Thankful for

My friends. My family. My sweet babboo. Flowers. Trees. Birds. Bees and Honey. Ladybirds. Butterflies. Dragonflies. Teh halia. Teh C. Macha latte. Ribena. Clear fish soup. Yong tau fu. Anchovy pasta. Ice cream. Frozen yoghurt. Clean drinking water. My dragon boat teammates. My A-wires. My precioussss. The Internet. My digital camera. My MacBook. Massages. Foot reflexology. Swimming pools. Pebble beaches. Cinque Terre. Bologna. Perugia. Olive oil. The farm. Warm blankets. Warm socks. New Year’s Day. Stargazing. My golden ballet shoes. My green Onitsuka Tiger sneakers. My green tee shirt. My backpack. My haversack. Tokyo. Mori Art Museum. Hama Rikyu Garden. Snoopy and Woodstock. My butterfly double-happiness trinket. My worn out strappy heels. My little black dress. My other little black dress. My other dresses, black or not. My potted bird nest fern. My potted plants. The garden view. Gardenias. Peonies. Hugs. Chicago. Art Institute of Chicago. San Francisco. Crissy Fields. Yosemite. Redwood trees. Angsana trees. Botanic gardens. Swans. Squirrels. Carps. Grass. Orchids. Good weather. My tea-bag coffee mug. My big blue water bottle. My small purple water bottle. My yoga teacher. My blue glass pendant. My Signo ultra-fine pens. My job. My pink labbit. My orange bear. My glass chandelier. Lembeh Strait. Lionfishes. Nudibranches. Octopi. Glass noodles. Hot chocolate. My blanket. My pillows. Blueberry muffins. Eggs benedict. Grilled cheese sandwiches. Vitamin Water. Non-fat lattes. Cafés. Prawn noodles. Chilli crab. Wild flowers. Weeds. Cherries. Grapes. Raisins. Oatmeal and raisin cookies. Havaianas. Squid ink pasta. My jade. Sunblock. Sailing. Hot chocolate. Snowboarding. Powder. Hot showers. Rain. Scented candles. Long baths. Bubble baths. Berry tea. Japanese food. Sake. Sashimi. Ocha. Rice pudding. Milk pudding. Kimchi pancakes. Fried rice. Thunder tea rice. Tofu. Soya beans. Orange carrot juice. Durian. Road trips. Karaoke. Forests. Jungles. Secret swimming holes. Secret gardens. Blue skies. Big, long bear hugs. And the memory of a furtive wink and a smile.

Turkey Day in the heartlands

Joined Chweets and her friends for Thanksgiving dinner at Damian’s shop last night. It was my first traditional Thanksgiving dinner with roast turkey, complete with candied yams, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts, mash potatoes, and pumpkin and pecan pies. (I have the whole turkey feast thing, but it’s with family during Christmas, a recent tradition we started a few years back, I don’t recall exactly when, and it’s not so elaborate.)

Traditional, if you discount the fact that we were seated in a kopitiam (coffee shop) at the bottom of a block of flats next to a hawker centre and a playground and multi-function hall in one of the island’s heartlands. Still, it was a veritable feast considering what Dame was charging us. Lis, who trained at Le Cordon Bleu, also made cupcakes and cookies, which were to die for.

At one point during dessert, between the pumpkin pie and the pecan pie, Chweets pulled out letters that some of them wrote to her when she was in college and read them out. Letters from over a decade ago. When one of the guys apparently liked one of the girls at the table, and they are both married to different people who were also at the table. Hilarious.

At one point, Sash did bring up the origins of the tradition. No one really knew, other than the fact that it involved pilgrims (the people with the funny hat) and natives (the people with the funny headgear). From there, it very quickly went into “let’s celebrate with a feast now that we’ve got their land” humour. Heehee. Sorry.

Aside from the wonderful first time Turkey Day feast, something felt a little strange for me. I know Ade and Raj, and I’ve met the others before now and then. But they are more Chweets’ close friends, like they go back for years. So as good as the food was, as funny as the joking and chatting got, as warm as the atmosphere became, I wasn’t really surrounded by my really close friends (save for Chweets), and I kinda missed them. Still, first time thanksgiving dinner doesn’t a tradition make. Maybe that’s why it was a nice meal but without the big emotional reunion reminiscing thing for me. If anything, the dragon boat team’s traditional Christmas party ought to be happening soon, in conjunction with our fourth anniversary (livers beware).

Anyhoo, for a dinner on a nice balmy Thursday evening, it was a good food and delicious turkey. And it got me out of the office before eight — thank you very much.

Hope everyone had a good Turkey Day.

Orange and carrot and good

What a wonder drink this is, orange and carrot juice.

