Emilia-Romagna

(Don’t worry)

Most of the people on this train are headed for Bologna, but a few get off with us at Pianoro.They soon disperse, and we’re left alone at the station. We find a bench with a view of the car park and get out the sandwiches we made before leaving Lucca. They’ve gone soggy in the heat, and so have we.

There’s a distinct lack of enthusiasm for this next farm. We grew accustomed to the comforts of our apartment and our lazy routines, and I’m suffering from what feels like the depression of an unrequited love. It’s absurd, I know, but Lucca stirred up desire and made me weep, how else can I describe it? Aidan and Riley have tried to negotiate a revision of our rules of engagement with other children – if they are annoying or too bossy the boys want permission to employ avoidance tactics. Ideally this would involve long hours in our room with their DSs, but they’re also willing to hang out with us, as long as they don’t have to do too much work. We’ve said we’ll think about it. Shannon and I are nervous that a difficult experience on this farm will bring a chorus of dissent, and agitation to move on or go home. We can’t afford to move on, and we don’t want to go home. But our month in Calabria has made us wary and raised questions about what this journey means for the boys – and, if I’m honest, what it means for me.

I’m mid-thought and mid-sandwich when a tired-looking Subaru drives into the empty car park. Two young women get out, go around to the back and open the boot. The driver, a woman not much younger than me, helps them to drag out their packs, embracing them in turn and smiling with such affection that I can only assume they’re family.

I must be staring. The woman sees me and waves.

‘Do you think that’s Elisa?’ Shannon says.

‘She’s not due for another twenty minutes.’

The woman is looking at us, waving again. She’s wearing cut-off denim shorts and a singlet. All of her limbs are long and tanned and smooth, her hair is short and practical, her smile and her eyes are bright and easy, and she wears no make-up or jewellery. She’s beautiful, but it’s of no consequence to her – Lucca in human form.

I put my sandwich down and go over, butterflies flitting in my stomach. ‘Elisa?’

‘Yes, you must be Pip.’ She leans in and kisses both my cheeks. Then she introduces me to the young women who are struggling to shoulder their heavy packs.

‘They have been with us for two weeks. We will miss them.’ She smiles again, a broad smile that lifts the corners of her large blue eyes.

The women are American college students on their summer break. As one, they begin a string of high-pitched testimonials about wwoofing at Il Granello. ‘You’ll just love it,’ they say. ‘They’re the best, and the kids are so cute, and Henry …’ At this point there’s a pause and a giggle. I take the opportunity to call Shannon and the boys over with our luggage.

The road from Pianoro winds steadily up hill, past woods and the occasional farmhouse, and eventually into the village of Livergnano. There’s a uniformity about the buildings, and Elisa tells us that almost every house was destroyed towards the end of World War II. I try to imagine what a bombardment would sound like, but I have no reference point, thank goodness. We turn left and travel up and over a hill, leaving behind the main street and its faded war. A rough descent leads directly to Il Granello.

The road cuts the property in half – the house is on the right, the barn on the left and rows of herbs and vegetables flank each side. If we drove another fifty metres we’d be in the courtyard of a stone building as old and beautiful as any we’ve seen in Lucca.

‘That’s the old monastery,’ Elisa says. ‘The nuns believed God kept it safe during the war, but really, it was physics.’ She parks the car, but we wait for an explanation before getting out. ‘Missiles were launched from the other side of the escarpment. The trajectory they needed to clear the cliffs meant they landed just a few metres beyond the monastery. The escarpment saved it – though I guess God had a hand in its formation.’

We unload our packs and dance through the farm’s menagerie. Four dogs crowd in on us, countless chickens scatter in our wake and two goats manoeuvre around a pony for a better view of the new wwoofers. Aidan is trying to make friends with them all when he spies a more interesting creature beyond a fence.

‘Who’s that?’ he asks.

‘That is Pancetta, the pig,’ replies Elisa.

‘That’s a funny name for a pig. It’s like calling it bacon.’ Finally, he’s learning Italian.

‘We wanted her to be bacon, but now we can’t do it. We all love her too much.’

‘She’s kind of ugly, isn’t she?’ Aidan is crouching down now, with his fingers wriggling through the fence. Pancetta is small, standing no taller than thirty centimetres on stubby legs that barely keep her belly from brushing the ground. Patchy black hair reveals grey skin beneath, and Elisa tells Aidan that the bald patches all over her face are the result of sunburn.

‘That’s why we built her a shelter,’ she says. ‘Would you like to be in charge of giving her breakfast while you’re here?’

Aidan’s smile is as broad and bright as Elisa’s. She puts a hand on his shoulder and asks if he and Riley would like to meet her children. In that instant, we feel at home.

The farmhouse is large and industrial – three floors with bars on the windows and a look of benign neglect. Inside the heavy front door there’s a kitchen to our left and an all-purpose room to our right. At the back is a huge fireplace harbouring the remains of a fire – absurd, given the heat of the day. In the centre is a long table strewn with paper and coloured pencils and children.

