Piedmont

(Look after your nails and don’t be afraid to paint them pink)

Bells ring constantly in Venice, and eventually we stopped hearing them. But on our last night I was woken at midnight by the sonorous tone of the Marangona, the only survivor of five original bells housed in the campanile, or bell tower, of San Marco. Historically, the Marangona was rung to herald the start of the working day, so I suppose it makes sense that I can hear it now – though I’m struggling to figure out how the sound could travel so clearly from Venice to Cessole, a small village in the north of Italy, not far from Turin.

Seven perfect notes call me out of sleep. When the last is nothing more than an echo in my mind I roll over and nestle into Shannon’s back. He’s warm and motionless, and I sink back down, into the glassy green. When I look at my feet, they’re webbed, and I realise I can glide through the water with the stealth of a gondola. There’s the balcony, all darkness behind wrought iron, a blue sky undulating below it. If I dive down I can go inside, but when I do there is nothing. Marangona rings again, once, and I gasp for breath. Twice, and I feel Shannon shift in my arms. I open my eyes and hear the lesser bells of a local church, their song drifting down the valley and through our bedroom window. The message is the same. It’s time to wake up and work.

We groan and pull pillows over our heads to drown out the intrusion.

‘I think some spiteful monk’s rigged those bells to chime twice,’ I suggest, as Shannon swings his legs to sit on the edge of the bed.

‘Church bells with a snooze setting? It beats an alarm.’

How right he is. By the time the seventh note is sung we’re wide awake, and thoughts of coffee have replaced our dreaming.

We have our own apartment. It’s like a hotel room, with a double bed and two singles, a sparkling ensuite and a kitchenette. It’s attached to the main house and looks across a paved courtyard to a barn that has been beautifully converted into a bed and breakfast called Tenuta Antica, Old Estate. It feels wrong to be pulling on work boots.

Mauro is in the kitchen, and he shows us where to find everything. As at Il Granello, there’s a cupboard full of cereal for the wwoofers, and of course we’re welcome to help ourselves to biscuits. This is good news indeed. Our boys have recently begun to ask when we’re going home, but biscuity breakfasts should sustain them for another few weeks.

Pia comes in wearing a T-shirt that’s not long enough to cover her underpants. She’s still rubbing sleep from her eyes, and I wonder if she’s forgotten we’re here.

‘Buongiorno, good morning, how did you sleep?’ She’s cheerful and without an ounce of shyness. When the other wwoofers file into the kitchen there’s no sign that she feels she should be dressed otherwise. Pia picks up where Mauro left off, telling us where to find the yoghurt and the bread, that both are in the restaurant if we run out of them in the house. She apologises for the early start.

‘It is so hot,’ she says, ‘so we’ve been starting at 7.30 for the past few weeks to avoid the heat of midday. At eleven we stop – you will hear the bells – and in the evening we work for two more hours.’

I notice that she’s painted her long fingernails white. Yesterday, when she met us at the station, they were fuchsia pink. It was because of her fingernails, and her pretty sandals, and the cotton dress she wore to just above her knees, that we hung back for so long. When the car park had emptied of all likely candidates, and I began to panic that arrangements for this final farm might have fallen through, we approached her.

‘Yes, of course, I am Maria Pia. It is so good to meet you,’ she’d said.

A boy comes tearing into the kitchen in the manner of a Hot Wheels car that has just been released across a smooth surface. His volume is at maximum, and there’s urgency in his rapid release of words. He comes to a sudden halt against his mother, wraps both arms around one of her naked thighs, and the volume decreases. Pia is the perfect counterpoise. She strokes his dark hair and speaks with a quiet, soothing rhythm. By the time his older brother comes through the door the argument that propelled him is over.

‘This,’ Pia says to us, ‘is Daniele. He is four and can get very excited.’

The older boy’s face is stormy. She puts her arm around him and whispers something that makes him smile. ‘And this young man is Luca, he is ten.’

An older woman shuffles in, not because of any infirmity, but to keep her slippers on her feet. Mauro hands her a coffee, and Pia introduces her as Anna, her mother.

‘She speaks no English, but she understands a lot. You can practice your Italian with her.’

Three other wwoofers make breakfast around our induction. Cherie and Paul are a couple in their late twenties, from New Zealand and Australia respectively. They’ve been here for two months and will stay another. They’re comfortable and familiar, and they make Nonna laugh. Nicky is a young woman from the US, on her summer break. She has all the characteristic enthusiasm and optimism of her nationality and youth, but her buoyant chatter seems to rub against Nonna, who removes herself to the back deck for a cigarette soon after Nicky arrives.

