Springtime in Calabria

Ah, to sit and relax under an orange tree during the heat of the day. Watch the sunset over the volcanic island of Stromboli as it quietly smokes away. Take eggs from the chickens and at Nonna's lead the goats out past the olive trees to eat the fava leaves. Hike down the washout to the Marinella and cook sausages and fish right from the sea. Brave the cool Med and swim to the crashing rocks. A glass of wine with a splash of water, fresh homemade cheese from Nana, soprosseto, anduilla, zucchini pate, a rare homebrew beer, hot bread, and always extra virgin organic olive oil.

The food here is really good, mostly vegetarian, but delicious. When we do get the chance to eat fish, pork or beef, we do so like pirates, throwing ourselves into it.

We are working much as things get going and we prepare for tourists to arrive on the 15th. There is a large workcrew here at the moment: two carpenters and a mason from a neighboring village. Italian, Libyan, and Romanian. Also two cleaning ladies have arrived, one Argentinian and the other Italian. Us and the four other PiraPora owners round out the crew, and it will be a pretty tight squeeze to get everything done by said time. Besides moving boulders, chainsawing wood, burning bonfires and raking acres of grass, I have been given the task of fixing an ancient table, while Cade built a giant, rad herb spiral. The table top was shot so we looked around the farm and found an old painting on wooden planks that had lost its paint decades ago. The wood is olive and in two massive slabs. It came from an old church that was demolished 50 years ago. If the nails I pulled out tell correctly, it is pre 1820. And sitting out in the rain for decades has only given it the slightest bit of rot. So, now it is the top for the new serving table. It is almost finished and will look really cool when done. The carpenters here took a good look at it and finally approved.

We work six days a week about 5 hours a day normally. However this week we are working more to help get everything ready. This we will exchange for a few days off next week. So far on our one day off per week, which has been Sunday thus far, we have gone to the Marinella.

The Marinella is a beautiful little cove you have to walk to from the back of the train station. A well beaten path takes you down, down to the beach. About a 15 minute walk with a 3 year old. Once here we pop some beers, start a fire, grill sausages and bread, fish if we have it, and chill out all day. I guess the place is a bit more packed in the summer but so far it has just been us. This last Sunday I went swimming for a bit. The water is begining to warm from its long cool over the winter, and had I remembered my goggles, I would have stayed in for longer.

We love it here. Everyone is super cheerful and the view is postcard material. Our time is up here around May 15th. We will head north to Rome for a bit of tourism and then on to a horse farm in Tuscany that has accepted us for a couple weeks. Maybe a day or two in Sicily before we head north... we will see. Enshalla.

Hoping the best to all!

Ciao!