There are three. A boy is hunched over a drawing, his face serious and intent. He looks about Riley’s age, and I recognise the same gentle quietness. A girl lies along the table with long, thin limbs. Straight brown hair falls either side of her delicate face, and when she looks at us, it’s with her mother’s eyes, large and blue like the Mediterranean. Watching them both is a small boy. He’s fair haired and blue eyed but has the same honeyed skin as his siblings. They fit together, these three. If Elisa told me they never fought, I’d believe her.

Elisa speaks to them in Italian, then turns to our boys. ‘Aidan and Riley, this is Lorenzo, he is nine years old. This is Alice, she is eight. And this little one is Gabri, he will be six years old next week.’ Gabri beams at her, Lorenzo and Alice offer quiet greetings in Italian. They are shy, seeking confirmation from their mother that they’ve done enough to welcome us. Instead of pushing them she guides us into the kitchen, where Romano and the other two wwoofers are preparing lunch.

Romano’s eyes are dark, like Lorenzo’s, and they twinkle. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a twinkle in someone’s eye until now, but it’s definitely there, below the thick eyebrows and above the greying beard. He takes Shannon’s hand in a friendly shake then bends slightly to extend the same courtesy to the boys. Finally, his whiskers are against my cheek.

~

In the early evening we help carry food to the table in the back garden. Wine is poured, a pot of pasta with tomato sauce is passed from hand to hand, olive oil is drizzled on fresh bread. We get to know one another.

Henry: twenty-one, dreadlocks, tattoos, and a ring through his lip. He’s studying Italian at a university in the UK and is here for six months to immerse himself in the language. The children hang off him like he’s a favourite uncle, and he never fails to give them his attention. After four months with this family he can tease and make jokes in Italian, and they’re all smiles.

Patti: American, older, retired, surprised she had the guts to become a wwoofer, and absolutely delighted. She’d never even grown parsley before coming here, but wanted to have an adventure. Her eyes glisten when she tells us how much she’ll miss this place when she leaves next week. Henry puts his arm around her shoulder and tells us she’s teaching him to play the ukulele. Patti says he’s a natural, and rests her head against him.

‘How long have you been here, Romano?’ Shannon asks.

‘Five years. This is our dream, but it took us a long time to find the right place. And it has taken some time to make it work. This house was almost derelict when we found it – no electricity and poor plumbing. We have fixed it to live in, so the owner rents it to us for a bit less.’

The children drift away from the table, far more interested in playing with a litter of kittens than listening to the dreams of adults and the detail of making them real. Henry piles up plates and goes into the kitchen to make coffee.

Romano and Elisa tell their story. They pass the details back and forth, each interested in the other’s interpretation of their life, as if it’s the first time they’ve heard it.

For the last four years, from February to November, they’ve hosted at least four wwoofers at any one time. Some, like Henry, have stayed for months and become part of the family, others, like us, have brought children and swelled the burden to five or six extra mouths. Henry brings a stack of small glasses and a pot of coffee. Without interrupting, he pours an inch of inky black for each of us then sits to listen to the story. Romano is describing their ambitions, and we recognise them as our own. The decisions they’ve made are the decisions we’re contemplating. I hang on every word.

‘We wanted to do something good with our life, and for the children, and we wanted to labour for something real,’ he says.

Romano and Elisa live entirely off the five acres of land attached to the farmhouse. Exactly the same amount of land we have. They grow vegetables and herbs and sell them to families at their children’s school, and at two weekly markets in Bologna – one organic and the other slow food. I can’t imagine how they make enough to cover all the costs of a family of five, let alone the six extra people who sit around the table today.

‘It is difficult,’ Elisa says. ‘For the first few years Romano had to keep working – he is a marine geologist so he was away from home for weeks at a time. But he was not happy and it was very hard for me, so now, just in the last few months, he has resigned and is finally a farmer.’ She has her hand on his knee and he gives her a look that acknowledges a long and emotional back-story.

‘How did you manage?’ I ask her. I’m thinking of all the things I’ve never done at our place and resolve to ask Shannon to show me how to start the ride-on mower the minute we get home.

‘I could only manage because of wwoofers.’

‘But wwoofers can create work.’

‘Yes.’ She laughs. ‘When we started this, I tried to be a perfect host. I thought the wwoofers expected to have their own bathroom but we only have one for the whole house. So we rented a portable toilet and put it in the laundry, and that is what the children and Romano and I used.’ Romano chuckles and Elisa pauses to take a sip of her coffee. ‘I would clean the house all over before they arrived – the windows and floors, as well as their rooms. And I would cook breakfast and lunch and dinner as if it was a restaurant. It was exhausting. The children were not happy, and less work was getting done because I was in the kitchen all the time instead of in the field.’ She smiles through the recollection, then notices the horror on my face and quickly reassures me. ‘I do not do any of that anymore, and we are all happier – even the wwoofers are happier. They want to be part of the family, and it is easier for everyone to relax if we share the work of cooking and cleaning.’

I want her to see relief on my face, but now I’m considering the logistics of eleven people sharing one bathroom. At least the boys will be thrilled when I suggest they take fewer showers.

