Wwwoofing in Lombardia Again – Just Can´t Seem to Stop

Cassina d´Enco

As I´m writing this I´m sitting in the yard of a 300-year old farmhouse opening to the Italian mountains in the evening sun. My legs are propped up on a chair and the 7-year-old wwoofing host´s son Emmanuele is looking over my shoulder with big hazel eyes. When I look back and smile at him, he runs away and starts fiddling innocently with the water pipe as if nothing had happened.

If it hadn´t been for my good old travel mate Laurella I wouldn´t have been back here already, having in mind my last wwoofing adventure in Lombardia (remember Val Codera?) is only two months ago. But we really wanted to travel together again, and circumstances have brought us here together for a long weekend, this time south of lake Como, in a small family farm in the mountains around Canzo Asso.

Once again I wonder, even after already two days, how in the world people can possibly seem to survive on a diet based on sugar (the younger son Emmanuele seems to find no affront whatsoever in indulging in a breakfast made from whisked raw egg and sugar), coffee, and pasta. Welcome to Italy, my friends! If you can´t take it, you´re not Italian enough. But once again I´m amazed by how freely and openly everybody, especially the children, just chat away to us in Italian, knowing we don´t speak any, and just expect us to somehow understand anyway; which  works surprisingly well. Our Italian gets better and better each day, and even though I haven´t so much as opened an Italian learning book in my life ever, I now know how to say most basic things in my accent that sounds incredibly stereotypically mafiosi-Italian to me, but seems to work just fine since nobody seems to take offence in it.

Thoughts on farm life

Happily we pull weeds in the onion garden, accompany shopping, sit in the sun and string berries and enjoy the quietness and tranquility of this place.

What I like most about it is that a) you have time for lengthy chats and in-depths discussions that you mostly don´t have the time for, and b) that you get to know, once again, a very different lifestyle. Not only is it alternative (fully biological, including self-made soap and buying only organic items in the supermarket even though the way there is twice as long as to the normal one, and prices are up to three times as much as for normal goods), but also a totally different work- and nature ethics.

Could you live with your two kids and your 83-and 85 year old parents in a super-old stone cottage in the mountains, trying to make a living with vegetable garden, sheep, catering for tourists and making jam and sirups, driving each day 20minutes one way at least twice to the next village to get your kids to school and pick them up, not to mention music and sports classes?

The father of Christina´s two boys left the family when she was pregnant the second time, which was when she decided to quit her regular job as a supervisor in some agricultural production and take over her families´ old agricultura which she has been running since then.

Yes, she knows that her work directly supports her loved ones, and she surely doesn´t feel estranged from her work like some office workers sitting in front of a screen 40 hours every week typing in stuff for some big company they don´t actually care for. And yes, she lives a healthier life with less waste and better ethics than most of us can ever claim to be, including educating her boys in a manner that is considered valuable by most of our society.

But could you do it? Could you live her life?

Thoughts on wwoofing life

For the first time wwoofing I don´t indulge in idyllic fantasies how it would be living here, and imagine that I could be quite happy in this quiet simple lifestyle (yes, I admit, I still sometimes dream of living in some of my wwoofing places I was at and I´m sure in another life I could be happy there). I don´t idealize and I realize for the first time I´ve grown more consious to what I´d need to be happy, and that surely involves having some free time for myself, too, including hobbies, meeting up with girlfriends for champagne and wine evenings, making cupcakes, lying lazily in a hammock, not driving around all the time.

Yes, it´s beautiful, and healthy. But trade my life for here? Nope.

Especially not if there´s biscotti for breakfast every day.

Maybe I´ll break the rules and ask for some fruit for breakfast tomorrow. Bend the Italianness, ew!

Three days later…back in Berlin

One risotto-caused mental breakdown, some sunburned skin, more italian words richer and some more doing dishes and visiting wonderfully Bellagio at Lake Como and Como itself later, I´m back in the grey and loud forest of buildings that I call my home now (Berlin, I´m talking about you), missing the tranquility of being woken up by the chirping of birds and the simplicity of farmlife. Christina and her two boys really have grown on me, and when I close my eyes at bedtime, I still hear Christina´s Italian English voice in my ears. Nonna, talking to us in a few German words having worked in Switzerland when she was our age, and her husband, talking to us in a Swiss German that´s hard to understand but incredibly friendly and welcoming. When our trip neared the end, I realized that I was just starting to get used to the place. Yes, a long weekend is enough to get your head out of normal life, and see something entirely different, do everything once in another place. But after this time, when you just start to get comfortable and at ease around the people, their customs, their living, your plane ticket screams at you to get back to the real world. It was a great experience, once again, and I´m really glad to have been able to make this experience. Seeing how other people live is always interesting, and sometimes humbling.

Ciao, la Bella Italia! Once again. See you next time, ragazzi!

Now it´s your turn: Could you live the alternative life, outside cities, in rural or remote areas, sustain yourself, live the eco life? And would you buy fewer but more expensive organic vegetables (which results in you eating mostly pasta and rice), or do you prefer having a lot of vegetables in your diet, even if it´s bad quality and ethically not as correct as it could be?