When everyone has had their fill of coffee and biscuits, Mauro leads us to the vines on the hill behind the house. The others have been coming here every morning for a week, and they quickly disappear into yesterday’s row, each with a pair of grape-pruning scissors.

Mauro demonstrates what he wants us to do.

‘Why do you need to cut off so much?’ I ask. The ground is littered with juvenile bunches, dehydrated rejects left to bake in the sun.

‘If there is more than one cluster on a vine the energy and nutrients are spread thinner, and there will not be as much sugar in the fruit. It is the sugar that will make good wine, and so we choose the best clusters and prune the rest.’

Snip. A poorly formed bunch drops to the ground, leaving a more fortunate pendulum of green orbs to sweeten. Mauro hands Shannon his sharp pruning scissors and, with an apology, offers me an ancient pair of secateurs. They’re heavy, and the blades are large and round and black. They look like they may have been inherited, and for a moment I feel a romantic pull towards the image of myself pruning grapes in this ancient vineyard, with shears that have been doing the job for generations.

‘How old are these vines?’ I ask.

‘Seven years old. We planted them when we moved here,’ Mauro replies, his face full of pride as he looks across the neat rows leading all the way down to the road.

‘You’ve only been here seven years?’ I say, turning to scan my surrounds and noting the expanse of vines, the new house, the beautifully restored barn. They would have moved here about the same time we moved to the Adelaide Hills. They’ve been busy. ‘What were you doing before that?’

‘We both worked in IT. That’s where we met.’ Mauro lets out a small laugh. ‘I don’t miss it, but it made all this possible. This is a much better way to live.’

When I snip my first bunch it remains hanging from bruised, fibrous threads. There’s no bite left in my elderly shears – they’re gummy and good for nothing more than grabbing hold of a stalk to snap it back and deliver its weight to an open, sun-baked grave.

The boys have joined us for our first day on the job, but the heat isn’t conducive to play, and there are clearly not enough pruning scissors to include them in the work. Aidan disappears after only ten minutes. ‘I think I’ll find Luca,’ he says. But Riley hasn’t settled in yet and is reluctant to leave my side. While I make my slow way along the row, he crawls into its shade. Grapes at every stage of ripeness, from green to deep purple, become his crowning glory, and Riley becomes Bacchus, the young god of wine.

This is undulating country, famous for its reds, and the hills around me are patched with squares and rectangles and odd shapes filled with grapes just weeks away from full colour. But it’s even more famous for something else, and in the wide valley between this hill and the one opposite are swathes of hazelnut trees.

Bacchus emerges from his fruit bowl complaining of boredom.

‘Want to know something interesting?’ I say.

‘Yeah. What?’

‘See all those trees across the road and covering the hills?’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’re hazelnut trees.’

‘That’s not very interesting.’

‘No, but in a few weeks the nuts will fall from all those trees, they’ll be collected and ground, and then they’ll be mixed with chocolate to make Nutella.’

‘Really? Is this where Nutella comes from?’

‘It was invented here about two hundred years ago,’ I say. ‘Napoleon’s doing, really. He wouldn’t let the locals have as much chocolate as they liked, so they started mixing it with hazelnuts to make it go further.’

‘Can we buy some and take it home?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ I say, though really, I can see a lot of reasons why not, but it’s too hot to explain them all.

‘I’m going to tell Aidan,’ he says, scampering out from beneath his vine. I cross my fingers that Aidan has made friends with Luca and that Riley will be welcomed into a band of three. They’re starting from scratch, again, and are still in mourning for the loss of their friends at Il Granello. If I could speed up the process of friendship, or have any influence at all on its development, I would. But I can’t do much more than cross my fingers and hope they have something in common.

Hours pass and a bell begins to sound. Before the eleventh chime, Cherie, Paul and Nicky emerge from their rows to retreat from the risen sun. I take my cue and make a mental note of which row I’m in and how far down I’ve come. Not far, I realise. But it also strikes me that this doesn’t really matter; the frustration I might have felt at the start of this journey about a lack of progress, is absent. There’s no hurry, the grapes will ripen, they’ll be sweeter for my efforts, and the wine will be drunk no matter what. If it’s drunk in company then any flaws will be irrelevant. I go in search of Shannon.