~

Barking dogs and daylight wake us, but in the room next door the boys are still asleep. We steal a cuddle before rousing them then begin our descent to the kitchen. A whistled tune meets us on the landing of the first floor. It’s floating up from below and Shannon and I recognise it as that ’80s ear-worm ‘Don’t Worry be Happy’ by Bobby McFerrin.

Romano looks up as we enter the kitchen, the whistling stops and his puckered lips stretch into a grin. ‘Good morning,’ he says. He asks what we like to eat for breakfast, then points to where the muesli and cornflakes are kept. ‘We always keep these things for wwoofers, but we do not eat them ourselves.’ He dips a biscuit into a glass of black coffee as if to make the point.

Beside him, Lorenzo eats a wedge of cake cut from the sponge that sits in the middle of the table.

‘Can I have cake for breakfast? Aidan asks.

‘Yes,’ I say, and we’re both surprised.

The boys sit down next to Lorenzo and there’s a shy exchange of greetings in Italian. Then Lorenzo passes the cake along with a few extra words they don’t understand. They say grazie, hoping it’s the correct response, and each cuts a thick slice. But Lorenzo was hoping for more. He turns to his dad, and from their quiet conversation a single word escapes that stops my boys chewing.

‘… Pokémon …’

‘Lorenzo wants to know if you like Pokémon,’ Romano translates.

Avoidance tactics will not be necessary, I think, and I celebrate with a slice of cake.

By eight o’clock all five children are in the main room with paper, coloured pencils and a laminating machine. Aidan and Riley have spread the Pokémon cards they bought in Arezzo across the table, and the others are showing off their significant collection of handmade specimens. They won’t miss us while we’re working.

We follow Romano outside and begin our instruction on the morning routine we will inherit from the wwoofers before us. He shows us where to find grain to feed the chickens, the ducks and the guinea fowl.

‘Henry usually does this job, but it may be something the boys would like to help with,’ he says. Pancetta, he explains, gets the scraps from the white bucket in the kitchen – he will show Aidan what to do later. Baskets for collecting herbs and vegetables are on a shelf just outside the front door. When full, they’re stored in the cool-room beside the house.

This routine will barely change from day-to-day, but our afternoons will vary depending on the heat. Romano makes a list of the possibilities: collecting and hanging herbs, sowing seeds, packing vegetable boxes, pulverising dried herbs, mixing herb salts, collecting eggs, preparing dinner. He introduces every activity like it’s one of his children – he has a soft spot for each, despite the tedium and occasional challenge. Then he mentions the figs.

‘You are lucky, you have arrived at the same time as the figs.’ He looks down the road, which is lined with mature trees on each side, all heavy with fruit. ‘Easy money – I think that is what you say in English. We do nothing, and they grow. People will pay fifty cents for one fig. All we have to do is pick them and take them to the market.’

There’s a moment of reverence for the fig, but picking them will have to wait. We grab gloves and a few baskets, and head into the vegetable field.

Elisa, Henry and Patti each have their own row. Patti is shuffling on her bum, slowly filling a basket with silverbeet. Henry’s taken his shirt off, and I remember the departing wwoofers giggling at the mention of his name. Elisa bends, stands, bends, stands. As we get closer I see her cradling great yellow blossoms in cotton-gloved hands and placing them in a foam box. They’re zucchini flowers, butter-yellow and gaping wide at the sun. She suggests we harvest the zucchini, keeping the slender vegetables separate from those that are growing bulbous – they’ll fetch a better price.

As the sun climbs we search the rows for vegetables of good size and colour. Our baskets fill with zucchinis: dark green and light, long and round, with flowers and without. There are only a few ripe tomatoes, but the vines are heavy with potential. Half the cucumbers have shrivelled at their ends, but we pick them regardless. They’ll sell, though not for much. The eggplants aren’t quite ready, and neither are the capsicums, but there’s an abundance of silverbeet, and herbs of every description.

It’s hot work, and I’m disappointed my back is aching so much. I go over to where Patti is sitting between two rows of silverbeet.

‘The trick is to sit down and take it slowly,’ she says, reminding me of Ulrike and her raspberry canes.

‘That’s a mantra I could definitely live by,’ I say. She smiles and pats the ground beside her.

Patti shows me how to cut the silverbeet, and when we’ve collected enough for the market we start on the weeds.

‘If these weeds had their way there’d be nothing for the market,’ I say.

‘That’s why we’re here,’ says Patti. ‘But it’s good work, don’t you think?’

I have to agree, but then I look over to Shannon. He’s been trying to free a row of lettuces from the shackles of an interloping creeper and his face is overtaken by a scowl.

Romano calls from the house. The words are rhythmic and repeated. At first I can’t make them out, but Patti puts down her trowel and Henry unties the T-shirt from around his head, slipping it on in a single movement as he walks towards the baskets piled with produce. He picks one up, hoists it onto his shoulder and follows the chant.

It’s eleven o’clock, and this is the call to prayer. When we’re all gathered in the kitchen the ceremony begins. Romano takes the espresso pot off the stove and holds it above the first small glass. No one speaks. He slowly tilts the pot, and when the coffee meets the inner curve of the spout it hisses and spits. Its venom released, Romano relaxes and pours the coffee from a height, with the ease of someone who has done this ten thousand times.