It’s simple, but happily chock-full of stuff that’s good for you. Like orange for vitamin C to boost the immune system and stave off the sniffles and other nasty bugs. Carrot for vitamin A to keep the windows to your soul bright and pretty, and B-complex vitamins to help combat the effects of dealing with those clients of yours day in, day out. If that’s not enough to put a skip in your step, the colour’s bright and cheerful too.

I can’t remember who introduced this drink to me. It was one of those times when someone goes to order drinks and just to make things easy, you say “I’ll have the same thing.” It sounded safe enough to say that, and I’ve never looked back since.

The only reason I can come up with for not liking this would be maybe not liking one of the two ingredients. But oranges, what’s not to like about oranges? Even pirates like oranges; they prevent the scurvy. Carrot juice, I didn’t like carrot juice before. I still wouldn’t order carrot juice on its own, but this, this is a winning combination.

A drink this wonderful deserves to be put in a gem-encrusted goblet of gold and served placed on a pedestal. But even in an ignoble takeaway plastic bag with a straw, it’s still all goodness. What a drink.

Now this is what I call “Hallelujah”

I thought I had the John Cale version. Dug through my back-up files from my old PC (that’s how long ago they are). Turns out they were mislabelled. Pity. It’s a really nice version. John Cale’s cover of the song “Hallelujah” was featured in the movie Shrek. But it was Rufus Wainwright’s cover that made it to the movie’s original soundtrack. It’s an excellent rendition nonetheless.

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah…

Rufus Wainwright – Hallelujah

You call that “Hallelujah”?

The TV was on last night and a commercial break came on. I wasn’t really paying attention — my attention was being administered to an attractive bunch of plump, round and succulent grapes — but suddenly a song caught my attention. I looked up and there was a commercial for the latest Il Divo album. Oh my gawd, Il Divo is singing “Hallelujah”. Say it isn’t so. But it was so. I didn’t need to know that; this is why I don’t watch TV much.

Il Divo is one of those operatic classical-pop crossover groups. I don’t hate them, I don’t really mind them, they’re really not bad and I guess they are kinda debonair looking. I don’t buy their CDs, but a lot of people do, if quadruple-, triple-, double- and whateverple-platinum album status are a gauge of these things to go by. They’ve opened lyrical opera and classical music (sort of) to a whole new target audience, I’ll give them that. They’re like The Three Tenors for a mass pop target audience. Or a Spice Girls with less bouncy songs and wearing crisp suits. Kudos to Simon Cowell for manufacturing this multinational (read: international sales, ka-ching) vocal group and making a gajillion-bazillion dollars off swooning women and not a few men.

But for Il Divo to do a cover of “Hallelujah”, albeit a Spanish one so it does kinda sound romantic without really knowing if the lyrics are the same, is a bit of a travesty. Maybe it’s just me.

“Hallelujah” is a song written by Leonard Cohen, originally released in his 1984 album, Various Positions. John Cale did an amazing cover version of “Hallelujah” which appeared on the 1991 Leonard Cohen tribute album, I’m Your Fan. But it was the late Jeff Buckley who recorded one of the best known covers of the song for his 1994 album, Grace. The power of the song is in its lyrics, but also in how it’s sung. More recently, Rufus Wainwright did a cover in 2001 that I like too.

By now, the song has gained enough popularity and everyone’s doing their own rendition (as is apparent above). “Hallelujah” is frequently used as the soundtrack in television shows and movies spanning a diverse range from indie films like Basquiat to blockbusters like Shrek, from dramas like ER, Criminal Minds and The Shield, to teen melodramas like The O.C. and One Tree Hill, just to name a handful. It was also on my all-time favourite TV series, The West Wing. Amen.

I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch and love is not a victory march,
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah 

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah

Raging down the river

Saturday. River Regatta Day 1.

Weather was nice. Looked like it might rain a couple of times during the day, but the skies actually held (it rained at the Regatta two years ago and that was not fun; hundreds of people cooped up together in the sheltered plaza was a few wet dogs short of miserable).

We had originally entered six races: 20-crew Mixed, 10-crew Mixed (Team A & B), and 10-crew Men’s (Team A, B & C). But because a lot of the races were scheduled too close to one another, the decision was made to pull out of the 20-crew and one of the Men’s 10-crew.

Also, not everyone would get to row too, and I think Coach was quite apologetic about it (because all this time he’s always pushed for everyone to go for at least one race to get the experience of it). He said “there’s no ‘I’ in team” at least twice, and “we are a team whether you are racing or not” at least five times throughout the day.