When I find him he’s examining his vine and calculating which grapes will live to be drunk and which will die.

‘Time to knock off,’ I say.

‘I might just finish this row,’ he says, as I knew he would. I calculate he’ll be another twenty minutes, so I pull the useless shears from my back pocket. This is what I’m good at, what I enjoy: noticing that Shannon needs a hand and offering it. But now that I think about it, I usually manage to time my generosity just before the task is done. He’s always appreciative, but employs me in a way that drains neither time nor energy. I wonder now if he’s always recognised how fragile my enthusiasm is, and is doing his best to safeguard it.

‘Why don’t we work the same row tomorrow?’ I say. ‘This is nice.’

‘You’ll just gasbag the whole time,’ he says, grinning at me from under his hat.

‘Not the whole time.’

‘Then it’s a date.’

We’re at the end of the row when the church bells ring out a second time. Shannon’s satisfied and pockets his scissors.

Back in our apartment, the boys are nowhere to be seen. We assume the best, lock the door, remove all our clothes and turn on the shower – just enough hot to take the shock out of the cold. We stand under the fall of water, uncomfortable in each other’s heat, but greedy for some time alone. We stay until the steam stops rising from our skin.

‘What do we do now?’ I wonder out loud once we’ve both dressed.

‘I know what you mean,’ says Shannon. ‘It sounds like we’re going to be spoilt with time at this farm.’

‘I have a feeling we’re going to be spoilt with more than time,’ I say. Pia and Mauro exude generosity. After delivering us to our room and listening, in mild horror, to our affectionate account of the woodhouse at Il Mulino (brought on by an overwhelming sense of gratitude for a functioning ensuite bathroom), Pia sat me down and asked what we hoped to get from our stay with them. Would we, for instance, like her to arrange any excursions to other farms – perhaps somewhere that makes cheese? Were we interested in learning how to make bread, or maybe pasta? What days would we like to have off? And were we comfortable with the hours she and Mauro had arranged? We haven’t been asked any of these questions before. We’ve been welcomed and cared for within the means of each farm, but we’ve always known that the main reason we’re there is because our labour will make a significant contribution to productivity, and that without us, or others like us, our hosts wouldn’t be able to make their lives pay. There’s an ease here that’s unfamiliar, but very enticing. I resolve to look for its source.

‘Let’s see what the boys want to do,’ I say to Shannon.

Aidan, Riley and Luca sit side-by-side on an old couch on the back deck of the house. It seems they’ve got something in common after all. When we pull open the glass door, they completely ignore us. When we say their names, it’s as if they’re deaf. When Shannon ruffles Aidan’s hair to alert him to our presence, he elicits a sound that could easily have been directed at an annoying fly. So far unsuccessful, Shannon places his hand in front of the small screen that has bewitched our son. The disturbance seems to register with all three, as if they’re connected through some kind of gaming telepathy and a threat to one might mean a threat to all. They look up simultaneously.

‘Oh. Hi, Dad, I didn’t know you were there,’ says Aidan. The truth of his statement is disconcerting.

‘Buongiorno,’ Luca says, before returning to his game.

Only Riley is prepared to pause. ‘I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘Will we be having lunch soon?’

‘Excellent question, sweetheart.’ At times like this I’m quick to praise even the most banal conversation. ‘Why don’t we go and find out?’

Just as Riley’s packing up his DS, Pia comes into the kitchen and sees Luca through the glass. I recognise the abrupt change in her demeanour – from easy to hard, relaxed to stressed, congenial to confrontational. Luca, sensing an increase in atmospheric pressure, shifts his weight on the couch. His right thumb keeps moving between A and B, and X and Y. His left thumb never stops applying pressure up and down, and left and right. But every now and then his eyes leave the screen to assess the situation. His mother is approaching, but it’s clear that he’s in the middle of a Pokémon battle, unable to save. Like children the world over, he’s prepared to risk the devastation of a parental storm for the chance to evolve or level up or whatever it is that happens when you press those buttons for long enough.

Having only ever seen this interaction from the eye of the storm, I’m fascinated to watch it unfold in another family. It would be polite to leave, but I can’t. I can’t even begin the sequence of disengaging Aidan from his device. I think I want him to see that his mother isn’t the only woman capable of going from docile to demented in under ten seconds when in competition with a screen.