The ritual over, our tongues relax in praise of the coffee divine. Stored heat rises from our naked arms and damp shirt backs, and when the children crowd in to show us their handiwork the kitchen becomes the centre of a party that none of us want to leave. This is our first mid-morning coffee, our first opportunity to talk about the farm with a bit of its soil under our nails. We drink slowly, and it’s only when the children have shown every one of us their favourite handmade Pokémon card and returned to their makeshift factory that we leave this sanctuary to pick the last of today’s offerings.

~

In only a few days we’ve become part of Il Granello’s rhythm. This might be what it’s like to live in a commune. I like it.

Romano is whistling again, the same old infectious tune. We’ve all found something to pick or pull in rows within earshot of the melody. I’m laying down a humming track, Henry is laying down the words and Patti is backing up the chorus. Shannon doesn’t sing as a rule, but I can see him keeping time in the dig-twist-pull of each weed extraction. Don’t worry, I’m happy. I feel the doubts that crept in when we were in Calabria receding. Right now, we’re doing exactly what we have been dreaming of, and it feels just right.

At lunch we all find a place at the garden table. Elisa and Romano are fluent in English, but their children speak almost none. They turn to Henry for words they can use with our boys, and Riley has learned to do the same (Aidan relies heavily on pantomime). When they’ve all eaten their fill they disappear into the garden shed and reappear a few minutes later with the litter of kittens. Pouncing on the bright spots of sunlight playing across the lawn, the kittens lead the children in an erratic dance.

Coffee marks the end of lunch, but not the start of work. On day one, Elisa told us they never work in the heat of the day. ‘It is a time to rest,’ she said.

‘If you like, you can go for a walk around the escarpment, or into the village. Or, like me, you can have a sleep.’ Elisa collects the empty glasses then catches my eye. ‘The children, I think, are now friends. They will be happy to play together.’ Her smile is one of relief.

‘Repose?’ I suggest to Shannon. We leave the children to the kittens and each other and retreat to our room.

Once the heat of the day has waned, we head to the herb room on the top floor of the house. Herbs hang in bunches from the ceiling like a colony of bats. Others are loosely spread over the surface of fine mesh screens resting on trestles. The air in this room is heavily aromatic and intoxicating, and I think for a moment that I’m still in an afternoon doze.

‘This is how we started,’ Elisa says, running her fingers through tiny yellow orbs of camomile. The smell stirs a memory of babies and sleepless nights. ‘But it did not work as we hoped.’ She reaches up to unhook a bouquet of dried oregano, the colony shivers as one, then settles as she removes her hand and her catch.

‘Dried herbs are not essential, so it was hard to get people to even stop at our stall,’ she says.

‘So, what did you do?’ I ask.

‘We noticed that when we took a few vegetables, just excess from our garden, people would stop to buy them, and sometimes they would purchase a herb salt or a dried bunch, but usually they just wanted the vegetables. So we started to grow more. It was hard, because we had planted so many rows of basilica and timo and cipollina and salvia …’ the words stop but her head keeps nodding indicating a long list. ‘We had to dig them up to plant zucchini and pomodoro.’

‘Trial and error,’ I say, wondering briefly about how Shannon and I would cope with failure.

‘Yes. I miss the aromatics, I would like to work more with them, but it is not what people want and we need to make money, so now most of our efforts are for vegetables.’

‘But you still have a lot of herbs. You must enjoy escaping up here in the afternoon?’ I say.

‘We still take them to the markets, but not so much. At holiday times they sell better. People buy the salts and packaged herbs as gifts. We are even experimenting with drying vegetables.’

Elisa motions us over to a chest of drawers. It stands almost as tall as me and as wide as a piano. When she slides out one of the drawers I see that the base has been replaced with more fine mesh. Spread across it are hundreds of pale-green discs.

‘Zucchini,’ she tells us. ‘We always have too much in summer, and they don’t keep, so they end up in Pancetta’s bucket and make us no money at all.’

Shannon and I laugh. We have our own love–hate relationship with zucchini. It grows in such abundance in our garden, and with so little attention, that for three months of each year it appears in almost every meal. We’re developing an intense hatred of it but can’t relinquish the easy success or the undeserved pride of seeing it thriving in our vegetable patch.

‘So what will you do with it all?’ Shannon asks. I can tell he’s going to put the answer away for safe keeping.

‘Package it up and sell it as an ingredient for soup when the weather cools and there are no fresh zucchini at the markets.’

‘That’s a brilliant idea,’ I say.

Shannon wants to know how the drier works, and the absurd flame in the fireplace downstairs is explained.

‘We capture heat from the flu and direct it into the bottom of the drawers. We have to keep the fire going very low all summer if we are drying this much food. As long as we keep the doors and windows open, we don’t really notice.’

I help Elisa to choose herbs for the afternoon market in Bologna then we all meet at the front of the house to pack the car with baskets of produce. Today she’ll take Patti to help, it’s her last night and this will be her last chore as a wwoofer. As much as I’d like to join them, only two people can fit in the Subaru with all the vegetables. I spend the rest of the afternoon slicing zucchini for the drier, while Shannon works in the field with Romano and Henry.