Since the 10-crew Mixed races were one after another, Coach was going to cox Team B, while Team A would be coxed by some substitute one of our team managers managed to arrange. I wasn’t in the race line-ups but I’d be the drummer for Team A, and Coach said I’d have to call for the commands. In a split second, I went from “Oh, you mean I’m not rowing?” to “Oh shit, I have to give the commands?!”

This race is a 350m race. Generally, the dragon boats start off with a “hard ten”, then “twenty pick-up” strokes, then “maintenance pull” until the call for “last charge” towards the finish line. In the middle of the “maintenance”, the coxon would call for another “hard ten” for a little boost in the middle of the race. It’s a short race that’s fast and noisy in a narrow river, and tends to be over before you realise it.

If I’m the drummer and I have to give the commands, that meant that I’d have to pay attention to the team’s rowing, the boat’s position in the race, call for the “hard ten” at the right time, and the last charge too. t would be highly embarrassing to call for a last charge too near the finish line. My back’s to the finish line so the only guides I have are the three buoys mark between the start and the chequered buoy.

There was a chance that one of the guys rowing would do it. They could, but it would just be a part of the formula as they would not be able to see the race situation. The other option would be that the guest coxon would call the commands. But really, the guy who said he would cox our boat for us wasn’t very cooperative at all. In fact, he forgot he was supposed to do it. We were out of the holding area into the loading area when we realised he wasn’t there as arranged, and had to send someone to run and locate him. And when he finally came, he coxed our boat but did it very grudgingly. I’m surprised the backpack rowers didn’t give him a whack.

Anyway, our race was a tough one. It was a mixed category, five teams including ours, but all the other dragon boats were strong teams and all men. And, men from organisations like the armed forces, tertiary school alumnis (the tertiary schools are very strong) and such.

During the race, I actually called for two “hard tens”. One of the guys wasn’t paying attention and thought it was the last charge so there was a minor confusion there, but I really had to do it. The first three teams were way ahead, but we were neck and neck with the team right next to us and we had to pull away. Damned if we were going to come in last.

In the end, I thought we came in fourth — I was ahead of their drummer, but it must be parallax error or that the finish line is crooked to the shore — but the results said we came in fifth.

Their time: 1.53.82. Our time: 1.53.97.

Anyway, there was some consolation. 10-crew Mixed Team B came in third in their race, but their time was three seconds slower than us. And Mixed Team A, though we came in last, were a little bit satisfied that we gave the all-man team of the Armed Forces Officers School a run for their money. Haha. They were this close to being beaten by a bunch of some girls.

The third race, the Men’s 10-crew Team B, was a good one. Coach was coxing and I was drumming. After drumming for so many races, I’ve kinda gotten used to Coach’s patterns during the race so that whatever I scream doesn’t interfere with whatever commands he’s screaming (remember, drummer = Anthony Robbins on meth with anger management issues, though my top priority is still to not fall off the boat). Even if we’re both screaming encouragement, it’s in synergy. For this race, everything went like clockwork.

Coach is probably the only one that can set an accurate pace. During the July race, he coxed the girls’ team and he was yelling the pace, which everyone followed, and we came in first in our heat. Whatever the team, girls’, guys’ or mixed, our strokes tend to be faster, which means each pull isn’t as hard or effective as it should be. Somehow during training, even when Coach is on our boat (our training sessions fill two boats), this doesn’t get rectified. Or maybe we are fast normally, and during races, we rush even more.

Anyhoo, we came in a close second in this heat, pulling away from our closest rival in the last minute, and secured a place in Sunday’s semi-finals.

The Men’s 10-crew Team C race was right after this. Coach didn’t even have to get off the boat, and some of the guys got out but some stayed put as they were in this crew as well. They may have been tired, but it was a really good race still. Men’s Team C didn’t make it to the semis (only first and second places move on, while third place depends on timings compared to other third places) but their race time was less than one second slower than Men’s Team B.

Sunday. River Regatta Day 2.

I came early same as the guys at 0930 hrs. The race was at noon and the girls weren’t racing, so they were allowed to arrive later (in fact, one of them arrived after the guys’ boat had left the dock). I was supposed to be drummer, but there was some mix-up. At least I think it was a mix-up. Apparently Coach mentioned I would be drummer, same as yesterday, during warm-up when he named the line-up, but maybe our captain didn’t hear it.

Our captain wasn’t in this team yesterday as he had to work. And today, Coach was rowing in the team too, so our captain did the mobilising the team. As he was yelling for the guys to line up to proceed to the holding area, he went “Where’s the drummer? Drummer?” And I was right there in front of him already waiting and all ready, and I said “I’m here”, but I was drowned out by his immediate “Bob! Bob, where are you?” And Bob comes running from the back, grabbing a lifevest in a hurry. I generally don’t question whoever’s in charge, though think I must have looked really dejected and crestfallen coz I saw two of the kids looking sadly back at me. Had no choice but to suck it up and put up a good face, and hang out with the team at the holding area.

