Marco's Farm

Letter #59: My first experience with WWOOFing and running into all the critters...

Gathering vegetables from the garden for lunch in Tuscany

9/22/23

On Monday morning, 7/24/23, I set my alarm to wake up around 8am so I could make it to my 11am train. About an hour later, I received a WhatsApp message from the first guy whose farm I’d be working on. He let me know he wouldn’t be able to pick me up at noon (which was his requested time), so asked if I could show up after 6pm. It sort of threw my day for a loop. I had to think fast—I was to check out of my AirBnB by 11am. Typically, I like to get a move on to the next place, even if that means waiting around at a cafe or something after I’d arrived from the train station or airport. But this guy told me there was no way to get to the farm by a taxi, and I had no clear indication what the town where the train station was located would be like, so I had no choice but to say in Florence for the day.

He stopped answering my texts and Marzia (the AirBnB owner) hadn’t been answering me either, so I waited in limbo to make a plan for where I’d leave my stuff for the day. I took a half hour to sit and meditate to help myself adjust to the change in schedule. Once I was finished, I felt calmer, and Marzia had answered my text, saying that no one was checking in after me so I could leave my bags in the room for the day.

I made breakfast with the remainder of my groceries, took a shower, then packed. I threw my laptop and journal into my tote bag, found another Ditta Artigianale cafe in Santo Spirito, and decided to dedicate the day to working on my newsletter.

I settled into a window seat and had another iced coffee and a slice of some sort of apple cake for dessert while I killed a few hours on my computer. Around 3pm I wrapped up and ran over to the nail salon to have my polish taken off. I’d be farming for the next 5 weeks and that sounded like hell on my manicure, so I took my nails back to their sad, natural state.

I trekked the 35 minutes or so back to the AirBnB to pick up my bags and take the bus to the train station. By the time I was on my way to Londa—it was about 5:45pm—I was disgusting. I’d walked all over the city sweating, commuting with my bags, and I was in dire need of another shower.

When Marco picked me up he wasn’t what I was expecting. He was short, with tanned skin, black hair cut into a mullet and a rattail, and drove an old Isuzu pick-up truck. I could sense immediately that he was the alternative type. If anything, he likely had good taste in music, and I was right—he had Bob Marley playing on cassette when I got into the truck.

We were both tired. He’d just finished helping a friend build something on another farm and I was beat from walking around in the heat all day. I did my best to express interest and make small talk, but he came off as quiet and reserved. It surprised me. I assumed that, for WWOOFing, I’d be met with excitement and a warm welcome for someone new staying in a farmer’s home and helping to work on their land. Even my previous phone call with him made him sound more energetic than he was demonstrating on our first day. Because of his low energy and limited conversation, I felt pretty awkward right away. But it only was Day 1, around 7:30pm at that point, so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As we pulled up to his house, I realized he was right in his text message to me that morning—there was no way I would’ve been able to get there by taxi. It took about 15 minutes—maybe more—just to get up the winding road and dirt driveway to his farm. It was up in the “mountains” (I’m still a bit confused about what is designated as a mountain after being in the Himalayas), so the driveway was rocky and rough, his truck swaying dramatically from side to side. There would be no way to enter or leave this place without a 4WD vehicle…

And just as his place felt quite remote from the town below, it felt just as rustic. It was an old farmhouse, of which he couldn’t tell me how old (because of all the additions that had been made over the years), but it was easily established several centuries ago. It was clear he didn’t take care to pick up any rubbish in the front. I’m a very clean, organized person so any unnecessary clutter—especially outside—drives me batty.

The inside was some of the same. Not super cluttered, pretty sparse actually, but a really cool, beautiful old building. There was a huge wood-burning oven in the center of the living space which he uses to bake about 40-50 sourdough loaves a week to sell in the farmer’s market in Florence.

The kitchen was also very rustic and simple, but had everything he needed, including the largest stand mixer I’d ever seen in my life (it was taller than me from the ground up). His kitchen was a reminder that you don’t need every gadget under the sun to put together a good meal. From what I could see, he used the same beat up pans, strainer, spatulas, cutting board, and only one or two knives to put together his meals. And they were FANTASTIC—more on that later.

He led me upstairs to my bedroom, a huge room with three twin beds. Yes, it was also rustic, but was beautiful. Super high, wood-beamed ceilings, the terracotta/ceramic tiled that I’ve come to love so much, and sparse, simple, vintage furniture. The windows looked out over the lush mountains beyond.

I sat my bags down and bee-lined it for the bathroom. The bathroom was also beautifully designed—he’d remodeled it himself. All the fixtures and tiles were brand new and perfectly complemented the rugged characteristics of the house. There was a stunning antique chest of drawers in the corner.