Pia stands over Luca now, words spilling from her that are identical in tone to words that have spilled from me so often. Just like Aidan, Luca responds with negotiation rather than aggression, his thumbs never slowing, his eyes flicking up and down between the screen and his mum.

I register a slight increase in Pia’s volume, a precursor to real trouble. Then suddenly, Luca is done. He smiles – a sure sign he managed to evolve and save – and closes his DS. Pia knows that this was a photo finish, that the winner isn’t clear, and the race will be run again and again. I can see it in the deep breath she takes and the slump of her shoulders when she exhales. Then she notices me and sees a fellow sufferer. We both turn our gaze on Aidan, who is still, outrageously, absorbed in his other world. But I only have to say his name in that way that summarises a thousand previous warnings, and he closes the lid, not at all confident he can take on two irate mothers, no matter how unreasonable their demands might be.

Lunch, it turns out, will be in half an hour. I’m welcome to help, Pia says, but not obliged. She makes a blue cheese sauce, and I put water on for pasta. Luca is sent to the restaurant kitchen for bread, and I ask the boys to lay the table. Pia and I talk. It’s the conversation of easy friendship, and I’m glad we’ve come to it so quickly. When there’s a pause, I turn to check on the boys – the table is laid, and they’ve disappeared. Shannon is nowhere to be seen either, and I realise that he must have slipped out before the storm. Pia and I are alone, which is perfect, because I have a favour to ask.

‘Pia, do you know where I could get my legs waxed?’

After four months I find myself in a state of disrepair that can only be fixed by a seasoned professional. It’s been a growing concern but I’ve been too sheepish to voice it at other farms, worried that my vanity might not be so well-received by the hardy, unadulterated women who’ve fed and sheltered us. Whenever I’ve attempted to secure the services of an estetista without their help, I’ve been thwarted by my inadequate Italian and our lack of transport. And so, as the weeks and months have passed by, the hairs on my legs have grown strong and abundant, like weeds.

Then I saw Pia. With her smooth skin and bright-pink fingernails, she bore all the hallmarks of a maintained woman. I knew my hirsute days would soon be over and every single one of my hairs stood on end – I must have looked like a hedgehog.

Of course Pia knows where I can get my legs waxed. She reaches for her telephone book and traces her finger over various numbers. Then she looks at me, really looks at me, from head to toe.

‘I could introduce you to my hairdresser too, if you like,’ she says.

‘I don’t think our gelato budget can cover a haircut as well as a wax.’

‘Okay,’ she says, laughing. ‘I will call the beautician for you. And if you ever want to use my hair dryer, you are very welcome.’

~

I’m on a bus to the nearby village of Bubbio for a little weeding and pruning of my own.

Bubbio is only ten kilometres away, but the road bends this way and that, and the bus stops to let people on and off, accelerating jerkily and stopping without grace. It’s the first time I’ve been on an excursion without the family, and despite a growing queasiness in my stomach, I’m in no hurry for it to end.

Actually, I’m in no hurry for any of it to end – I love this unfettered, itinerant existence, and the challenge of trying on other people’s lives – but soon we’ll be home and on our own. I think Shannon is ready. I’ve been watching him grow into himself more and more at every farm we’ve stayed at; I think he’s found what we came looking for and can’t wait to take it back to the Adelaide Hills. Not long ago, this scared the hell out of me. I’ve been digging up doubts as fast as I’ve been digging up weeds, and remembering the joy on Shannon’s face as he stuck that pitchfork into his pile of compost at Il Granello almost broke my heart. But now, after watching Pia and Mauro, I think it just might be possible. After all, here I am, on my way to a beautician, a few hours of pruning under my belt and the tiniest hint of a hangover reminding me of a late night and good conversation – the good life doesn’t have to be exhausting and all-consuming.

We sat around the kitchen table last night drinking limoncello and grappa, while all four boys watched The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, dubbed into Italian with English subtitles. Actually, it’s an exaggeration to say we drank grappa – we really only tasted it, several times, just to confirm that it was undrinkable. We had already willingly drunk more than a few glasses of limoncello, which, it turns out, is a remarkably pleasant tipple if an Italian nonna is in charge of its production. Grappa, unfortunately, seems to be revolting no matter who’s in charge of making it, but we had to be sure, and so Mauro kept pouring it into our glasses. By the time The Sorcerer’s Apprentice had finished and the boys went to bed, we grown-ups had bonded in the age-old way.