Anyway, that was a really, really good race. It was so damn close. It was as though all five boats were crossing the finish line with the determination of the Chorus Line. From where we stood on the shore, we couldn’t tell who came in first, but Roy said it was our boat, and Roy’s a dragon boat veteran, so we all believed him.

And as the boys rowed in, Coach was smiling, beaming, so that meant he was happy, which means we must have done really well.

No one knew the results so we had to wait.

When the were finally put up, we were fifth. We were like “No way!” but except for the winner, which had a time of 1.46 seconds, the rest of the four teams were 1.47 with varying milliseconds. I’m wondering if there’s any way to get a more accurate method of timing than people with stopwatches as I’m imagining is the method used here. (Somehow I can’t picture those old fibreglass boats being outfitted with anything more advanced than a lightbulb.)

But it was a good showing by our team, especially since we have been receiving flak from the corporate teams who were giving us and several other teams grief; long story, but basically, we couldn’t race in that category and could only join the open categories. Coach was still satisfied, and we all went for an early lunch.

The River Regatta marks the end of the racing season, but unlike previous years, we’re not taking a break. Training resumes next Saturday, same place same time. Though we’re open to recruiting more rowers again.

It wasn’t until after I got home, showered, cleaned up, got into some clean clothes and sat down for a moment that it finally hit me. The realisation and sinking disappointment that I didn’t get to row in the race. I was really looking forward to the River Regatta coz I already missed last year’s. But I was so anxious about being assigned to call the commands for that first race, not messing up the timing was all I could think of. Then for the second race, I was all focused on what to yell and stuff like that, and then what to yell for today’s semi-finals (I had my choice expletives all lined-up and rehearsed), even though I didn’t get to be drummer in the end. But that’s small disappointment compared to realising that I trained all this time and didn’t get to race (and looking at the ones who did, there’s one I think I’m at least better than). And then shortly after, my mum tells me she spoke to my brother and he’s not sure if he’ll still have a job next week, which means I can’t go visit and crash at his place and go look for a job there myself, so there goes that plan (that, and that my brother would be jobless).

So this weekend turned out really good, but also kinda like crap, sort of.

Sformata di patate e verdure not-recipe

Here’s a recipe. Actually, no, I can’t really say it’s a recipe because I don’t have the exact measurements and cooking times, and other important details like that. Ha. I guess that makes this a not-recipe.

But if you cook, you can get the jist of it and can probably wing it. Otherwise, there are other recipes for sformata below. Oh, yes. This is a not-recipe for sformata, a hearty traditional Italian dish (I think it’s from the Emilia-Romagna or Tuscany region). There are savoury and sweet versions, but this one is savoury and using greens.

Sformata di Patate e Verdure

Ingredients
Potatoes
Kale or spinach (cabbage is okay too, and/or other greens)
Ricotta
Pecorino or mozzarella (a more solid cheese)
Lemon
Garlic, chopped
Nutmeg
Olive oil

Preparation
Wash the potatoes and boil them. Peel the skins off and mash them. Add salt and a little nutmeg and a bit of olive oil. Mix until the paste is homogeneous.

Boil the kale or spinach (or cabbage; boiling time depends on what veggie you use). Chop the greens, add the chopped garlic, add ricotta and lemon juice, grate some lemon peel in, and mix. Add a bit of olive oil and some pepper. And a bit or a more solid cheese, such as pecorino or mozzarella.

Line a deep baking tray with baking paper and put a layer of potatoes at the bottom of the pot and around the sides as well, saving some for the top. Put the greens in the middle and cover the top with the rest of the potatoes. Baking time is about 30 minutes at 160°C (325°F), depending on your tray depth and your oven, or when the top is nicely browned.

I know the instructions aren’t great, I’m writing from what i jotted down in my journal. But if you cook regularly, you can probably improvise. It’s really easy to make.

Or you could compare the preparation with the pros.

This Emilian-style sformato recipe for ham and cheese seems quite similar to the one the farmer made, only it’s with ham and cheese and not vegetables. Here’s another sformato recipe using leek. And one more recipe with porcini mushrooms (I love mushrooms, must experiment and add mushrooms when I try this).

Peasant food, please

The kitchen in the farmhouse wasn’t just the warmest part of the house, it was the heart of the farm, especially before mealtimes when all activity happens around there.

The furnace, a cast-iron sort, is in the kitchen and the heat goes out to the radiators in the different parts of the farmhouse. When the logs finish burning while we’re out in the groves during the day or in the middle of the night, the farmhouse gets all cold again.

