Bella Vista

 The last two weeks has felt like a bit of heaven compare to the last farm. We have a spacious room with a walk out balcony that looks out over the Amalfi coast. It has all the Italian charm. The attitude towards work here is work if you feel like it, when you feel like and how long you feel like. I must say it’s been difficult for me being a person who likes structure. I like to know I start work at 9 and finish at 4 everyday.  I learned quickly I wasn’t going to get that here.



Lucas enjoying the view. I'm up on our balcony taking the photo.

We spent the whole first week of work harvesting olives from their 30 olive trees. This is a family event so Alessandra’s Brother, Mother and Aunt all came to help. Her Mother and Aunt were super friendly. They spoke about the same amount of English as we do Italian. It was entertaining trying to figure out what each other was trying to communicate. There was a lot of hand gestures and acting, followed by a lot of laughs. Once we had all the olives harvested they took them to a plant that processes them into olive oil. We got to ride along and watch the olives we picked washed and go through the process of turning into oil. The deal is the person that brings in the olives gets the first 30% of cold pressed oil. This is enough oil to supply the whole family for the year (and they like their oil). There is no money exchanged, just olives for oil. I’m super bummed because I forgot to bring my camera to the processing plant. I could have shown everyone how it works from tree to table.

 

 

We used this special ramp to pick all the leaves and things out of the olives.

This is about half the olives we picked.

Our second week of work was the most unorganized. We spent a lot of time waiting around to be told or shown what work needs to be done. We planted some things, mowed lawn, harvested fruit, and created a new garden by tilling the ground and creating rows for planting. They are very fortunate here to have a year round growing season!


The garden we tilled and made these rows using muscle power.

 Although the views are beautiful and the work is easy and minimal it’s been difficult “fitting in” with the family. I’ve felt awkward and left out more here than anywhere so far on our trip. They don’t really acknowledge us or include us in anything. We’re just these people floating around that they have to feed. That being said I’m excided to move on to our next farm in a few days. It will be nice to have a change of scenery.



The yummy dinner we bought because our farm host told us at 8pm they wern't feeding us dinner after we spent the whole day working on their garden.