Images of the home

I nearly forgot to mention the strong smell of marijuana when we walked upstairs. It was like I was walking down the streets on New York! He explained to me that he’s been growing CBD plants (the legal cannabis used for pain management), having the plants distilled to a CBD oil to be sold in the market. It was more just a surprising scent to be hit with since it’s only become more widely accepted and de-criminalized in the past several years.

The shower was super refreshing. That was one of the sweatiest days of my entire year of travel, my oversized cotton tee refusing to dry from the sweat. 😑 I put on fresh clothes and headed down for dinner. Marco had been out in the garden watering. With the heat, the garden has to be watered both early in he morning and evening. I offered to help him that evening, but he insisted I go upstairs and get settled before dinner.

When he got back, he started cooking. I can’t say our conversation was free-flowing—I felt pretty awkward. I asked if I could help cut anything up for the meal, so I diced up some veggies. He is definitely the type that is VERY particular in the kitchen, commenting on how I was chopping. I’ve dated a couple guys who were like that and it’s pretty obnoxious, not a great quality in someone. Instead, it makes me feel like I’m walking on eggshells around the kitchen, afraid I’ll mess something up. But, to be fair, he put together an incredible pasta dish with a kind of noodle I hadn’t had before. We had fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, drizzled in olive oil that he makes from his own olive trees. Marco doesn’t drink alcohol, so wine would not be on the menu that week. His English was a little rough, and I speak next to zero Italian, so it took us a bit to understand each other through conversation.

At one point, he called me into the kitchen to show me that sometimes there are critters in the house…a small black scorpion darted around inside the porcelian sink. It had been hiding under the dish sponge. I recoiled in revulsion. It freaked me out. I had just arrived and was already being forced to face my fears of life in the countryside. I explained to him, the best I could, that I was irrationally afraid of spiders and scorpions, even if they are harmless. I told him I was working on overcoming that fear but asked for some grace because they really do scare me to the point where I can’t calm down. He laughed and agreed, and asked me not to kill any of them, a nod to the Vipassana meditation that we both had participated in. I learned he still practiced every morning for 30-60 minutes in order to improve his posture and prevent back pain later in life.

Once we finished the dinner we washed dishes—I offered to do them alone since he did all the cooking, but he insisted we do them together, with one person washing and the other rinsing. We stacked the dishes in the deep windowsill in front of the kitchen sink, the sill lined with terracotta tiles. It went faster to be sure, but I was feeling a little anxious, trying to be sure I was pulling my weight since this was my first WWOOFing experience. No such thing as a free lunch…

I asked what time we’d start work the following day. He said we’d eat breakfast around 7:30am, beginning our work day around 8am. We’d work until lunch time—1pm or so—then take a siesta when the heat of the day was at its hottest, and resume work again in the evening, around 6pm.

I headed up to bed and fell asleep relatively quickly. He goes to bed late—after 1am. It was nearly midnight when I got into bed, much later than I’d like to if I’m to be awake by 7am. Even though it’s hot in Tuscany this time of year, with the windows open there was a nice breeze, and, miraculously, these old stone houses stay relatively cool considering. I’d learn that many of these country houses have stone walls up to 1 meter thick—that’s 3 feet! So it’s no wonder wifi doesn’t always work inside, and how these houses can stay cool in the summer, warm in the winter. 

Speaking of wifi, Marco didn’t have wifi at home. He barely got cell phone service in the house. If he wanted to answer messages or arrange anything using the internet, he’d have to do so from outside, on his phone, after all the farm chores were completed. Which is why he often stayed up past 1am. It is such a foreign way of living to all of us in the technology age. We assume everyone has a smart phone and every household will have wifi. Luckily, my cell service worked well enough in the house so I could still use my hotspot to schedule my newsletter.

That night it stormed—A LOT. It was beautiful, roaring thunder and sheets of rain hammering down outside my open bedroom window. I enjoyed the break from the heat. I awoke the next morning by 7, but never heard Marco stirring in the other room. His room was right next to mine and the door remained closed. So I laid back down in bed until I heard him get up around 8:30am.

Was it a little weird to have a room right next to a strange man, secluded up in the Tuscan hills? Yeah, a little. But he had favorable reviews on WWOOF so I had to trust that business would proceed as usual.

He made a simple breakfast of porridge with apples and a pot of tea. We started working late, after 9am, once it stopped raining. I spent my time weeding the vegetable garden, a task I don’t at all mind. It doesn’t require any critical thinking and you can see the instant results of your work. The vegetable beds looked cleaner, the plants had more room to breathe. He grew tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, green beans, lettuce, and eggplants. Tons of variety, so I knew I’d be eating some amazing meals over the next week.