The bus goes around another bend and I’m wondering if my breakfast will make an embarrassing appearance when I see the sign for Bubbio. I walk to the front of the bus, the doors open and I’m spat out onto the pavement. There’s a small park, a bench under a large, shady tree, something resembling a breeze. I have fifteen minutes before my appointment, and everything I need to compose myself is at hand. I sit on the bench and take out my notebook to record my new enthusiasm.

By the time I enter the salon I’m perfectly well, and my sense of wellbeing increases when I inhale the concoction of scents that are characteristic of such places. It’s sweet and familiar. Already I feel more beautiful.

‘Buonasera,’ I say. ‘Come stai?’ I’ve remembered to use the appropriate afternoon greeting, and my accent is spot-on. But once again I’ve misled a local into believing I can understand them. The woman behind the desk prattles, probably asks my name, confirms that I’m here for a wax, enquires about just how much hair I want removed from my bikini area. I realise the inherent danger of miscommunication in this context and say, ‘Non capisco l’italiano,’ employing a broad Australian drawl. Funny, suddenly I don’t feel so beautiful.

‘Non capisco l’inglese,’ she replies, and her prattling stops. She leads me into a cubicle, dimly lit with all the requisite paraphernalia: a massage table covered in a towel; an assortment of tweezers, heads down in a glass of ethanol; two small electric tubs with melted wax, pink and aromatic; and beside them a pile of cloth strips and a box of tongue depressors. She points to a chair and mimes the removal of my skirt. Then she leaves.

I know the drill. I hang my skirt over the back of the chair, place my shoes under it, climb up onto the table and throw a spare towel over my furry legs. I notice that the music being piped into the room is English pop.

I sit with my arms wrapped around my knees wondering if I’ve been forgotten. This too is part of the drill. It takes thirty seconds to remove a skirt or jeans, and even in winter, when boots and stockings extend the undressing, it rarely takes more than a minute. But I’m always left to wait, half-naked, for interminable minutes, wondering if I’ve been forgotten or if another woman, in another cubicle, has just had an entire eyebrow waxed off by accident, requiring all staff to abandon their posts and try sticking on individual eyebrow hairs with that special glue they use for false eyelashes.

The door opens and a new face appears. Her smile is enormous, and so is her hair. I like her immediately, which is great, because she’s about to ask me to remove the towel and spread my legs. When she speaks it’s in Italian, and we re-enact my earlier conversation with her colleague. She definitely asks me to do something, but I’m not sure what. I hesitate, not wanting to respond to a simple request for my name with the full exposure of my unkempt groin. We smile a lot, giggle even, and eventually the time seems right for the removal of the towel. She leans in, as if examining my inner thighs for skin cancers. I have so much admiration for these women.

Then a serious question, one that needs an answer before she continues. I can tell by the way she looks at my crotch and flourishes her hand in the space above it, like a game show host revealing ‘A brand new car!’ Not a sports car, obviously, more like a people mover. The flourish is tracing a wide, circular path – it’s sign language for ‘How much?’

Even when conducted in English, this is a difficult conversation. There are regional variations, colloquialisms and euphemisms. The exact dimensions of a double X, for instance, can differ from salon to salon. From one, I’ve left feeling skinned. From another, cheated, barely able to tell the difference between the before and after shot.

A pantomime of gestures and made-up words ensues. I’m encouraged when she recognises Brasilliano as a legitimate word, and hope that she’s heard the emphatic ‘no’ that precedes it. Just in case, I direct her gaze back to the undergrowth and trace the line I want her to take. She double checks, indicates I’m being a bit conservative and runs her finger a little closer to the mid-line, I blush, nod and lie back, not at all sure what will be left when this is all over.

When I board the bus back to the farm I feel positively aerodynamic. But I’m a bit disappointed I was so well understood. I don’t think I could ever actually ask for a Brazilian or a triple X or whatever else the removal of every pubic hair might be called – mutton undressed like lamb is a phrase that springs to mind in my particular case. But the possibility of it happening by accident, and the thought of Shannon discombobulating on the discovery, became more and more appealing with every patch of hair that was ripped from my body. Another unlikely dream – they are everywhere once you start to look.

When I get back to our apartment, Shannon is snoozing. I’m hot and sticky after the walk from the bus stop so I quietly undress for a shower. Not quietly enough.

‘I think she missed a patch,’ Shannon says.

‘What?!’ I can’t twist my body enough to see the back of my leg.

