Benoit, Stephanie, Michelle

The crew walking to the castle for the night.

More nice graffiti.

It has been just over a month that I've been on this farm now, and it is starting to look like it is going to be hard to leave. My plans to begin the Camino de Santiago have been pushed back two weeks due to a really cheap flight that I've found. I have also picked up a partner for the walk. Benoit, a french guy that I've been working with has decided that he will join me on the walk. The group that I've been working with are all leaving the farm around the 15th of October, which is very good because if they were staying it would be much harder to leave as we have become so close. The weather is changing here, with frequent thunderstorms and less devastating heat. The wine making has begun, and we have spent the last five days picking grapes, cleaning the equipment, and pressing the grapes into juice, much the same way as you would do with apples. The juice is then left in round 50 liter jugs to ferment, which it does with on its own with no further involvement. As it ferments it expels any impurities out of the top of the bottle in a brown sort of foam. Out come the seeds, the dirt, the skins, everything. Occasionally while working members of the community will take pity upon us and deliver us a bottle of wine to drink while we dig. The first time was a group of old Italian grandmothers. They warned me that if I marry an Italian woman I will soon die, as did all of their husbands. They asked me if my mother knew what I was doing, and told me that I was an idiot for working for free. They said the wine was the least I deserved for moving so many rocks. Today was much the same. Benoit and I were digging a ditch to provide drainage for the coming rain, and a man walked down the street to see what we were up to and to give us another liter of wine. I think it is just because we are so good looking, digging shirtless in the heat. Italy provides.