Today I participated in my first pig killing. We had to separate the pig from the rest of its family, running around like sheep dogs to divide them. Then we had to try to capture the thing. It was very fast. We had a net that wasn't especially effective, so we were essentially just trying to chase the thing into a corner. It conveniently got stuck in a section of fence. Antonello jumped up behind it and grabbed it by one of the rear legs. He held it while he called for the hammer. With the hammer in hand he beat the thing on the back of the skull, stopping the screaming and stunning the pig. Then he thrust a rusty bayonette down underneath the breast bone of the pig to pierce the aorta. It took about thirty seconds for the pig to bleed out. We then hoisted it up, stretching it by the rear legs between to support pillars in the barn. Benoit and I skinned it and gutted it there. I suppose we will eat it tonight as we are scheduled to kill another tomorrow. I took no pictures of this one as I didn't want to foul my camera with the blood that got over everything.

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.

      Yesterday. I decided I was going to sleep in an abandoned castle that sits on the top of a mountain a few miles away. I headed out from the "rustic farm", and soon discovered that I was being followed by the farm Mascot, Barrone, a little dog with one tooth that looks rather like a creature from Star Wars. I've been trying to train him using cheese, but despite my best efforts he insisted on coming with me. Fortunately I had some cordage on me and was able to fashion a leash to prevent him from being murdered by the ridiculous drivers that speed through the tiny streets of Sora. I don't think he's ever seen a leash before in his life, but he begrudgingly got the hang of it.
       The people of Sora, or maybe it's all of Italy, are consistently too fashionable for whatever they are doing. This is probably the reason they were giving me a wide berth, as I suppose together Barrone and I looked (and smelled)  like a risky pair of vagabonds. We were just entering Sora on the narrow sidewalk when I noticed a large, saggy, sleeping dog ahead of us. I was  a little concerned, but Barrone is such a fine diplomat that I didn't feel it would be a problem. Just as we passed the dog it lurched up from its coma in a savage alligator ambush and took Barrone fully into its mouth by the back and began to shake him side to side like said alligator. Barrone's legs were flailing uselessly in the air and he was screaming bloody murder, which is exactly what I thought I was witnessing. Not having any other course of action I decided to kick the damn beast in the throat until he let go. It took ten good kicks straight to the jugular at full force before Barrone was able to escape. The big dog stumbled backwards into an alley, not looking so hot. I wasn't as concerned for his well being as I was for Barrone and the crowd of Italians watching the spectacle. I expected Barrone to be completely crippled, but he just shook his little mane and was on his way, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

     The actual trail up to the Castle starts out with a long, haggard set of stairs up a ridge. They meet up with a beautiful church, and continue up and around limestone crags until you have climbed 500' or so to the peak of the mountain and the castle. Once I made it to the ridge the view opened up onto a huge mountain range and another arm of Sora in the intervening valley. The first thing I noticed was the number of helicopters whirling around the sky with buckets dangling beneath them. Thus far, everyday here it has smelled of wildfire smoke, but this was the first time I saw why. The side of the mountain was covered with fire. The terrain was way too steep for engines, so the had all kinds of choppers going after the thing. Ancient looking airplanes would buzz a hundred feet above me every ten minutes as well, drenching this thing with water. The smoke was creeping down the hillside towards a church, which is where they were concentrating their efforts. One of these chopper pilots must have been a devout catholic as he was getting after it more than any pilot I have ever seen. He was refilling in a river that must have been less than fifteen feet wide and surrounded by telephone wires. His rotor blades were so close to the hillside next to him that he must have been trimming the grass.His turn around time was two and a half minutes to fill, fly, and dump. I watched for twenty minutes simply because I was sure I was going to see him go down. They stopped at dusk, but I continued to watch the mountain burn all night long.

      The castle is pretty much as you'd expect a ruined medieval castle to be. It is made of massive blocks of stone that appear to just fit together without cement, or clay, or anything to keep them from falling on your head. The walls are about forty feet high, with slits for archers and huge round conical towers. There wasn't a soul there and it looks like there is absolutely no effort taken to maintain the thing. Inside there are tunnels that go into little creepy underground chambers with slots to allow a tiny amount of air and light in. The whole thing is really incredible. I was going to sleep inside, but found it too spooky, so me and Barrone made our home on top, with the wildfire providing romantic candle light for our dinner of cheese and salami.