When we sit down for dinner I’m tired and aching, but my mind is calm. The vegetables sold well at the market, and Elisa can barely keep her eyes open. A relaxed smile plays across her face like the sunlight played across the lawn just hours ago. It’s a moment of clarity for me after weeks of ambivalence – they live a happy life, and a good one, by toiling for something real.

~

It’s Saturday. Our working day has ended with another long lunch and now we’re driving in a convoy of two through the hills surrounding Bologna. The quiet road winds and climbs, then a few cars come into view, then a few more. They’re parked precariously anywhere there’s space. We pull in behind the last car and spill out of our vehicles, each of us carrying a contribution to this evening’s feast.

Our shadows are long when we arrive on the hill, but it’s high and should catch another hour or so of sunlight. Twenty people stand on their left legs, their right feet against their inner thighs and their hands in prayer above their heads. Tree pose, it’s called. They’re a colourful contrast against the blue sky. Elisa, Romano and Henry immediately join their ranks. The children – all five – join a crowd of youngsters chasing each other on the grassy slopes. Neither Shannon nor I are confident we can maintain our balance on one leg so we find a place to watch from the sidelines.

When a young woman in Indian print approaches us I’m reminded of being at a show at the Adelaide Fringe and praying not to be asked to go on stage. She’s carrying two flimsy yoga mats, which she offers to us with some friendly Italian banter. Shannon’s reply gives our origins away and the conversation proceeds in English.

‘Please, join in. The poses are gentle so you do not need to know yoga. You are very welcome,’ she says, putting the mats in our arms.

We smile, as if this invitation was exactly what we’d been waiting for, then walk reluctantly to the middle of the hill and raise our hands in prayer.

From a distance, these hills are the rolling green of poetry. On our way here I imagined strolling barefoot up the gentle slope then lying back upon the cushion of soft grass to daydream in the fading light. On closer inspection, I realise that the green grass sprouts from the pale rigid carcasses of last season. It’s like armour around the new growth – effective armour. I struggle to hold my one-legged pose, and when I lurch to the right I’m forced to save myself by planting my foot on solid ground. I should have prayed for balance and a thicker mat. The thin veneer between me and the earth is no barrier to the spear of grass that finds the ball of my foot. I grind my teeth – this is no place for expletives – and move my mat a few inches to the left.

The farce continues through triangle pose and warrior pose and downward dog. Each is interrupted by a little dance of pain and a repositioning of my disintegrating yoga mat – it has so many holes that it’s beginning to look like it’s been crocheted. When I look over at Shannon he’s wobbly but his efforts are earnest.

We’re told to lie on our backs with our knees bent. I position myself between spears and indulge in a full yogic breath, as instructed. The mountain air is calming. Disobediently, I keep my eyes open – there’s nothing between me and the sky except for the occasional grasshopper. We all breathe in and out together, creating a pulsating hum as if we’re all parts of the same organism. I notice Shannon has his eyes closed and that his face is slack. What unexpected bliss to be on this hill in Italy, moving and breathing as one with all these good people.

We transition into a shoulder stand – first our knees come slowly up towards our heads, then twenty-five pairs of legs rise into the air in unison. There is total silence. We’re a congregation with our heads bowed.

But I’ve failed to factor in the slope, and suddenly my toes no longer point skyward. My legs won’t stay vertical, they veer towards my face, still straight but headed for the ground. I haven’t done a sit-up for ten years, and that night of belly dancing with Simona has done nothing to develop the muscle required to pull my legs back up. My shoulders lift from the ground (contrary to instruction) then the weight of my hips propels my whole body backwards. Instinctively I bend my knees and bring my arms in to protect my face from the spikey ground. I roll once, not quite like a gymnast, then twice, not quite like a three-year-old, then I do a kind of sideways flop that stops my descent down the hill but delivers a sprinkling of dirt to my open mouth.

I know I look ridiculous and a snort escapes me. It’s the sound I make when I’m trying not to laugh on solemn occasions. I can’t tell if it’s my snorting or the duration of the pose, but legs start to waver and some collapse. We’re separate organisms again.

Our instructor suggests corpse pose and a few minutes of meditation. Thank all the Hindu gods, I think.

It turns out I’m not the only one with puncture wounds and a rash from rolling in the grass. While we feast, we compare the damage done to our mats and laugh at the image of our earnest selves trying to overcome the grass and gravity. It’s not what we expected, not what the organisers planned, but it was fun and it was shared and we will all go home happy.

~

I can’t decide whether my favourite place on this farm is the herb room with its warm perfume, or this cool-room. I’ve just delivered my final basket of figs and am taking pleasure in the scent of groundwater steeped in stone, and the cool air generated by its evaporation – it’s been another sweltering morning. The heat has sped up the ripening of the figs and so we’ve spent the hours between our morning coffee and lunch picking them. It’s a delicate task, and each fruit needs the picker’s full concentration if the stalk and the flesh are to remain intact. None of us managed this every time.

As I bit into another damaged fig Shannon whispered with a smile, ‘Pip, you’re literally eating into their profit.’

‘I think of it more as quality control,’ I replied.

