NOTO is a hillside village which was one of the many towns totally destroyed in the late 1600's by an earthquake. So its' buildings are about 300 years old. It looks like it sits on the southern coast of Sicily but you have to drive about 5 miles out to reach the sea.
The farm where I am staying is owned by Massimo, Janne (yonni), son Mattias (22) and daughter Sophia (17). It is mostly a citrus farm with a few olive trees thrown in. Fruit trees are abundant also but not in season right now. He has about 100 acres here set in a valley where 2 streams meet, flowing into one. It is very quiet and peaceful here almost like a garden of Eden. There are a few villas where tourists come mostly in the Summer to rent. I'm staying in one of the apartments used for rental. It is one half of the walkout basement to their house. It consists of a large room (bedroom), a fully equipped kitchen and full bath (no bathtub). As soon as 4:30 p.m. comes and the sun goes down below the peak of the mountain to one side, it gets very cold. Janne does not start the wood fired furnace that supplies heat and hot water until 4 p.m. And even then, the one very small heater in my room cannot possibly heat the whole place. So I am very cold most of the time. The down quilt on my bed is my saving grace.
Mattias is home from college until Feb. 1st. He goes to a university in Denmark. Janne is from Denmark originally and remains a dual citizen of Denmark and Italy. Being of Danish citizenship, Mattias gets all the perks and attends the university for free and gets 700 Euro/month living expense from the government. It's enough for rent and food. And he is allowed to attend college for 7-10 years under these conditions.
The whole family here is Macrobiotic. They eat no animal food. Except the wild rabbit we ate the first day I was here. Don't understand that but so be it. Janne and Massimo both are excellent cooks. The food is amazingly good even without the use of any herbs or spices. It is jaw-dropping to see the amount of food they all eat. And they are all very thin. Beautiful skin. Beautiful hair. And they all get along like they're not related at all.
The tasks I do here is: gather and carry with a wheel barrow as much firewood as I can find to fill a little hut for that purpose. Also I have picked lemons and oranges. I have pulled weeds out from between the stones in the walkways and fished out small round stones from the stream for Janne to use in her trench which carries water down and away from the house. But the biggest and most tedious of all is fixing the loose stones set in sand that serves as a driveway/parking area. This means I have to take a small flat-ended ax and chop up sand around the existing loose stones (about 10x12" ea.), add more sand and then pound it into the space between the rocks with the blunt end of the ax. Sounds complicated. It's not-just hurts my back like picking up olives one by one like I did in Carovigno.
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