happen. ‘Maybe this week will be okay,’ he offers.

‘Do you think it will explode while we’re here?’ Aidan asks.

‘Maybe it will explode just as we’re getting off the boat. Would you like that?’ I ask.

‘Yeah! That would be so cool.’

When the boys have had their fill and the rows are neat and weedless, we pack up our tools and buckets and head back to our room to clean up for lunch.

Whether by design or circumstance, we’ve been spending less and less time with Lauren and her family. We’ve not been invited back to lunch since that first day, so the restaurant is now our midday stomping ground. Today, like most days, the guests are all at the beach or exploring nearby towns, so we have the restaurant all to ourselves.

We’ve come to look forward to it. The fare is simple and good: white bread and provolone cheese, rough slices of prosciutto and, if we’re lucky, leftovers from the night before. Without the protocol of dinner, it’s less awkward. I know where the wine is, and Gianni has insisted I help myself. After we’ve eaten we can linger with the boys, help them with school work, listen to them fighting over the soccer table. We’re not required to weed or wash up for anybody else, and we have none of our own domestic hooks to pull us away from doing nothing in particular together.

While I wait for the coffee to brew, I run my finger across the spines of books on the restaurant bookshelf. It’s an eclectic collection, most likely Lauren’s rejects and books left behind. I pick out an old tourist booklet about Tropea, a seaside town just ten minutes away by train:

‘You will discover the echo of the people who lived here, in the fascinating explosion of colours and cosmic throbs enveloping the restless cliffs of the hills, the melodic rustling of the waves, the soft and pleasant caressing of the white sands and the bright roar that embraces you with its endless motion, that is the sea breeze.’

Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to visit this magical place? ‘Our next day trip,’ I say to Shannon, placing the booklet in front of him.

‘Of course,’ he says, pushing our Lonely Planet guide across the table, open to the page describing Tropea as a puzzle of lanes and piazzas, with sunsets the colour of amethyst. I look for a reference to ‘cosmic throbs’, but find nothing.

Tropea’s main street is decorated with tacky souvenirs, red onions and chillies. It’s famous for all three, but the combination is a dizzying kaleidoscope of kitsch that is, I have to admit, making my head throb – though there’s nothing ‘cosmic’ about it. We’re caught in a swarm of day-trippers. The street hangs in front of us like flypaper, and one by one we’re all becoming stuck to its colourful sides. Only the odd person escapes to venture down Tropea’s meandering side streets and discover a more tranquil, and infinitely more beautiful, place.

Today, we are the ones who get away. The town wends this way and that, as if the streets were laid out by someone who’d just consumed a barrel of beer. We stop for lunch at a trattoria, empty despite being minutes from the main drag where people are waiting for tables at overpriced restaurants. We’re seated near the front – their best table.

Pizza Margarita and fried whitebait, two beers, two lemonades. It’s modest but feels celebratory; our first meal out for weeks. The waiter carries his two-year-old nephew on his hip as he takes our order. When he brings the obligatory basket of bread, the toddler crawls between his legs, forcing a little dance.

Our stomachs full, we take the meandering route from the restaurant to a once-grand staircase that leads down to the beach. It’s dotted with bathers now, but in a few weeks it’ll be blanketed with beach towels and burnt bodies as Europe takes its summer holiday. We walk along the shore and hand over ten euros for two beach chairs and an umbrella. We want to replicate our perfect day in Positano.

The sand here is more forgiving and far more beautiful than the volcanic grey of the Amalfi Coast. The boys begin digging another fort, but they’re distracted by the broken tiles that freckle the shore. Each handful of sand is an excavation of treasure: they pick out beautiful fragments of colour, and Riley sorts them into piles on the end of my beach chair. There’s a lot of white, but they’re all subtly different. A paint catalogue would name them clotted cream, snow cap, frosting. The blues are more distinct; dark blue is rare and my favourite, sky blue dominates. Then there are the earthy colours, the browns and oranges that aren’t very beautiful on their own, but together become the fallen leaves of an Adelaide Hills autumn. Suddenly we’re all a little homesick. The tiny blue stones that look like lapis lazuli are actually, Shannon informs us, bits of coral, but we decide to keep them anyway.

‘These red bits are coral as well,’ he’s saying to Aidan. He used to be a marine ecologist – it was his first big dream, and he made it come true. When his research funding ran out he got a job as a garbage collector.