I’m sated, in so many ways. Sweetness lingers on my lips, and the neatly stacked baskets filled with fresh organic food give me a serene sense of fulfilment. Over two hours we’ve filled four baskets with ripe fruit, stalks attached. We’ve worked together and in tune, and this afternoon our baskets of food will go to market. It’s not so hard to imagine doing this in the Adelaide Hills. I wonder how long a fig tree takes to grow?

I meet Elisa in the kitchen. She and Alice are making pasta.

‘Grattini,’ Elisa says when I ask what it is. She’s made pasta dough and Alice is pulling off tiny bits and rolling them into irregular balls not much larger than grains of rice.

‘They’re so small. It must take a while,’ I say.

‘Not so long,’ she assures me.

My stomach growls at the thought of a delayed lunch, but then she joins Alice in picking off bits of pasta and invites me to do the same. I watch as one hand follows the other, swift and dextrous. The pasta is rolled between two fingers and dropped into a bowl. I do my best to mimic her technique, and the ball of dough reduces quickly. All the while Elisa talks, sometimes to me, sometimes to Alice. I can see Elisa as an eight-year-old girl, her eyes almost too large for her delicate head, looking to her own mother for confirmation and praise. There’s no doubt she received it, and now she’s passing it on.

I try to ask Alice what she enjoys most about growing food. So often it’s the boys we say we want this life for, but I’m not convinced they care that much. I know for sure they would choose junk food over an apple pulled fresh from the tree.

Alice looks to her mum for translation, then back to her busy hands. She shrugs, not sure.

‘It has been hardest for Alice,’ says Elisa. ‘She is very shy and does not always feel comfortable with strangers in the house.’ She bends to kiss Alice on the top of her head and Alice looks up and smiles.

‘But it must be great to be home all the time, the kids must love that.’

‘Well, I’m not really home; I’m in the field or at the market. During the summer I have hardly any time to play or even help with homework.’ She looks towards Alice with an expression of apology. ‘We all look forward to the winter. When the ground is frozen we stop hosting wwoofers and the children have us all to themselves.’

The grattini is served with fish and a tomato sauce. The tiny ballssoak up the juices and the effort involved is rewarded with the silence of savouring and then a clamour of compliments. Elisa passes all gratitude on to Alice, who beams. When we’ve eaten far more than our fill, the children recruit Shannon to a game of mosca cieca or ‘blind fly’ – we know it as ‘blind man’s bluff’. Lorenzo puts a hood over Shannon’s head and the bluffing begins. The children can barely contain their giggling to make the required calls. Shannon lurches at them, always missing, and always leaving squeals of delight in his wake. These drawn-out lunches are the summer routine at Il Granello, and I wonder if Elisa’s concern about the time she spends with her children is misplaced.

‘Would you like to help me at the market this evening?’ Elisa asks me while we watch.

It’s like being asked to the ball. ‘Of course I’d like to help, I thought you’d never ask,’ I say, and we both laugh.

When we lived in Sydney the organic market in Frenches Forest was our weekly dose of the good life. At first it was enough to just wander around with a cane basket and fill it with a bit of fruit and a loaf of bread; we went as much for the atmosphere as for the food. It was relaxed and colourful, and had none of the Saturday morning angst that met us when we walked through the sliding doors of Woolworths. But over a few years the market became a symbol of our growing dreams. The egg man would show us photos of his happy hens. The couple who sold bread would chat about how early they were up that morning, but reassure us of the pleasure brought by the smell of rising dough. The potato man always had dirt under his fingernails from digging up the spuds the evening before, and the mushroom man could never be persuaded to reveal the location of his gathering grounds. ‘What a good way to live,’ one of us would say, almost every time we got back in the car to drive home.

Today we’re heading for an organic market that’s held every Thursday in the parking lot of a school in Bologna. As we drive from the hills into the city, I can’t help thinking about what Shannon and I might take to market in the not-too-distant future.

We get there around five in the afternoon, find our spot and start setting up the marquee. The black asphalt is unforgiving. There’s no shade and no breeze, and the vegetables are sweating in the back of the car. By the time we’ve laid out the produce, we’re exhausted. Then the first customers arrive and Elisa becomes animated and welcoming, as if she’s just arrived at a party and hasn’t been working since seven o’clock this morning.

Everything we’ve picked over the past few days is arranged neatly across two long tables. Zucchinis are the dominant theme. When I take a turn around the market, I realise Zucchinis are the dominant theme at all the vegetable stalls, and I wonder how ours will sell. Small queues are beginning to form, so I take my place next to Elisa and prepare to be useful.

It’s harder than I thought it would be. My recent revision of Italian words for numbers and weights, vegetables and herbs, hasn’t equipped me for the rapid-fire enquiry coming from a stylish middle-aged woman in a black suit. She’s picked up a light-green, young and slender zucchini with the flower still attached; I remember picking it, and all its stablemates, just before Romano called us in for coffee this morning. But I have no idea what she’s asking. Is it the price? I tell her – I think – and point to where it’s written on the box just in case. She shakes her head, picks up another zucchini, the larger sort Shannon collected, and tries to explain herself with more words. I wonder if she can see my heart pounding in my chest, or smell the sweat that has just sprung from my armpits. Her words have disassembled into an alphabet soup, and all I can do is offer her an apologetic smile. It must come across as a grimace, because she suddenly leans back as if she’s only just realised I’m unhinged. Elisa comes over and explains my disability. While she gathers a selection of zucchini, the market-goer engages me in a slower conversation, her broad smile encouraging me to try. But I understand very little, and the resulting pantomime is holding up the queue. I pass Elisa a paper bag for the zucchinis she’s selected and my role is set. I become the bag lady, and customers throw me compassionate smiles but little conversation, for the best part of an hour.