It was such a novelty to put logs into the furnace. (Yes, I’m aware I found it fun because I didn’t have to trudge into the forest to chop down the tree, then chop the wood to store in the shed, and make sure there was enough wood for the whole winter. Then again, with the industrial age and invention of central heating, I think it’s a novelty for many urbanites out there too. Anyway, I didn’t burn off any fingers so that’s a good thing.)

I liked to sit on the steps in the corner that lead up to the rooms. The kitchen isn’t big, and does get a bit cramped when there are five people in it at the same time, cooking, cutting bread, making tea, or just passing through to the sitting-dining area. Sometimes, the dog and cat would be underfoot too.

I enjoyed watching that chaos. It was a good chaos, not the noisy, frenetic kind that gives me a headache. It was a warm, family-ish chaos. The people were new but the feeling was familiar.

And the homemade food that came out of that kitchen was incredible. It’s funny that two weeks on the farm and other than some group shots of us, I have no pictures of the food to show for. No photos of wild boar stew, rosemary bread, chestnut broth, walnut and kaki Christmas dessert, castagno cake, millet and spicy veggie stew, rosti and kraut, sausages and horse sausages, salami, parma ham, cheese, pecorino(!), risotto, gnocchi, sformata di patate e verdure, farmer’s homemade chocolate cake…

I guess I was really too busy eating. The only food shots I have are a salad and the cream pasta. Hah! The Italian peasant cuisine I’ve been gushing so much about and my only photos are a salad and almost macaroni and cheese. (Actually calling the walnut and almond and sundried tomato and ricotta cheese pasta “macaroni and cheese” seems insulting, so I apologise.)

Anyway, I’ve got some of the recipes. If you can call them that. Have not tried that many of them, though. Bugger. Blame it on work and no time. And it’s so much easier, and cheaper too, to just eat out. Also I can’t find some of the ingredients here (picturing myself at the market in the heartlands asking the “auntie” for fennel) unless maybe I try some of the more select supermarkets. Peasant food there, gourmet food here back home. Pfah.

Life on the farm

On a hilltop somewhere between Castiglion Fiorentino and Cortona lies a little medieval hamlet by the name of Ristonchia of about twenty stone houses surrounded by forests and olive groves.

As is common in all communities big and small in Europe, at the centre of the village sits a small church. Village history has it that King Charles, while passing through, wanted to build a church for the people. And since his saint was St Martin, the patron saint of this humble church became Holy Martin. It was built some time in the 1100’s, burnt down and was rebuilt some time in the 1400’s. The church is currently under the care of Lucca who, though not a man of the cloth, has tended the grounds and the maintained the humble chapel for over half a century.

Down the lane from the crest of the village lives a carpenter. His workshop is located under his home, and he sells his craft at the towns and villages in the region during weekends. At the edge of a village is a neat stone cottage that belongs to an American family who lives there for six months of a year.

Nearby is a retired lady in a house with neat lace curtains and a small but blossoming garden. She lives by herself, unless you count the five cats that live with her, and the ten or so more feral cats that come in from the forests for food.

Next to that cottage is a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse. Through the years, rooms have been added to its original foundation, resulting in a rather haphazard layout. There are three rooms within the farmhouse, another one with a separate entrance under it, and the farmer’s quarters is the loft, which is also accessed from outside the house. Still, the kitchen and sitting-dining area is the heart of all activity and everything gravitates there.

This was home for me for two weeks.

When I first decided to WWOOF, I specifically wanted to work on an olive harvest. I don’t know why I never thought about the grape harvest, or if I did, it was very much fleetingly. My mind just decided “olives”, and never considered anything else as a possible option. Olive harvest is mostly in October, and apparently last year was a bad year for olives in some regions; there wasn’t enough precipitation or it came at the wrong time. Anyway, I found a farm that would do its harvest in early to mid-November. Because it was atop a hill, the temperatures were lower, causing the olives to ripen a little later than elsewhere. The farmer replied my emails and we agreed on the dates.

Then I got really nervous. What if I didn’t like the farm? What if I couldn’t handle the work they gave me? What if the people were a bunch of earthy-crunchy types because I’m all for environmentally friendliness but I don’t know how much earthy-crunchiness I can take before it freaks me out. What if… What if… What if…

But, like I said before, everyone I met who had WWOOFed before had happy stories. Only later did Ellie say she WWOOFed on a farm in San Luis Obispo where the farmer was a little crazy but that didn’t bother me. It was San Luis Obispo, that’s in California, and we know what they say about… (heehee).