‘Do you miss it?’ I ask.

‘Miss what?’

‘Spending your days on rock platforms collecting shells.’

‘I only spent some of my days on rock platforms – most of the time I was in a lab, or crunching numbers at a computer.’

‘But it’s all you wanted to do as a kid, surely you miss it a bit.’

‘I really don’t. To be honest, I got more satisfaction out of being a garbo. Society would fall apart if bins weren’t emptied – it puts counting molluscs at Botany Bay into perspective. And the hours were better.’

I watch him explain coral to the boys and wonder what kind of parent I’d have been if Shannon hadn’t been around so much. A frustrated one, I suspect.

I join the boys in the sand and start sieving it through my fingers.

‘Where do all the tiles come from?’ Riley asks.

‘Maybe they were washed into the sea after Vesuvius erupted. Maybe they’re two thousand years old,’ Aidan suggests.

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Though I don’t think this tile was ever part of a mosaic in Pompeii. See the grid pattern on the back? I think it was meant for a bathroom in one of those resorts.’

‘We should throw those away,’ Riley says, ‘As well as the tiles with sharp edges. Let’s just keep the ones from Pompeii.’

‘What do you mean, keep?’ I ask.

‘We should take them home. You let Aidan take home rocks from Vesuvius, we should take these home as well.’

I can’t argue because I’ve already started to imagine the mosaic we’ll create together. ‘I guess we could collect tiles instead of snow domes or tea towels, but you’ll have to convince Dad. He’s bound to end up carrying them.’

Dad thinks it’s a terrible idea, but the sun and the beach chair have made his brain soft and he hasn’t the ability to argue.

Sage advice from more than one person at the farm leads us to Tonino’s gelateria on Corso Vittorio Emanuele – when we arrive, we’re breathless from the walk up the hill. Tonino himself is behind the counter. We know it’s him because of his likeness to a gilt-framed portrait of a laughing man with a hooked nose and friar’s bald patch that hangs on the wall above him. The wrinkles around his eyes as he greets the boys are identical, though his hair is greyer. Behind him, a machine is churning his latest invention. Tonino makes his own gelato, which, I was devastated to find out, is not the case for most gelaterias. We have come to taste his famous red onion gelato, but it is not the only flavour that intrigues us.

Red onion is very oniony, but surprisingly sweet. We’re not as taken with cactus or salami, but the fig goes down very well and a few favourites set the bar high for future gelato eating. Tonino chats to us in Italian as if we understand what he’s saying. We understand a little, and with new-found confidence I venture to ask, in Italian, if he makes Pokémon flavour. He looks bewildered.

Back at the farm we contemplate our pile of coloured tiles. We guess a kilo – too much to carry around for another couple of months. No one except Shannon wants to leave the tiles behind, so we decide to post them home along with our woollens, a couple of much-loved books and Aidan’s rocks from Vesuvius.

It marks a transition, a shedding of skins – into the box go all of the things we thought we might need but didn’t and all of the things we once needed, but don’t any more. We realise that we’re halfway through our journey.

‘Only halfway?’ Aidan moans. ‘It feels like we’ve been away forever.’

‘Are you homesick?’ I ask, although I’m not sure I know what to do with the answer.

‘Kinda. I miss my room.’

‘What about you, Riley, are you homesick?’

‘Um, not really, but do we have to stay here much longer?’

‘Another week and a bit. Can you last that long?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ His voice is small and he’s looking at the floor.

Looking at Riley now, I wonder if we’re expecting too much from them, leaving them alone for hours at a time in unfamiliar places, with people they barely know and sometimes don’t get on with. The other day, after a morning digging trenches for chicken fencing, Shannon and I found Riley cocooned in his bed. He was tired, he said, but Aidan told us later that Luca had picked up Riley’s DS and threatened to throw it on the ground if they didn’t play with him. I imagine what that meant to Riley. His DS is the only constant in his life right now. When he feels lonely or homesick, when the strangeness of a place overwhelms him, it gives Riley a place to retreat to. Aidan told me Riley froze, that tears welled in his eyes as Luca held the DS above his head. Hours later I sat on the bed and stroked his hair. I explained that Luca is only six and doesn’t realise the importance of things. It was no consolation. Riley is only nine: the importance of things weighs heavily. I realised then, later than I should have, that the DS comes a distant second to Shannon and me.

