WWOOFing in Italy: Day One on Farm Three

6 April 2011

When I arrived to the station in Ancona, Fabio picked me up after his teaching woodworking at a university in Ancona. The man did not even finish high school, but he is so experienced that after retiring he was asked to teach at this private university.

I have not met a single “simple” farmer through WWOOFing in Italy! While it is part of their shtick to look a little rough around the edges, they are all either highly experienced or highly educated. We drove to his home, a beautiful mountain drive on a cliff overlooking the Adriatic Sea, hills (as per usual), and snow covered mountains in the distance. We stopped at the beach to enjoy a look at the water and to squint out the skyline of Croatia, and arrived at his farm home of 37 years to meet his wife, an artist. The evening we sat at the table for at least an hour and a half talking. It’s so nice to be on a farm where they speak in Italian, not just dialect, and one where they are interested in talking to me, not either too gruff to be bothered/ too busy with children or other work/too entranced by a television set! While it is taking their dogs a little while to warm up to me, I do not think it will take Fabio long at all. In the morning, after I had expressed my desire to learn about apiculture he spent a good hour showing me how he makes the houses, comparing the families and their strengths and weaknesses, and simply sitting and watching them do their magic. I need to reread that chapter in Origin of Species about bees today that had seemed so dry at the time…now I could appreciate it. Bees are amazing creatures! Wax, honey, propoli, bee hives, dancing out encoded messages...what can’t they do?

Fabio makes the beehives inside his workshop, where he also does all sorts of other work. He built his entire home himself, starting 37 years ago, from the planting of every tree to the latch on every door. Currently he is making a model size Parthenon for the blind museum in Ancona; for this museum he has made several tactile structures for people to enjoy. Hanging from his wall, there is a black and white print from a computer that he seems to have made in Photoshop. There are three cavemen making tools with rocks on the ground, one of them with Fabio’s face photoshopped in (very little extra photoshopping is necessary to make him a believable caveman). Over, it says, “Homo Fabius.” This man has got a sense of humor.