I arrived early at the Castiglion Fiorentino train station coz I managed to catch an earlier train from Florence. With an hour or so to spare in the afternoon, I sat nervously at the very small station — it was more a stop reallly, there wasn’t even an open counter or a toilet. After a minute or so, the waiting got to me, I had to do something. So I did what Italians do in the afternoons — enjoy a cup of espresso. I don’t know if caffeine would help my state of mind any, but the espressos are so good in Italy and they are only €1…

The farmer later picked me up from the train station in his rustic little Japanese hatchback and we stopped by his gardener’s place on the way back. By gardener, I mean a lady who owns a big garden and sells her vegetables to a small group of clients out of her shed. We were going to have vegetable stew for dinner that night. How fresh is that!

The farmhouse is so cosy. We enter by the kitchen, move into the sitting-dining area, or go up the steps in the kitchen to the rooms. (The bathroom’s kind of outside the kitchen, outside the living quarters but still within the main door. Which meant you leave the warmth of the house to step into the toilet. But there was good hot water and a seat with a view, so that made up for it.)

My room had two beds. Another volunteer would share my room, but she wouldn’t arrive until the next day so I had the room all to myself. Which meant I got to pick which bed I wanted. Whee.

Quick scan of the room — clean. No cobwebs in the corners, which meant no spiders. Settled my backpack into my corner and organised my zone. It’s a small but lovely room with a view of the Tuscan valley out one window, and a glimpse of the village out the other window.

I loved my bed and my two layers of blankets. Softer than what I was used to at home, but so warm and cosy. It was near a window and the radiator. The radiator isn’t on all the time as it cools down some time at night after the last logs downstairs in the furnace have burned out, but generally, it’s convenient for drying stuff.

I could really go on and wax lyrical about how much I loved that room, but I’ll just say that honestly, I was really in want of nothing.

I remember debating internally what time I ought to ask the farmer and his No.2 start their day. 5am? 6am?(Didn’t want to sound too much like a spoilt city slicker.)

Turns out that since he doesn’t rely solely on his crop for income, he’s quite a relaxed farmer and they wake up at 7am. (That’s about the same time I wake up at home to go to work.) I vaguely recall them joking something about European working hours. Anyway, that’s the time the No.2 and us volunteers wake up. The farmer himself wakes up earlier to do his other chores, like feed the goats and chickens and turkeys in his backyard. In the end I wake up a little earlier to beat the others to the bathroom, also because it takes me a little longer to get ready also. I’m not used to all this cold weather, there’s so many layers to sort out…

Breakfast begins at 7.30am and we leave for the olive groves around 8. Breakfast is a simple affair. Bread — both homemade and store-bought — and spreads like jam, marmalade, peanut butter, Nutella and honey. The No.2 would make espresso over the stove using a moka pot. And fruit. And cereal too at the request of some of the volunteers. I love the rosemary bread the farmer baked, thick and heavy like German bread. There were also loaves of focaccia, wholemeal and multigrain.

On a side note, being a city dweller, I found it totally absolutely amazing that the farmer would return from a walk in the woods on his property with rosemary that he plucked along the way. It wasn’t like some herb garden in his backyard, but from the woods. Wild. He’ll just give them a wash and throw some in the tea pot as he made some tea (it’s good for treating arthritis) and keep the rest for baking.

For me, the best part of breakfast had to be the honey. The farmer has some beehives in the back garden and during summer, he collects his own honey and stores the jars in his huge pantry under the house. “Goodness from the Tuscan hills” he called it. I love that honey. I can weep with joy from something as simple as butter and honey on a slice of bread.

(Pause to relish that oh-so-sweet memory…)

After breakfast, it’s off to the olive groves.

First, we line the ground around the olive trees with huge nets. Next, we’re all armed with a little garden rake thingie. And then we start work. The branches of the tree are mostly low and soft, so we can pull them down lower and just “comb” the branches with the rake.

The ripe olives will just fall off the branches onto the nets on the ground and after a tree has been plucked clean, we gather the nets to collect the olives and transfer them into crates. As for the olives in the higher branches, we can climb the trees to get to them (there are ladders but climbing is easier, faster and funner).

One of my favourite moments that I remember vividly is the pleasant sensation of olives falling on my head. I’d be combing one of the lower branches and someone else would be above me in the tree combing the higher branches, and it will just be raining little deep purple olives in dull tok-tok-tok-toktoktoktok-tok-tok… It was almost like a massage.

Around half past noon, we’d head back to the farmhouse for lunch.

Since we’re all out in the fields, lunch is simple too. Bread and hams, salamis and cheese and any leftovers from the previous night’s main course. Again, coming from a culture where pork has to be cooked or else you risk trichinosis and other very bad things, I was amazed to learn that cured meat is not cooked. It’s salt, sugar, nitrate and/or nitrite. Maybe some of them are smoked. I must have asked the No.2 if the meat was cooked in any way some three times a meal.