Now, with his head bowed, and his small voice telling us he’s not happy here, we consider our options. If we want, we could leave tomorrow. If we had a car, we could leave today. We talk about it, but Shannon and I lack the impulsiveness of the true intrepid traveller – and we lack the cash. If we left now we’d have to pay for ten days’ food and accommodation that we didn’t anticipate. We decide to stick to the plan, but to be more assertive. One of us needs to always be available to the boys. That means we work nearby or they come with us, and at night, one of us will always come back to our room with them, no matter how much washing up there is.

It feels like the kind of discussion working parents have all the time – how to be there for your children and still earn a living. But it’s a bit hard to believe we’re having it here, in the south of Italy, where we have a view of an active volcano.

Steam is rising from the kettle on Lauren’s stove. Her hand hovers, waiting for the whistle to blow before she takes it from the heat to fill the pot. I reach into the cupboard and pull out two mugs, conscious that this might be the last time.

This farm is potentially a wwoofing heaven – the food, the view, even the hours – but after four weeks it’s lost its shine. I’ve decided it’s like a beautiful pair of shoes that give you blisters. I thought that by now Lauren and I would know each other and be comfortable, but her attention is always elsewhere. Today it reminds me of my own distraction. When the needs of work and home and children collide and ring noisily in my head, it’s hard to hear Riley’s small voice, or make room for details about Aidan’s monsters. I often just nod and smile to give the impression that I’m listening. Lauren is nodding and smiling at me now – her response to my mundane enquiry about her morning. I realise, sheepishly, that this is no holiday for her.

I like to think I’d be different. I remember Stefan saying that every wwoofer brought something of value to their farm, and that he just had to be observant and take time to listen to their story. But time, for them, was languid. I began walking slowly at Il Mulino, and I found I was never out of breath and never late. Since arriving at Pirapora, my pace has quickened, and I resent it. I want so much to be free from the tyranny of time and banish words like ‘quick’ and ‘hurry’. I’ve been brought up to revere the clock. Lauren, I realise, is a daughter of the same congregation, though it doesn’t suit the clothes she wears. On reflection, it doesn’t suit mine.

I’m curious about what it is that distracts her, about what brought her here, and what makes her stay. I want to know what she thinks of this life and whether it’s worth pursuing. But our conversations have been guarded, and I’ve had to rely heavily on observation. I’ve observed an efficient, frustrated, time-poor woman who quite possibly would prefer to be doing something else.

Tea is an opportunity to talk. Every few days, around eleven in the morning, she’s boiled the kettle and put three heaped spoons of Twining’s Earl Grey into a blue teapot. This releases my inquisitive tongue and allows Lauren to relax, just a little. We both understand the value of a good cup of tea in a country that venerates coffee. It’s something else we have in common.

This time, she tells me that she attended Cambridge: ‘Elitist and overrated, I couldn’t stand it so I left.’

She never finished her degree, but she wants me to know this about her. She wants me to know that she’s chosen this farming life from all the possible lives available to her. In addition to her native English, Lauren speaks Italian and German. Her bookshelves bow under the weight of knowledge. Philosophers and Booker Prize-winners cohabit with experts on permaculture and organic gardening. I can’t help thinking her presence on this family farm is accidental. That what might have been just another experience has somehow snared her. Love will do that, and she fell in love with a man who dreamt of cooking home-grown organic food within clear sight of a volcano. It would have been easy to follow that dream, to tweak it and make it her own. But I want to know what it’s really like, if she still loves it, what she would do differently. And I want to know what else she dreams of in the quiet moments of her life.

While my words struggle to compose themselves, she rinses her cup and pulls on her boots.

‘How’s the chicken fence going?’ she asks.

‘Great, it should be finished this afternoon.’

‘Good, leave Shannon to finish it off, I want you to paint the new chicken house then help Rosie with the strawberry jam.’

I wash my cup and follow her out the door. A mouthful of questions dissipates on my tongue.

The chicken fence is magnificent. In a symbolic gesture of solidarity, the boys and I have rushed from the laboratorio,where we’ve been helping Rosie make strawberry jam, to assist Shannon in rolling out the final few metres of chicken wire. We’ve secured it to the last post, and it’s fabulous. The chicken house, on the other hand, looks like it’s been shat on by a flock of seagulls. The paint was a watery lime wash that had to be slapped on with a drenched brush. I was in a hurry to collect the boys so they could help with the jam, and I took less care than I should have.