When the early rush dies down I’m released to look around. I need something thirst-quenching, so I join the queue for the fruit stall. I use the waiting time to practise my request: due pesce per favore, two peaches please. My mouth is watering with the thought of them, and when I reach the counter I’m afraid my words will sound gargled.

‘Due pesce per favore,’ I say, perfectly. The response is a furrowed brow and a string of unfamiliar words, so I try a second time. Again I execute the line with perfection. This time the response is more widespread – words from behind me, words from beside me, more words and the hint of a grin from the young man who grows the big fat peaches. Third time lucky, I think, and I raise my voice in case volume was the problem all along.

‘Due pesce per favore.’

Volume appears not to be the problem. Peach man is laughing, the queue is laughing.

Someone in the middle of the queue leans forward to explain the joke. ‘The fishmonger is next door.’

‘But I don’t want fish, I want peaches,’ I say.

‘Pesca, you want pesca not pesce.’

I turn my flushed face to peach man, but before I can correct my request he’s handing me a bag with three large peaches, for which he only accepts the price of two. Then I hear more words from my translator.

‘He says, you sounded like an Italian when you asked for fish, so he just assumed you had the wrong stall.’

Something light and bright rises in my chest, and a small secret is revealed – I wish I was Italian. It’s a childish thought, and reminds me of wishing I was Olivia Newton John when I was ten. It was never going to happen: my voice was weak and my hair was dark brown, and even before the chubbiness of adolescence set in, I couldn’t have squeezed into the black, vacuum-sealed outfit she wore in Grease. Being Italian is equally out of reach, I know, but for just a moment a real Italian thought I was a local. I will hang on to this like a magic seed, and maybe, if I water it with Italian lessons and fertilise it with regular visits to Italy, staying with our new friends or, better still, in a beautiful old apartment in the centre of Lucca with nothing but window boxes to weed, maybe then I would actually become Italian …

The heat must be making me lightheaded and fanciful. I return to Elisa’s stall and offer her a peach. She takes it, grateful – it’s the only useful thing I’ve done since we arrived.

‘You know, Pip, if you stayed with us for six months you would be speaking fluently, like Henry,’ she says.

It would be as simple as that. But of course it wouldn’t. I take a bite of my peach and release the sunshine caught beneath its skin. When I’m rehydrated and sticky with juice from chin to fingertips I do the sensible thing and store the image of an Italian me in a cupboard at the back of my mind.

~

Elisa is crying. I can hear her in the bedroom below ours, her soft sobbing interrupted by searching questions. Romano’s gentle reassurance barely stems the flow of tears. Something about her life has overwhelmed her, made her fragile and uncertain – she’s scared. These things sound the same in any language. Otherwise the house is quiet: all the children are asleep and Henry is far away in a room at the other end of the second-floor corridor. We can’t help but listen.

Shannon and I don’t speak, we’re afraid our whispers will intrude. I’ve sobbed like this, and now I feel the anxiety of it like a wave in my belly. Since we arrived, the optimism of Romano’s whistled anthem has been reinforced by the daily joy of working, eating and relaxing with him and Elisa, and watching our children become more and more attached to one another. The dream I’ve had of the good life sits companionably beside the reality of Il Granello, and I’ve come to believe in the possibility of living it. Their example interrupted my uncertainty and propelled me back, like a pendulum, towards a good life of my own.

But now, as Elisa’s distress tires itself out, I hesitate. The satisfaction of a good market, of coming home with empty crates and a bag full of cash, is diluted by Elisa’s tears. I realise that the takings from tonight would have been no more than a day’s pay on the modest wage I had back home. At best, it would only come in three times a week, and they would have to deduct rent, bills and the cost of food for their family and at least four hungry wwoofers.

I feel the pendulum lose momentum, just short of the goal. I know I could reach out into space and bridge the gap – grab hold of the good life, tears and all – but once again I’m filled with uncertainty. As I did with Lauren at Pirapora, I’ve overlooked some deeper experience at Il Granello. I’ve focused too much on my own reactions to living on these farms – the physical discomforts and the emotional rewards. I haven’t recognised them as temporary, impossible to compare to the difficult and sustained routine of these women’s lives. I’m not sure I have either Lauren’s or Elisa’s virtues – their determination, resilience and strength of will. And there’s not much evidence that they suffer my weakness for sleeping in or my lifelong habit of putting off until tomorrow that which I could, in all honesty, if I wasn’t so lazy, do today.