Anyway, he’d take out his flick knife from his back pocket to cut the meat. I don’t know what else he uses that knife for, but in a place like this, nothing works better than wiping the blade with the kitchen towel or even on your sleeve. There were lots of meats, some of them are more streaked and marbled with fat than what I’m used to (I don’t even eat bacon), and I’m not the only one because one of the other girls also found it more fat than she was used to.

What I thought was also really cool was that we didn’t use plates, but wooden blocks for the bread.

The best part of lunch was honey. Again!

This time with cheese. I will confess now that until the farm, except for the occasional craving for a Welsh rare bit, I wasn’t really a cheese person. It happens with growing up somewhat lactose intolerant. My knowledge of cheese was also pretty much limited to Kraft, Philidelphia and mozzarella. Only a few years ago did I expand it to brie and some other names I never really paid attention to, thanks to friends who studied overseas and enjoyed cheese a lot. I did try blue cheese when I was a student — my friends and I were in Paris and we were like “we have to try this at least once to see what the fuss is all about!” I think we almost threw up. But my palate has evolved over the years. And at the farm… the slabs and wheels of different cheeses on the table… the pecorino… The No.2 introduced me a very powerfully flavoured pecorino, it was too strong even for the farmer, but when he added a touch of the farm’s honey… Oh. My. God.

It was back to the olive groves after lunch, but because it’s late autumn, it gets dark by 4.30pm.

We’ll all be back in the farmhouse getting ready for dinner while the No.2 plays some Ella on the CD player. Some days we have world music too. And some days, even though we’re in rural Tuscany, we get to listen to some retro pop too.

The farmer cooks and we help with the preparation, mashing potatoes, peeling chestnuts, peeling and chopping apples, cracking walnuts and such. The farmer can really cook. He calls it peasant food, poor people food, but the meals I enjoyed there were the best I had in Italy. Simple, unfussy, and lots of homemade olive oil.

The beauty of the olive oil on the farm and in many places in Italy is that it’s pure olive oil. Colour-wise it is cloudy, unlike commercial olive oils in the supermarkets that are filtered and clear. Taste-wise, it’s grassy. Raw. But that’s what real olive oil tastes like. The land it comes from, and not some factory somewhere in a nondescript industrial park. I discovered new appreciation for olive oil.

Dinner was always something to look forward to.

One of the guests, a German couple (I thought they were adorable because they look like one another, both like retired German shot putters), brought some wild boar that their neighbour had shot and we had stew for dinner. The husband also made kraut, which I normally don’t like, but that evening, I practically licked my plate clean.

There was always table wine, lunch or dinner, on the table. It was good for table wine. And whenever the bottle was empty, the No.2 would disappear to the pantry downstairs and return with a full bottle. Dinner was always a very full affair.

After we cleared the table and cleaned the dishes, we were free. There was no TV or radio at the farm, and no newspapers too, much to No.2’s gripe because he wanted to know what was going on out there even though I heard he stays in a cottage in the middle of the forest in Arezzo. Or maybe he just had to have his soccer news.

Sometimes all of us would sit around and just chat. In the two weeks I was there, volunteers and guests came and went. We had an Ellie, a retired Dutch nurse who lives in Austria; Sabine, a translator and regular housesitter for one of the farmer’s neighbours; Kristle, a French vet working in Zurich; her friend, Dom, a Swiss student who just finished med school; an American backpacker who has been WWOOFing since May; the German shot put couple, he’s a contractor and she’s a nurse; Aki, a retired vet who works in Africa and moved to Italy because of his Italian girlfriend; J and F, an American entrepreneur and his young dot-com partner; and me.

Sometimes we’d play Uno. Sometimes I’ll just be updating my journal or writing postcards. And then by midnight, I would be snuggled upstairs in my nice, warm and comfy bed.

Life is simple, and incredibly rich. Life is beautiful.

WWOOFing it

I miss the farm.

Last year in Italy, I went to work on a farm. Well, volunteer was more like it. You do work in exchange for room and board. It was through wwoof.it, which is part of the worldwide organisation wwoof.org.

I first heard about WWOOF from a friend’s friend. She works in public relations but took a break and went to work on a couple of farms in Italy. She told me about her experience, and directed me to wwoof.it (all pictures here are from their website).

WWOOF started out as “Working Weekends on Organic Farms”, a volunteer placement programme that was started in England in 1971 by Sue Coppard. She lived in London and wanted to give people a chance to get away for the weekend and at the same time help organic farmers, all the while supporting and raising awareness for the organic movement.

People soon stayed for more than just weekends, so the name was changed to “Willing Workers on Organic Farms”. As the movement gained momentum and grew all over the world, people were soon WWOOFing in foreign countries. This caused the labour and immigration authorities in some nations to have problems with the word “work”, even though WWOOFing was really a volunteer programme. In the end, the name was changed to what it is today, “World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms”.