From where we stand we can see the results of much of our labour over the past few weeks. Besides the fence and the chicken house there are tomato frames standing tall and straight, with newly pruned tomato plants tied neatly to the first row of bamboo and only a few grass twines unravelling from incompetent twisting. I’m pleased to see that several rows of carrots have survived my ministrations, though a new wave of weeds is beginning to push up the soil around them.

‘Great job, Shan, you’ve ticked all the boxes on Lauren’s list.’

‘We have, you mean.’

He’s being kind. It’s becoming apparent that I’m not a natural in the field. Bending over to pull out weeds makes me a bit woozy. If I didn’t take regular breaks I’d be falling all over the place. Shannon is quite happy to make up for my malingering, and without a word of reproof. Now, as he joins us under a shady tree, dirt sticking to his sweaty brow, we talk about what a good life we would have back home if we could replace paid work with digging and planting and harvesting food. It’s a familiar conversation, but I’m staring at row upon row of seedlings in cracked earth, sticky with clay, and for the first time I notice how fragile they look. I change the subject.

‘Here comes Franco,’ I say. We stand to greet him. He’s always smiling, his arms spread wide as if he’s waiting for a hug.

‘Wonderful, wonderful.’ He’s looking over at the chicken enclosure. ‘Tomorrow we will move the chickens. It will be a celebration.’ He turns to us and pats Shannon on the shoulder. ‘We are so happy, you have done a wonderful job, thank you.’

His thanks is the first we’ve had in weeks. It’s a mean thought, and I shake my head to dismiss it, reminding myself that our labour is paid for in risotto and tiramisu.

Franco arranges us like a guard of honour either side of an imagined path from the old chicken yard to the new.

‘This won’t work,’ Shannon whispers to me.

We each have a length of bamboo which will be used, we are told, to herd the birds towards their new home. It’s not far, perhaps ten metres, but our presence is likely to make the chickens suspicious. A crowd has gathered – Gianni has invited the guests, thinking it might be nice for them to see a working farm in action. Half of them insist on helping and more bamboo is handed around.

‘A bucket of scraps and someone familiar would probably do the job,’ Shannon says to me, as Rosie opens the gate of the old yard and starts to shoo out the chickens. They’re reluctant. There are about twenty of them, not including the clucky hen and her brood of chicks – she’s hiding them in a tangle of bushes and avoiding the evacuation.

The first hen out the gate is startled, perhaps by the warrior stance of Gianni to its left, and so it darts right. Lauren tries to corral it with her bamboo, shouting for others to back her up. I try to cut the frightened bird off before it runs into a row of carrots, but it keeps changing direction and I’m afraid of hurting it with the stick. More hens run out ahead of Rosie’s flailing arms. The boys are delighted at the opportunity to brandish their spears and swords – the chickens are hordes of goblins emerging from a dark forest in Middle Earth.

Shannon isn’t really moving. He stands near the entrance to the new yard with his bamboo horizontal and a smile that only I notice. The hens have scattered in every direction, and so have the people. Gianni and Franco are shouting instructions in Italian, German, English. I know Shannon is probably right and that this is a wild goose chase (or chicken chase), but the excitement is so infectious that I call to Aidan and Riley to go after a couple of hens that have darted their way.

After half an hour we’ve managed to usher one chicken into the new enclosure. It calls to the others, but they’ve disappeared. We’re not sure that they’ll even return to their original home. Mumbled concerns about foxes and mild accusations of poor planning are heard above the clucking of the lonely captive. Franco dismisses the fox threat and decides to try again tomorrow, perhaps just him and a bucket of food. It occurs to me that Franco would find a kindred spirit in Stefan. It’s not important to him that our efforts today didn’t succeed. We will succeed tomorrow, or the next day. Together they would walk from here talking of something else, the chickens forgotten because thinking of them now is not productive. Gianni, Lauren and Rosie look defeated, but the rest of us peel away from the battleground in high spirits. It’s the most fun we’ve had all month.

I’m alone in our room, and Lauren is moving about next door. I won’t miss her, I write in my notebook, but before the thought unfurls I’m distracted by the first deep breaths of an accordion.

