Podere Vallari - Day 4

Ciao from Podere Vallari farm in Tuscany. I have now been on the farm for 4 days and its been a great experience. The scenery is what one would imagine in a movie...rolling hills of olive groves and vineyards, just 4 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, cool fall temps, great sunsets and sunrises, etc.

The farm is owned by Sigismund and Ursula Hadelich (google their son Augustin Hadelich, famous violinist). Sigismun is 64 and Ursual is 61, but you would never know it from their work ethic and stamina. They are organic farmers and use virtually no technology in their trade. We harvest olives by hand, bag them by hand, spread nets on the ground, trim the olive trees...everything is done by hand....it is quite impressive and hard work.

They take large quantities of olives to the mill roughly twice each month to be pressed into the best olive oil on earth. They also bottle and sell their own table wine each year from their vineyard.

Each day we have breakfast at 8am, work at 9am, short break at 11am, HUGE lunch at 1pm (their big meal of the day), work til dark, dinner at 730pm which usually consists of bread, cheese, wine, salad, etc., then talk until 9 or 10pm then crash.

They have been generous enough to allow me to stay in one of their vacation cottages - a tuscan style one bedroom cottage on a valley overlooking vineyards and olive groves. No phone, no TV, no heat, but a nice fireplace, and it has electricity. They have three similar dwellings if anyone is interested in visiting Tuscany, this is a great spot to consider home base. From here you can explore many areas as it is very centrally located in Tuscany and all of Italy really.

Yesterday we harvested 260lbs of olives, today slightly more. Its as difficult as any day Ive worked in concert production, but very rewarding and in scenery that is stunning. Every aspect of Ursula and Sigismunds life impresses me...they are organic farmers in the true sense of the word and making small batches of an amazing product and living just as one would imagine in Tuscany, very simply. Its awesome.

I´ll probably hang here another week or so as I am the only wwoofer http://www.wwoof.org/ right now and its clear they appreciate and need the help. If anyone is interested they´ll be harvesting until at least Christmas, sometimes into Feb....come help out and see Italy! Peace.