WWOOFing is a chance for people who have an interest and understanding for organic farming and biodynamic ways of living to learn more or get first hand experience. But even if you’re not an aspiring organic farmer and don’t plan to do any planting, whether in your balcony planter, backyard, sizable garden or acres of land, it’s still an experience because you live on a farm in a country or community that’s new to you and do stuff that you probably wouldn’t get a chance to do at home.

WWOOFers do not get paid for their work (it’s a volunteer programme, duh). WWOOF hosts are expected to provide room and board.

WWOOF organisations do charge volunteers and hosts a small membership fee to cover the costs of maintaining the network. Read the details because joining the international organisation doesn’t make you a member of a country’s organisation. So if you want to WWOOF in Italy, just join the Italian chapter; you don’t have to be a member of the global one to sign up.

A lot of this info is pretty much based on WWOOFing in Italy coz that’s where I was.

Once you join up, you’ll receive a list of farms as well as their contact details. Everything is up to you from that point on — you go through the descriptions, pick the farms that interest you, and make contact with them. It’s up to you to make arrangements on how long, what dates, what living conditions, what work you’ll be expected to do, and so on. Hosts are expected to offer full room and board but volunteers are advised to double check or confirm the exact details just to be safe.

Farms can range from a private garden, through smallholdings, allotments to commercial farms.

Looking at the Italian list here, which covers the whole country so you can see the wide range of farming activity being offered, it looks as though some farms consist of a nuclear family who have some land and grow their own food. There also the communes, religious groups, holistic centres with some crops, and even a nudist farm (though volunteers are not required to participate). There are also farms that have thoroughly embraced living with harmony with the land and don’t use detergent but ash, and other such practices.

In some places, you’ll sleep in a room in the farmhouse, but in others, it could be a caravan or you might even have to bring your own tent. There was one farm that seemed quite sizable and commercial — it had a dorm specially for volunteers. It was the top few on my list, but they couldn’t tell me their harvest dates at the time I wrote to them, and by the time they got back, I had committed to another farm.

Many of these farms also operate as agriturismo, and one of the farms my friend volunteered at, she ended up maintaining the farmhouse, polishing silverware and stuff. The descriptions will also tell you stuff like what languages the farmer speaks, whether the farm is vegetarian, accepts volunteers with children, or smokers.

From the contact list, you can email the farms, though not all of them check their emails regularly. They say the most convenient way to reach them is to call, but at convenient hours as many of them would be out at work.

Pick an activity that interests you and go at the right time so you’ll get to do it. I met one volunteer at my host’s farm who pretty much WWOOFed for six months around Italy. She did cheese-making, saffron harvest, baked and sold breads at farmers’ markets, did the grape harvest, olive harvest and a few others I can’t remember. Grape harvest is around September. Olive harvest is around October. Ellie, a penshioner who started at the farm before the olives were ripe spent a week just picking up twigs, clearing the undergrowth in the olive groves, and generally helping out around the farm in preparation for the harvest.

If I recall correctly, I read somewhere that the host is required by the organisation to give you days off.

But working hours may vary depending on what work needs to be done. For example, if there’s a harvest and the crop needs to be brought in fast or it’ll go bad, you may be required to work longer hours; most likely you’ll also get extra days off too. Since you’re a volunteer you should not be asked for too much. But at the same time it would not be fair if you don’t contribute enough. Again, all this boils down to communication with the host beforehand to avoid any misunderstandings.

I met a backpacker who had WWOOFed before in Scotland and Japan. She said WWOOFing in Japan was tough because the Japanese “don’t stop working.” I thought that was funny; that sounds like Japan, all right.

Actually I met a lot of travellers who’ve WWOOFed before and here, I’ve never heard there was such a thing until recently. (I’m a late bloomer on things in life, but better late than never… I was hesitant at first, but I figured if my public relations friend can do it, so can I, even if I’m not the most gung ho or extrovert person around…) But everyone I met while travelling before my stay at the farm who has WWOOFed before had happy stories. And if ever you don’t like it at a farm, it’s still understandable to make an amicable split and leave early.

Anyhoo, many WWOOFers are students, backpackers and penshioners, and most hosts are understanding about you wanting to get out and see the sights on your days off. At the farm I stayed in, we volunteers got half a Saturday and the whole of Sunday off, and our host actually brought us to the nearby towns and took us to see the sights. We also joined his yoga class once on a weekday night.

That said, however, WWOOFing is not a holiday or a cheap way to see Italy. It is still work.

But as far as work goes, this is probably one of the best jobs I have ever had.

wwoof.it (English)
WWOOF Italy FAQ