I recognise the tune from the soundtrack of Amélie, and smile at the memory of a little girl trying to make her finger ‘pop’ out of her mouth. Yann Tiersen’s haunting melody slips into me like opium smoke. It loosens my mind and I begin to think differently about Lauren.

This is a quiet moment, all her own; one of the few in her busy life. Instead of resting or reading or watching television, she’s making music. We’ve been here nearly a month and it’s the first time I’ve heard her play. She plays beautifully. But she’s not yet familiar with the piece. The conversation she’s having with the music flows for a while, and then hesitates. Certain phrases repeat themselves, tentative, as though she’s trying to work out their meaning. When she’s sure, the conversation resumes and her expression is forceful, emotional.

I feel uncomfortable. Lauren has come across as so assured, even arrogant, in the way she lives this life. But now I wonder if it’s some kind of armour she wears against subversive thoughts.

There’s something I recognise, and am only beginning to understand. Over the past week or so I’ve lain awake long after Shannon and the boys have nodded off, a quiet truth nagging me as I drift between consciousness and sleep, a confession on the tip of my tongue that disappears before I know what it is. As I lie here now, listening to Lauren struggle with the melody, I begin to articulate it.

I thought I knew what we were looking for in Italy, that we’d recognise it and claim it and take it home in our backpacks to live happily ever after in the Adelaide Hills. But the closer I come to the life I think I want, the less familiar it is. I know what I’ve been hoping for – some kind of Eden – and together, Shannon and I have defined it. When we talk about it, we talk about planting and harvesting and bottling and going to market. We paint a picture of ourselves working together in the orchard or the kitchen, our downtime a shared meal with friends after turning a bumper crop of tomatoes into passata. But something has been left out.

When I’m alone with this dream of ours I think less about digging and more about making. Bread is where our dream and mine sit so comfortably together, but the truth that nags me might lie between the kneading and the baking, in those quiet hours when magic happens, when the dough rises of its own accord and my ideas have time to form. I know they’re there; they whisper to me before I go to sleep, when I’m stuck in traffic, when I should be paying attention to the presentation of a colleague. But the only time I nurture them is while the bread grows, while it bakes, while it cools on the wire rack and fills the house with its promise. Before I’ve even finished kneading, words are being arranged into phrases, rehearsed and edited within the rhythm of movement that makes the dough elastic. As soon as I’ve washed the flour from my hands I start to write. By the time the dough has doubled in size I’ve written pages of words: fervent, crazy, soppy words; misspelt and shameful; honest and bare; stupid, senseless, experimental words that can be anything because they will be nothing. They dwell only in these quiet moments, and no one will ever read them. I’ve always thought that was enough.

I’m worried that I might lose something precious if I stay here listening to Lauren’s lament for much longer, but my face is wet and my eyes swollen. I can’t leave. The more I think about her, the more I feel a mirror is being held up for me to peer into, that some possible future is being foretold. It’s not one I want to run to.

She plays her last note. She’s been interrupted, so it hangs in the air, expectant, and we’re both left with the unfinished song playing over in our heads.

Lauren is leaving today – a trip home to England. Her last instruction to us is to weed the garden bed that borders the footpath down to the restaurant. The boys are helping, and we’re taking it easy, talking about our own departure – it feels long overdue.

‘Does that mean we won’t get to go to Stromboli?’ Aidan asks. Since it disappeared behind the summer haze, we thought he’d forgotten about the volcano. We almost had.

‘I’m afraid it does, mate,’ Shannon says.

‘It’s not going anywhere,’ I say. ‘Maybe you’ll come back and climb it when you’re older.’

‘Maybe,’ he says, and I wonder if this will be a dream he carries with him, or if it will be put aside.

Gianni starts up the van not far from where we’re digging. We turn to see Lauren bringing her bags from the house. She’s animated and excited, smiling more than I’ve seen her smile since we got here. She sees us, gives the bags to Gianni and runs over.

‘It was good to meet you, enjoy the rest of your trip.’

No more, or less, than that. We watch her skip back towards the van and I feel happy for her. I don’t really care anymore that we’re an afterthought – why should we be more than that? Just because she’s part of our journey, doesn’t mean we have to be part of hers. Before she gets to the van she turns, and, walking backwards, waves her hand.

‘Thanks for all your great work,’ she says. ‘It’s made a huge difference.’