The biggest issue? The spiders!!! Some of the biggest I’ve ever seen, these creepy Italian tarantulas that crawled all over the garden and blended in the dirt. In the 6 days I was there I’d see a handful of these tarantulas a day, 3-8, but luckily never ended up touching any of them. One of them ended up in the house one night, alongside his friend, the scorpion, and sure enough I was checking over my bedding, the floor I walked on, and my boots obsessively the following morning. I definitely got better about seeing them, slightly less reactionary when out in the garden—but only SLIGHTLY. I really was trying to be ok with them, especially in their natural environment.

We went up to have lunch around 1:30pm. He made me a frittata with the leftover pasta  which was a brilliant way to use up the pasta dish from the previous evening.I cut up more tomatoes and shredded some beetroot for a salad. Truly, his cooking was spectacular—later that evening he made a creamy zucchini pasta dish. I was living my dream of eating pasta twice a day!

I can’t say the conversation improved much. It was a shame because I think we had many shared interests, but in general he seemed preoccupied and grumpy. I began to wonder why he chooses to even have WWOOFers when it seemed he’d rather be alone…

I went and napped after lunch, and we agreed to start work again at 5:30pm to make up for the late morning. I fell asleep right away, enjoying a good 1.5 or 2 hour nap. The combination of the big travel day, the late bedtime, and nightmares of scorpions had me exhausted.

That evening I completed more weeding (it’s oddly time-consuming, so at least my help allowed allowed him to focus on other tasks). I helped him water the CBD plants, him showing me a specific way of watering around the base of the plant and avoiding getting the leaves wet.

We had dinner—again me feeling like I didn’t know how to help him in the kitchen and so feeling quite useless as I waited for him to finish dinner. I tried to learn more about him during the meal—how long he’d owned the house, what he was doing before that, etc. He’s a trained economist that’s turned into a self-sufficient farmer that lives relatively off the grid. He lived and WWOOFed in South America for 2 years, and when he returned to Italy, he decided to buy this farm, now 10 years ago. He grows much of his own food and sells sourdough bread and olive oil at the market in Florence on the weekends.

I did learn quite a bit about gardening from him, but in general don’t want to write extensively about him. We finally had a breakthrough on Thursday night when he confessed to me that he was in love with two different (younger) women in the city, and I was able to ask more questions, giving him someone to confide in.

But up until that point I feel like I was just witnessing the sour disposition of someone prone to a temper. Even when we ran errands in town, he had a road rage that was incredibly off-putting. He didn’t seem like a happy individual, and honestly I couldn’t wait to get out of there and on with the rest of my journey.

We had a better day on Friday. I helped him get all the CBD plants into the ground and water lines laid down through the day. But I felt too guarded by that time to feel like we’d develop a genuine friendship.

By Saturday morning, since he needed to go back to his hometown to help his friends rebuild their farmhouses after a (very random) tornado blew through the town, I took the opportunity to be on my way. I was eager to see if my first WWOOFing experience was just a fluke and the balance opportunities would be better, matching all the rave reviews I had read about WWOOFing in general online.

He insisted I didn’t need to work Saturday morning before I left, that I could just pack. But really I didn’t feel like sitting around, waiting until we left at 10:45am. So I showered and packed, and then went out back to help him braid the stems of onions that he’d picked and allowed to dry, in order to prepare them for winter storage.

I actually LOVED this task. I’ve always been good at braiding hair, and who DOESN’T find the clusters of onions and garlic hanging in traditional Italian restaurants so charming?! I was happy to know how and why this practice has taken place for years. It keeps the onions from resting on one another and molding. Instead, they can be hung from the rafters of storage room and plucked down when ready for use.

We got into his truck and headed down to the train station. We bonded further over a myriad of other topics, from reggae to the recent legalization of psychedelics to be used for therapy, and pretty soon he was talking about what we could do when I came back to Londa—he hadn’t yet introduced me to Claudio, the corner shop butcher who also gaslights as a clown. Marco asked if I would return in time for his birthday on August 13th. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wouldn’t be reaching out to him again when I came back to Londa to work on a different farm in the end of August, so I just nodded my head in non-committal agreement.

Honestly, his sour mood lasted way too long during our time together, and I have little patience for sustained negativity. There is a parallel story that I will share in a later post, a story that helps me remember when to walk away from a friendship, relationship, or otherwise…

View of the land, sweet kitty Nina, our grasshopper indoor friend, dinner on the table, and me braiding onions

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