Anna's Farm
Letter #71: Back in Londa, east of Florence, for my final week of farm work. Tons of veggies and lots of sweet dogs.
10/23/2023
Anna’s farm was my third and final WWOOFing experience in Italy. My prior two experiences had been less than desirable (aside from the enjoyable work and the beautiful surroundings), so I as anxious to see how my final week of farming would go. Anna and I had exchanged some texts over the previous 5 months since I had first booked her place, so I felt we may already have a promising connection.
She picked me up at the train station that Sunday evening around 7pm, back in Londa, a small town about 45 minutes east of Florence. Already her greeting was warm and welcoming, and I felt like I could speak easily with her—she asked me a lot about my previous WWOOFing experiences. I have zero poker face so I spoke pretty honestly about the other farm owners I had worked with.
Anna spoke English incredibly well because of being married to an Australian and having lived there for 3 years with him. She affirmed that I shouldn’t have been made to feel so insecure about not being able to speak Italian at the last farm—especially if the listing had mentioned “English” as one of their spoken languages.
She drove us up to her beautiful farm—a place purchased by her parents as their country escape from Florence when she was a child. It had always been her dream to move back to this place full time and start a hobby farm.
She specializes in permaculture—'an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems.’ Her gardens are wild and varied, feeding off the surrounding plants and fungi to renew themselves season after season. They were lush and teeming with life, not at all what I was used to seeing in “monoculture” farms where the soil looks dead and bare once the crop has been harvested. She plants with the 3-sister mentality, an Indigenous American method of planting corn, squash, and beans together, because those plants will nurture each other like family. Anna found several plant combinations that would thrive in the 3-sister setting, and so her garden was varied and interesting to work with.
She grew a huge field of lavender with which she would teach me how to make essential oil, lavender water, serums, and soap. She had olive groves where she made her own olive oil every year with the help of her husband and some friends.
She has 5 rescue dogs, 1 mama goose, 3 baby geese, 7 chickens and a baby hare that she had captured in her vegetable garden. She would be releasing him back into the wild once he was old enough and strong enough to be on his own.
Within the first night I was already learning so much about caring for a garden—much more than I had in the past two places combined.
Anna pretty much runs the place by herself AND works a part time, remote job to financially maintain the farm. When her husband isn’t traveling for work or at the office in Denmark (where he’s based), he visits and helps her as well. But, for the most part, this endeavor is her own, and it is A LOT of work.
She’s awake by 5am every day and falls into bed, exhausted, at midnight every night. While it was fascinating to see how she ran this place—all the love, care, and dedication she puts into it—I realized early on this would not be the lifestyle for me.
That said, I enjoyed the work and was happy to alleviate some of the burden for her. I would help harvest the vegetables that were ready to be eaten—TONS of tomatoes, green beans, chamomile flowers, black cumin seeds, onions, eggplants. She even had a persimmon tree that wouldn’t be ripe until closer to winter. I’d help water the surrounding grounds in the evening, which included the rose bushes near the guest house, the rose petals of which she would use to make skincare products. I helped feed her 5 dogs the minced meat she picked up from the butcher every week.
We had the especially difficult task of feeding Luna, the dog that was afraid of ALL humans except for Anna. Luna would bark incessantly if you looked her in the face—even if you were anywhere near her line of sight. Every evening we would work on building Luna’s trust for me, both of us being very patient for this sweet, rescued mutt.
In the evenings, Anna, her husband, Steve, and I would sit around the outdoor table, enjoying an Aperol Spritz and munching on whatever was available that day. Sometimes leftover pasta from lunch, prosciutto, or steak that Steve had gotten from the local butcher. We always had a salad of tomatoes, homemade olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. It was at Anna’s that I fell in love with the creamy, sweet cheeses of stracciatella and stracchino.
There was little downtime on her farm. I’d get 1-3 hours of rest in the afternoons, but other than that, worked about 7-8 hours a day, including Saturday. Because I liked Anna so much and was learning a lot about maintaining a garden, I didn’t mind the lack of downtime.
For sure my favorite part was trimming the lavender bushes and preparing the flowers to be made into an oil. Their scent would linger on my hands all day—I never got sick of it. There were some SUPER creepy spiders hanging around the lavender fields so I definitely had a few freakouts—luckily, I wasn’t alone. When Anna had lived in Australia for 3 years, she eventually convinced her family to move back to the EU because she was too freaked out by all the poisonous spiders there. (She had a few scares with spiders on her pillow…in her children’s bedroom…). I was relieved to be working with someone that understood my irrational fear. 😅
That said, I never saw another scorpion and never saw any spiders in my room—a cozy, rustic stone room with a pull-out bed, private bathroom, and a fan. I opened up both the window and door at night and slept like a dream.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time at Anna’s. Her husband, Steve, had that perfectly dry Australian humor that I love, and it was interesting to see how they functioned in a long distance marriage. It was expanding to see this unique relationship lifestyle, and I could tell how much they still adored each other after all these years and after raising three kids—now all grown and also living in different countries.
Steve doesn’t like dogs and Anna has 5 dogs. Steve loves his job (and the salary), so lives alone in an apartment in Copenhagen. The sacrifices they make to be independently happy, but still function successfully together, was fascinating to me.
Anna was strongly-opinionated, so I found myself nodding along in agreement more than inserting my own opinions for fear of being “wrong”. But she had a mothering way about her and provided me with the WWOOFing experience I’d hoped to have all along.
Would I do WWOOFing again? No, probably not. I learned much of what I wanted to about having a garden, but in future travel I’d prefer to work remotely, spend money on accommodation, and be in control of my own time. After 5 weeks of living under someone else’s roof, I was ready to be off on my own again.
I still had another week left in Italy where I’d be heading back to Pari to stay with Julie and help her look after my new favorite puppy, Pixie.
Random things I learned from Anna:
Calendula can fix an abssess tooth in a dog and also a human.
If you buy a car in Italy without Italian driving experience on your license, the insurance is 1000 Euros a year. With 25 years of Italian driving experience, insurance costs only 300 Euros a year.
A dog’s prey is 37 degrees Celsius when they eat it—it is optimal for the dog’s digestion to have its food be that same temperature when they eat.
Dogs should eat in hierarchy of age to support leadership and pack mentality.
Keeping lots of green plants around the outside of a house keeps it cool in the summer, and, in case of fire, helps protect the house from burning so quickly.
Layers for permaculture growth: rotten wood first, then tree branches, soil, and finished with wood chips.
Chickens won’t lay eggs if it’s too hot or too cold outside.
Chamomile flower mixed with calendula flower is incredibly moisturizing and sensitive to dry skin.
Hey! Would you like to connect over creativity, self-growth, and problem-solving? Or just to have a virtual glass of wine or mocktail? Please book a time on my Calendly for us to chat! I can’t wait to see you. XOXO.
If you’re enjoying On the Road, please share with others who you may think would enjoy as well! As always, I love reading your comments and feedback. If you're not already subscribed, please click the button below so I can continue sending you weekly-ish stories and lessons while I travel. 🚙
Loved reading your post here and so glad this last experience with the farm work turned out so well! It's always so inspiring to witness how others are crafting their own lifestyles doing meaningful things. Thanks for sharing all the things you learned while there!