‘Just there, it looks like a landing strip, one of those grassy ones on a remote island.’ He’s hardly discombobulating, but at least he’s amused.

‘Pass me the tweezers,’ I say

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Pluck them all out. I’m not leaving this room until I’m as smooth as marble.’

~

The bells have been rung eight times, and are now on their second coming. We pruned the last vines days ago and have been allowed to sleep in ever since.

‘I could get used to this,’ I say, stretching and throwing a leg across Shannon.

‘Smooth,’ he says.

‘Glad you noticed, it cost at least sixteen gelatos.’

‘Better not tell Aidan.’

‘Definitely not.’

‘What could you get used to?’ Shannon asks.

‘This life. I reckon they’ve nailed it, don’t you?

‘It’s pretty comfortable,’ says Shannon.

‘But still productive. They seem to have hit a sweet spot.’

‘Five wwoofers probably helps, though at the moment I think they might be struggling to keep us all busy,’ he says.

On the first day after the vines, instead of handing out pruning scissors, Pia handed out spoons.

‘Today, we remove weeds from the vegetable garden,’ she’d said, brandishing tablespoons, dessert spoons and a couple of tarnished teaspoons. We all stood there waiting for more information.

‘Maybe we’ll have to eat them after we pull them out,’ Shannon whispered to Riley, whose weak smile indicated he thought it might be true.

Pia noticed our confusion and continued. ‘They are all you need,’ she said, giving each of us a spoon relative to our size.

‘Can I have a bigger one?’ asked Aidan.

‘If you have a bigger spoon, you have to remove bigger weeds,’ Pia cautioned.

Aidan decided his teaspoon would be adequate, but I had a sudden memory of weeding around the carrot seedlings at Pirapora.

‘Can we swap?’ I asked Shannon, his tablespoon suddenly far more desirable than my dessert spoon.

‘Not a chance,’ he said, no doubt having a similar flashback.

It turns out Pia was right. The area given over to vegetables at Tenuta Antica is small – more of a patch than a commercial concern. The beds are raised and mulched, and altogether it’s no bigger than the garden we have at home. So five people armed with cutlery made short work of the weeds. Before dinner, we stacked firewood.

On the second day after the vines, Pia decided that we should learn to make pasta.

‘It is not possible for you to leave here without knowing how to make pasta. I would not forgive myself,’ she’d said.

We spent all morning in the restaurant kitchen cracking eggs into mounds of flour and rolling the smooth, yellow dough through an electric pasta maker. Aidan donned a white hair net and apron and managed to make a sheet of pasta two metres long. It took three of us to guide it out. Like a midwife, Pia coached and encouraged, while Aidan fed the rollers and delivered the ribbon of dough into my waiting hands. His smile grew with the pasta, and when it was over, we had enough to furnish every layer of an industrial-sized lasagne. We ate the lasagne for lunch, and it fed twelve. Before dinner, we stacked firewood.

On the third day after the vines, we made bread, but not because it was required for the restaurant – Pia had that in hand. We made bread because we couldn’t, and Pia didn’t want anyone leaving her farm without this basic skill. All five wwoofers gathered in the kitchen where she gave us a choice of flours, counselled us on the importance of moisture and warned us not to over-knead.

As the heel of my hand pressed into the dough, I thought of Ulrike and the way she gave over her kitchen and her weekly bread, trusting, somehow, that I would work it out. Could she have known how much I craved the solitary hours of the process, even then, when time was elastic and there were no imposed schedules?

It occurred to me that Pia’s kitchen couldn’t have been more different than Ulrike’s. Certainly, there was a similar wooden table, big enough for a crowd, but this room was well-appointed and spacious, with light streaming in from large modern windows. Nothing was cracked, and there was certainly nothing solitary about making bread in Pia’s kitchen. When the instruction was over we each chose our flours, added salt and water, and mixed in our allocation of pasta madre. Each of us kept up a running commentary of our own progress, and it was impossible to find a rhythm in the kneading, or a quiet moment to think, for all the laughter and dire comparisons to Pia’s example. When it was time to let our dough rest, we were reluctant to leave the table and good company. Coffee was made, and an hour passed quickly.