       There's graffiti everywhere. In the parks, alleys, on the castle. The difference is that almost all of it has to do with love. "Ti Amo so-and-so" makes up about eighty percent of all the taggings. Those that are not directly love related tend to be very sweet or kind spirited. It seems like all the artists are poets or something. As always more pictures here.

Digging in the ruin.

These arches are all over the town during festivals.

He was watching the band, and too funny
to not take a picture.

Italy has festivals for every occasion imaginable. In the last two weeks there have been three major town-side nights of partying and shenanigans. They also have the habit of constant fireworks during the day. All day long it sounds like there is a war going on, complete with puffs of white smoke issuing from the mountain side. They do fireworks right. The first night we went to a real festival the fireworks were so intense as to be frightening.

Simon, Beniot, Gavin.

      Also of note, as of this moment, in the middle of this post, my head has officially become bald. Due to a haircut gone pranked, I no longer have any hair at all. My head is very white and lumpy.

Barrone, the dog that follows us everywhere.
To the farm and back, into town, even into the
pizzeria.

I'm currently staying and working at a farm that's really more like an eco-tourism gig. We are in the mountains near the town of Sora, a few hours east of Rome. It's way cool. I'm working and living with about eight other young vagabonds, some of whom stay in rooms at the main farm, and others who travel with me on the trail through the woods back to the more primitive sister farm known as "Le Mogli" to sleep. The work we are doing is mostly to renovate a few ancient ruins so they may be habitable. There are ruins everywhere. The only buildings Le Mogli are stone ruins and they comprise our kitchen and storage rooms. The shower is a bamboo stall with a shower head that is attached to a hose to run gravity fed water from a barrel up the hill. We sleep outside when the weather is nice, in tents when it is not, poop in a hole, and pee in the bushes. We do have a stone pizza oven which is often put to use, and an outdoor sink that provides potable water. Not much to complain about really. Every night we create a feast together, and every day we haul stones and dirt from the ruins together. Occasionally we make the pilgrimage to town along a dirt road that winds a few miles through fields of corn and olives. The nearest town is Pescosolido, which lies about a mile uphill from us, but we usually end up in Sora, which is about two miles downhill and has the cheaper food.

Foreground: us making dinner. Background:
our awesome ruin.

There are many Italian philosophies that permeate many different parts of the culture. "Piano, piano" means "take it easy man, we're in Italy you know," and is how everything is done. All scheduling requires at least a half to a full hour of "Italian time" to be added on to everything. Another phrase, "vino, vino!" dictates that wine be consumed in copious amounts at all hours of the day, no meal being complete without a minor state of drunkenness. "Manga, manga!" is yet another, meaning "eat, eat!" it is also thrown around often along with fresh tomatoes from the garden, and figs from the trees, and grapes from the side of the road. It's a good thing we put in so much hiking, as one could readily bloat to truly American proportions on all the pasta, pizza, and wine. As of now, with the people and the work that are here, a month isn't looking like it will be long enough. As always, more pictures are here.

Italy

So I've been gone for ten days and this is the first time I've had enough internet access to actually do any real work. I am alive and well. The adventures didn't take long to find us. The first few nights we camped at a crowded site in Pompei. It was basically a collection of lots in the middle of the city, right beside the train tracks.

The entrance to the ruins of Pompei was about a two minutes walk from the camp and on the first night we bought a pizza and walked into the ruin. When the sun started going down we decided it was time to leave only to find that they had closed the gates and we were locked inside ancient Pompei. We wandered around for a while before we encountered a security type individual who pleasantly escorted us out of the ruins.

Pompei Hound

 









    Pompei is traditionally a place of many dogs, and the same holds true today. They are everywhere, most of them living in the ruins. We had one Pompei dog who adopted us and followed us back to our camp to live with us.
    Pompei is really well preserved. Lots of the original paint is still on the walls, and there are tons of pictures here.