Our Italian vacation ends tomorrow. When we return to Seattle, work will be starting on our farm pad, we’ll be finishing the remodel of our kitchen, building two new greenhouses, and the planting season has already begun. Plus, it’s been such a mild winter, we should be able to start selling veggies right away.
Seedlings started in our absence
So far, we’ve visited five farms and had three very in depth visits to farms ranging in size from one to eighty acres. We’ve learned a ton. Yet what we’ve seen and learned has raised many new questions, and inspired many new thoughts and ideas. Small-scale agriculture in Italy is amazing. In many ways, it seems to offer a wonderful example of how small-medium scale agriculture can work in America.
Fava beans
But of all the things we will take away from this trip, what we’ll remember most will surely be the unfathomable hospitality of all of the farmers we visited. At every farm we visited, we essentially dropped in unannounced. Yet, each time, we ended up being invited to stay for a long lunch with their families. They took time to teach us how to cook regional specialities. We talked about cultivation techniques, vegetable pricing, labor markets, the Italian economy.
After lunch, we sat before the fire.
Before this trip, I honestly don’t know how I would have responded to a complete stranger arriving on our farm and asking a bunch of questions in broken English.
I do now.
Local Roots Farm 
It couldn’t have hurt that you arrived at the farms with an adorable baby, either…
Really lovely! Sorry you’re leaving Italy so early, but glad you had such a wonderful experience and learned a lot. Next week Rick and I are going to Salzburg to meet up with an American/Austrian farming couple that have a stall in the Thursday morning market. They are quite notable in the Munich/Salzburg area, and also have many, many visitors to their 35 acre farm, to find out about their farming techniques. Before they came (back) to Austria, they were farming in North Bend! Beth and Wolfgang Coppermayer, or maybe just Mayer. Not sure about the business name, but I’ll keep you posted. Their specialty right now is pigs and all pork products; evidently, their products are lusted for in the specialty restaurant markets of Munich. In the growing season, they also do a big business in greens.
Gute reise home. Tschuss! and Ciao.
Judi and Rick
Hi Judi!
Thanks for the note, and we’d love to hear more about your Austrian farmers. Enjoy the rest of your trip, and stay warm over there!
Siri
Hi Local Roots Farm,
Thanks for a beautiful snapshot of your trip.
I stumbled across your post while trying to find farms in Italy who accept workers on a slightly more committed/long-term level than WWOOF offers.
My partner and myself are currently learning to farm in Western Mass and as he is Italian, we would like to spend next season (2013) continuing to build our experience by apprenticing on a small or mid-size farm in Italy. We are interested largely in vegetable cultivation but also grain. We are committed to organic practices and would like to find a farm that has found systems that work for them for weed suppression, cultivation, and soil health or are experimenting with them. A family or farm that is passionate about cooking would be great too, as we are hoping to have a small restaurant or farm-table dinners at our farm.
Any information about the farms you visited or that you heard of along the way would be wonderful. We are hoping to work in exchange for food and housing or a small stipend.
Thanks and I hope you are having a great season!
Laura