I should talk to Shannon, but saying any of this out loud will give it substance and make it much harder to get rid of when I change my mind in the morning. And anyway, to say anything now would only disturb the delicate quiet that has finally come to rest on Elisa. It’s like a thin frost on the tender growth of spring, and shouldn’t be disturbed by anything other than sunshine.

~

The sun has risen, and I look at Elisa from under the brim of my hat. There’s no sign of last night’s turmoil. Romano, as usual, is whistling ‘ Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ , but now I hear it differently. It’s a secret message. It’s not for us wwoofers; it’s for Elisa. She is, as always, the only one not singing along, but she’s stopped her picking and is smiling at him across the rows of vegetables. There’s no sadness in her eyes. Instead, it’s as if she’s woken up to find herself exactly where she wants to be.

In the afternoon, Shannon builds Romano and Elisa a compost bay and fills it with waste – it’s his farewell gift. Every day at Il Granello, wwoofers pull out piles of weeds and grass that could be mixed with manure from the pony and soiled straw from the chicken barn to produce a rich, loamy compost that will help the vegetables to grow. It’s the staple of our garden at home and is curiously absent here. Romano is enthusiastic, and the two of them spend the afternoon working out the most efficient way to get weeds to the compost bay, and compost to the fields.

They talk a lot, often in Italian, each as enthusiastic as the other. From where I stand I can see the passion they have for what they’re doing, and their abiding belief in its worth. I can also see joy. They’re caught up, not just in this moment but the future it offers – some utopia where weeds don’t dominate and tomatoes grow faster. A smile erupts across my face. Shannon has just stuck a garden fork into the compost pile like a mountaineer sticks a flag in Everest. He’s claiming it, and I think he knows that it represents something that defines him.

What would I stick a flag in, I wonder? I’d like to think a well-made loaf, but it’s just as likely to be a glass of red wine on a table facing a cluttered street, in an ancient city where fragments of an aria or the notes of a trumpet can settle like seeds in my imagination. I shake the thought from my head: the two images are uncomfortably incompatible.

‘Coffee’s on,’ I call as I walk towards them.

They finish their conversation. Shannon laughs, Romano laughs. He puts his hand on Shannon’s shoulder and says one more thing before switching to English.

‘Coffee. Wonderful,’ he says. ‘Shannon is teaching me good things about compost. It will improve our systems, and this pleases me very much.’

Later, when the house is quiet and we’ve gone to bed, I lie awake. I’m thinking of Shannon and Romano, their shared labour and parallel dreams. Right now I want to stay and see how it all turns out, to learn Italian, to become close to Elisa and Romano and watch our children grow up together.

‘Every now and then I think about an alternative life,’ I whisper into the dark.

There’s no answer, but I know he’s awake.

‘Shan?’

‘What kind of alternative life?’ He sounds wary, and suddenly I’m not sure what I was going to say.

~

In just two weeks we’ve become woven into the fabric of Il Granello. Pulling ourselves out of it leaves us feeling unravelled. Lorenzo and Alice offer the boys a pile of handmade Pokémon cards. In return they’re given cards brought from home and printed in English. They all embrace, like cousins would after one of their regular visits. But our children may never visit again. From Riley’s and Lorenzo’s expressions I guess that they know this. Despite their shy natures and the barriers of language, they recognised each other and immediately felt comfortable. In two weeks they’ve forged bonds that would normally take months or even years.

It feels like this for all of us. We each have our own what-if scenarios – what-if we just cancelled the next farm and stayed here for another few weeks? What-if we moved here for a year, or indefinitely? What-if we jumped right off the deep end and committed to this good life with these good people in this good place?

That’s where it all comes unstuck. This isn’t our place. Our place lies fallow, overrun with grass grown thick and tall on winter rain. Our place is waiting for a commitment of some kind, and that’s the reason we’re here. We won’t have the luxury of just contributing to something good while others do all the worrying.

Another what-if, barely audible in the way of uncomfortable truths – what-if I can’t commit? What-if my good life is no longer the good life Shannon dreams about? What-if?

Elisa drives us to the bus stop and waits with us for the bus. Our conversation is stilted now. Only a few words are robust enough for final partings: sorry, thank you, I love you. When the time comes, I choose all three. I hear the laboured motor of the bus and turn to Elisa. Our faces, like our sons’, reflect each other. She comes close and wraps her long arms around me.

‘The children are sad to see you go,’ she says.

‘And we’re sorry to go,’ I reply. ‘If we’d known we were going to fall in love with you all we would have organised to stay for months.’

We separate but hang on to each other’s hands. ‘Thank you, Elisa, for all your kindness.’

Her large eyes shine, she nods and lets me go. Then she embraces Shannon and the boys with the same affection.

When the bus pulls up we’re all strangely quiet and reflective, you’d never know we were on our way to Venice for a few day’s holiday before the next farm. Shannon and I gather our packs, and I overhear Elisa telling Aidan that Henry tried to feed Pancetta her breakfast this morning and Pancetta charged at him.

‘She wanted you to do it, and blames Henry for you leaving,’ she says.

Aidan and Pancetta bonded over that morning ritual of the scrap bucket, and his face lights up. Elisa coaxed the same smile out of him on the day we arrived, and here it is at our departure – they’re perfect bookends to our time at Il Granello.