By the time our loaves were out of the oven it was clear that one of us chose too many flours, one of us didn’t add enough water, and one of us over-kneaded. One of us made all three errors (it would be rude to say who) but the bread was still edible. My loaf was exactly as I’d hoped it would be, and as I inhaled its heated scent I imagined it cooling on my own kitchen bench, and the pleasure of taking the first hot slice back to where I’d laid down my notebook – one final quiet moment before the children came home from school. It was such a pleasing thought that I spread two slices with an extra thick layer of strawberry-chocolate jam, still warm from the pot, and gave them to the boys.

‘This is the best bread ever,’ said Aidan, clearly happy with my choice of white flour. ‘Will you make it when we get home?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Do you promise?’

‘I promise. Monday will be baking day, and maybe Thursday.’ The thought of two baking days every week made me feel a bit giddy, and I had to sit down.

Before dinner, we stacked firewood.

On the fourth day we picked sambuca. It’s the most minor ingredient in the aniseed drink that I was partial to knocking back during the late ’80s, and in English it’s known as elderberry. It felt a little more like work, especially as the sun rose and the berries became harder and harder to reach. We formed a line of production. One of us, high on a ladder, would snip bunches of ripe fruit from the tree and pass it back to another, who’d place it in a crate that would be carried to the large table in the shaded courtyard. The highest fruit were left for the birds.

‘Shannon, maybe you could help me with something,’ Mauro suggested after all the berries had been collected.

I was reminded how easily friendship has come to Shannon on this journey, how valued he’s been for his quiet and considered character, his knowledge, and his deep regard for the lives that have been shared with us. Shannon is shy, and often so short of words at social gatherings that his presence becomes peripheral. But since we’ve been in Italy I’ve noticed a flourishing. This life and the people it attracts suit him so well.

I watched as they walked in the direction of the vines, heads turned slightly towards one another, hands gesticulating, then I turned to the table where the others had begun picking the tiny black berries from their tiny crimson stalks.

The boys tried to help, for a while anyway, but they preferred plunging their hands into the bowls full of fruit – the berries like small ball bearings. Pia and I still sat together long after Cherie, Paul and Nicky had retired for the afternoon. We barely noticed the movement of our fingers for the movement of our tongues. Our boys hung around, eager to hear the stories in which they starred – their births, their schooling, their dreams (or at least the dreams we have for them – how easily I’ve construed Aidan’s love of Lego as an ambition to be an architect). They took turns to sit on our laps or lean against us, arms around our necks. Aidan, Riley and Luca kept to their own mothers, but Daniele slid off Pia’s lap to climb onto mine. When he reached his arms around my waist and rested his head against my chest it was the only time my hands stopped what they were doing. I accepted his gift with a hug of my own then I kissed his head like I’d seen Pia do on our first morning. I held his weight until every last berry had been picked from its stalk.

As the heat left the day, we stacked firewood.

~

Today we will work again. Mauro has ordered peaches from a local farmer, and we’ve been asked to gather in the courtyard after breakfast.

A tower of crates, full of fruit, stands beside a huge pot of water simmering on top of a gas ring. A long trestle table is set up with all manner of bowls and cutting boards and paring knives. There are two crates of peaches already dunked – their skins loosened – in the centre of the table. A bucket has been placed beside each chair. We take our seats, and Mauro shows us what’s to be done.

‘We will make peach juice,’ he informs us, ‘so all the fruit must have the skin removed and the seed taken out.’ He makes quick work of the first peach, and drops its slices into one of the waiting bowls.

Hands, some still stained from sambuca berries, reach into the crates to retrieve their first peaches. It’s a stickier job than yesterday – the fruit is ripe and juice runs down our arms and drips off the edges of the table. All four boys play table soccer nearby, stopping every now and then to pilfer segments of fruit, not interested in helping.

We each have our own process and rhythm, and soon the first bowls are full. Mauro takes them to the restaurant kitchen and empties them into an old wooden press. For the first hour it’s a convivial hive of activity. We talk about our travels and other farms, about the jobs we left behind and the ones we hope to do when we return. We all agree that this is the way we should live, that working together to produce peach juice is surely the attainment of good-life nirvana.

In the second hour, those who spurned latex gloves at the start are feeling the sting of acid in tiny cuts. Backs start to ache and fingers to stiffen. The bowls we fill are constantly returned, the empty crates are removed and replaced. The peaches keep coming like a biblical plague. As each hour passes we eat fewer peaches, speak less, go to the toilet more often. Cherie asks how many crates are left, and Mauro says twenty-five. After four hours, she and Paul leave the table. The church bells are ringing, and it’s time for us wwoofers to clock off. But Shannon and I stay – Mauro and Pia will never get through it all if we don’t. We work through the afternoon, and nirvana gives way to something a bit more realistic, but nonetheless satisfying.

