San Cassiano: Farming in Italy!

Hi there, it’s Laurika!

I’m excited to be making an extended guest appearance on the blog, and also to tell you about our first week traveling together in Italy! Ray and I met up at our hostel in Rome and spent the evening wandering around and taking in the sights. 

It’s true what they say - that you can’t turn a corner in Rome without bumping into some sort of ancient archeological treasure. And look what we found!

The beautiful Trevi Fountain - it's built into the wall of a palace and powered by an ancient aqueduct

The next morning we departed for San Cassiano farm. For those who don’t know, Ray and I decided to spend our first few weeks in Italy working on a farm through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farmers). The program matches up organic farms around the world with travelers (or WWOOFers) who work on the farm in exchange for free room and board. Our farm is called San Cassiano and is located in the small town of San Potito Sannitico, about 45 minutes from Naples.

The journey to San Cassiano started out with us sprinting through the streets of Rome in the rain with all of our luggage, and just barely making our train. In the course of all this we met our first friend in Italy, Maurizio, who turns out to be a tour guide in Rome, but was on his way home to visit his parents in the small town where we were going to make our bus connection. After discovering that our bus wouldn’t arrive for another hour and a half he invited us over to his parents’ house for lunch! The food was delicious, his family was incredibly nice and we can’t wait to link up with Mauritzio again when we return to Rome and hopefully take one of his tours!

We have really been enjoying our stay at San Cassiano. The farm is a small family operation: they grow wheat, barley, various other fruits and vegetables, make wine, olive oil and have a small number of animals. Most of it is for their own consumption, but they also run a restaurant and have WWOOFers and other agrotourism guests coming in and out throughout the year.

The farm is run by the mother and head cook Rosanna, her two sons Vittorio and Andrea, Andrea's girlfriend Valentina, and their adorable 3-month old baby girl named Ginebra. There are also 2 other WWOOFers here from Maine, Dillon and Katie. The food here is fantastic and I’m hoping that after a while they’ll let me help out with the cooking, although Rosanna runs a very tight ship and is constantly correcting us about how things should be done (“The coffee makers get rinsed, but never with soap!” “Bread should be toasted over the hot embers, not the open flame!”). In addition to Rosanna’s cooking, Andrea used to work as a chef in Spain, which has meant that we speak to him mostly in Spanish, to each other in English, and to Rosanna through a mixture of gestures and the few Italian words we know - its been a multilingual experience, to say the least.

The awesome paintings on the guest house, where we stay

What do we do all day on the farm?

Mostly chop, stack and bundle wood

Our favorite night so far has been pizza night, which unbeknownst to us turned out to be a huge party!

Playing Napolitani cards

The oven - our chopped wood was put to good use!

Chowing down on some delicious pizza!

We spent this weekend hiking around and exploring the nearby mountain towns. We’re excited to see more of this beautiful countryside in the next 2 weeks before we leave the farm and head to Naples.

Ciao a tutti!

Laurika (and Ray)