Sustainable Living in Paradise:
Biodynamic Farming in the Heart of Tuscany
By Jaime Lewis
It’s early afternoon in Tuscany, and the fat tagliatelle with preserved artichokes from lunch are settling in and enchanting me into a mid-day nap. I will rest until 2pm, when the "get-to-work" bell rings and Poggio Antico comes back to life, producing biodynamic cheeses, pasta, bread, fruits and vegetables with a nod to the centuries-old traditions of the surrounding Chianti hills.
Not everyone gets such an opportunity to participate in the life and work of a self-sufficient Italian farm. But those who discover Willing Workers On Organic Farms (WWOOF) are introduced to flavors they might not have imagined possible. Today, after a morning of shoveling earth in the pouring rain, the flavors I'm savoring are sore muscles, warm woolen socks, and tagliatelle con carciofi. All three are delicious, and all three are on offer at Poggio Antico.
The secret to the farm’s success is cooperation. 35 people live and work here, each contributing to the biodynamic production of food and filling their niche, whether it’s milking cows, pulling weeds in the garden, baking bread, spinning wool, or selling products at markets across Tuscany.
It all started in 1976 at a bar outside the Venice train station. After serving drinks and inhaling cigarette smoke every day for too many years, brothers Gianni and Lucio decided to exchange the city bar for a country farm in Tuscany. Their guide was Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, whose writings advocated organic practices such as crop rotation and composting in concert with the rhythmic influences of the sun, moon, planets and stars. The brothers and their wives, Daniela and Sonia, were attracted to the philosophy of a self-sufficient farm in which "waste" begets abundance; in which their young children would grow up acutely conscious of the seasons and literally eating the fruits of their labor.
But it didn’t come easy. "We had young children and had never been on a farm in our lives," says Daniela. "We learned a lot in those early years...and we made a lot of mistakes." But with time, Poggio Antico’s vegetable gardens and fruit orchards began to turn a profit. Then the vineyards. Then the grains, cheeses, breads, and jams. Friends visited to join in the work, and eventually came to stay. After twenty five years, Poggio Antico is now home to eight families on 100 hectares. It boasts a small grocery store, an organic wool and knits shop, a full dairy, a mill and a canning center. It has hosted eager-to-work visitors since its inception, and I am the latest in a long line of those who have tasted la dolce vita on a real Italian farm.
My first morning at Poggio Antico, I am treated to yogurt, muesli, fruit, butter, bread, biscotti, caffe orzo (a roasted grain substitute for coffee) and tea - nearly all homegrown and homemade. As I savor each bite of whole-milk yogurt with hearty oats and juicy raisins, I think about how each element of my breakfast was either grown or produced within just a few feet of the house. How often in the United States have I witnessed (and tasted!) such an accomplishment? Probably never.
My arrival marks the beginning of the grape harvest. For one week, the music of shears snipping, grape clusters falling, and bits of conversation are heard across the vineyards. When the final grape falls into our baskets, we pose for a photo that I will treasure as a reminder of the community we found here amidst the vines.
Next we harvest kilo upon kilo of ripe, red tomatoes for making passata, a tomato sauce used widely in Italian cuisine, most notably on pizzas. Unlike American tomato sauce, passata is thin, without spices, herbs, salt or preservatives of any kind. It’s made by rinsing the tomatoes, checking for insects, boiling them in hot water, eliminating seeds and skins, and passing them through a mill to liquefy the pulp. I help bottle passata that will be sold tomorrow in the shop, fresh as can be.
Every morning, the farm’s few dozen cows and goats provide milk for fresh yogurt, butter, or one of twenty varieties of cheese. The animals are pastured during the warmer seasons, eating hay from those same grasses throughout the colder months, so the cheeses have their own signature flavor that is unique to these hills. "If you taste a true Piave from the Veneto, its flavor is very different from a cheese done in the exact same style from Tuscany," says Lucio. "It's a question of what the cows are eating: Veneto grasses or Tuscan grasses." I listen as Daniela makes mozzarella from cow's milk, draining the curds, melting them in hot water and gently forming the beautiful white globes by hand. I taste some straight from the pot and nearly melt myself.
During my stay, I harvest peperoncini that will be dried and chopped into spicy cheeses; apples, peaches, and pears that will make jams; squash that will be gnocchi on our plates that night; and beans that will be dried and conserved for the winter. As I perform these small tasks across Poggio Antico's production, the economy of self-sufficiency reveals itself more and more. Cream scraped off of fresh milk inspires homemade gelato. Tough rinds from cheese wheels are mixed into food for the cats and dogs. Tomato seeds and stems from the making of passata are thrown into the compost pile to enrich the soil for next year's tomato crop. The sun's bright autumnal rays supply the energy to heat water for my (much-appreciated) showers.
It becomes easy to see why self-sufficient living is often considered an ethical choice. There is something inherently correct about working with the earth's natural processes, rather than against them. To eat an untreated, unsprayed tomato in the bountiful month of September is to participate in the divine. To eat a greenish-pink "tomato" from under the fluorescent lights of a supermarket in February is a shame, or in Italian a peccato – the same word for a sin. Submission to the cycles of creation (and re-creation) might also inspire the kindness I witness in Poggio Antico's residents. As we sit at the table laughing and eating pizza from grains, cheeses, tomatoes and vegetables produced just a heartbeat from the table, I feel sure there is nowhere else on earth where people are so keenly aware of the seasons and of their fellow human being.
Some argue that the greatest gift to be had from WWOOFing is the learning experience. Some says it's the food. But for me, it is the sensation of being part of something ancient, sacred, clean, and true. No longer is “sustainability” a simple question of shopping in the “right” store, installing solar panels, or cycling to work. It is now a matter of wholeness inside and out, a wider perspective, and a fuller heart. More than anything else, that’s what I hope to bring with me back to the States.
Oh, and a bottle of passata. Because sometimes local is a state of mind.
Jaime Lewis left a successful career in orchestra management for a year of farming, eating and drinking in Italy and New Zealand. She is now a freelance food and drink writer in San Luis Obispo. Read about her odyssey at www.jaimeclewis.wordpress.com.
For more information:
www.wwoof.org
www.poggioantico.it
http://jaimeclewis.wordpress.com
http://steinerbooks.org