I take a peach from the crate, slip it out of its skin and slit it down the middle. I twist and pull the two halves apart, one holds tighter to the seed than the other. My nail reaches under and levers it out, straight into the bucket on my right. I cut each half in half again, then slice it into a bowl. It took a while to settle on this procedure, but I’ve been doing it for six hours now and it feels automatic. I reach for another peach, but the crate is empty.

We look at each other – it’s like we’ve come to the end of a marathon: we’re exhausted but elated.

‘Now to finish the juice, if you have the energy?’ Mauro says.

We follow him into the kitchen where Pia is filling an old-fashioned fruit press with the last of our sliced peaches. When all the peaches are in, Mauro fits two semicircles of thick wood around a central pole, and pushes it down. The barrel that holds the fruit begins to bleed. Pulp and juice leak from the gaps and a moat around its base fills to overflowing – the dark orange nectar drips into a waiting tub. More weight is needed to extract all the juice, and Mauro piles on dense lengths of timber, then heavy cast-iron weights, the last of which has a thread to match that of the central pole. He attaches a long bar and, like a work horse, pushes it around the barrel. The pressing begins.

The kitchen fills with boys – their keen hearing must have picked up the squelch of peach pulp. We hand out glasses and let them catch the juice before it reaches the tub.

‘Depending on how it tastes, we might add sugar,’ says Mauro. But the consensus is that it tastes good. How could it not?

When the last drops have been extracted, the juice is bottled then put in a special oven to be pasteurised.

‘My tummy hurts,’ says Riley.

‘I thought it might,’ I say.

‘Why didn’t you stop me?’

‘I thought it would be too cruel.’

There’s no time to stack firewood this evening, and no need. We finished that job last night, and now Pia and Mauro have enough wood to fire their heaters all through the cold of winter. I wonder if they’ll recall us when the pile dwindles and the chill leaves the air. It feels like we’ve become the best of friends, but maybe it feels like that for everyone who comes here.

~

The family is leaving tomorrow to visit a friend in Switzerland, and we wwoofers will all go our separate ways. The table in the courtyard is set for a feast.

Mauro has made the first course and begins filling our plates with pasta roma. It looks like a simple tomato sauce, but tastes like so much more. ‘It is my specialty,’ he says.

Riley asks if he can have another serve and Mauro fills his plate. The satisfaction of pleasing a fussy eater is written all over his face.

The pasta is followed by Nonna’s roasted veal, which is followed by a crisp salad picked by the boys and me this afternoon. It’s only when we get to dessert that there’s a departure from the Italian habit of honouring good food and produce through separate courses. Trifle is Cherie’s farewell gift. It took all afternoon to construct, and when it came to the table it was a work of art, each layer of strawberries and kiwifruit so precise that it was a shame to disturb it. But disturb it we did, and now we ache with regret.

Night has fallen over the courtyard, and only the children have the energy to move. They’re hunting frogs, following their evening call and disturbing them in their watery hideouts. The rest of us are stuffed and stuck at the table.

‘How long have you known her?’ I ask Pia, of the woman they’ll visit in Switzerland.

‘She came here as a wwoofer, years ago, soon after we started this life, and we became friends, like you and me.’ She touches my forearm, which is resting on the table beside hers. ‘Daniele loves her. When she came, he clung to her like she was his mother. Switzerland is not that far, so we try to visit with each other every year or so.’

‘Do you think you’d ever visit Australia?’ I ask. I’ve asked it of others, but I knew it was not a real possibility. It’s too far and too expensive for near-subsistence farmers to even contemplate. But Pia and Mauro are not subsistence farmers, they’ve built this life on savings from good jobs, and I have a feeling they don’t need to rely completely on income from the farm.

‘Yes, of course. We’re thinking of coming in the next few years. Actually, having you here has made us think it is possible to travel with the boys, maybe to be wwoofers in Australia. But we have to wait for Daniele to grow up a bit. He would not make us welcome at the moment.’

This is our last night in Italy, and I feel like something is slipping through my fingers. I want to hang on to it but I’m not sure how.

‘We’d welcome you,’ I say. ‘Maybe you could be our first wwoofers?’ It’s a genuine offer, but even as I say it I don’t expect it to happen.