Manual Labor but La Vida

My second day on the farm showed me that they don't always work quite as hard as we did on my first day.

For the morning they needed to run to the market for some supplies, so I got to accompany the family into Asti for the outdoor market and official bag-carrier girl. Marina and I went off for household shopping while the men and little Harriet went to look at tools and other play-things.

These markets are quite different from ones at home and I love them. The indoor market is a permanent place, essentially the equivalent of an USian (more on the term 'American later'). Each vendor has their particular genre of ware to sell, one for chicken meat, a pescaterian for fish, the bread man, a cheese shop. And you wander between all these specialists to order your freshly butchered meat. In the fish section you actually see the fish you're going to eat and, if you'd like, you can watch them be de-finned and de-boned right there on the spot (or you do it at home yourself later). I talked with Marina about how different this is than in the US, where our food (even what is presented as fresh at the butchers in the back) is already so de-animalized that you look at fillets instead of the actual fish they come from. And here they really are whole, eyes, gills, fins-you can see it all. If you've ever read Michael Pollen you'd know what I'm referring to in noticing how far removed we are in the US from our food, most things are already so processed and packaged we don't really think of the physical animal/shape it originally came from.

Anyway, while I squeemed and tried to come to terms with seeing my dinner in a life-like form, Marina was amazed at how sheltered we are from our food so she made sure to take me by a number of other life-like meals to see what I thought.

When we were finished stocking up at the markets, we made our way home for the afternoon meal and naps.

And I realized they're not so intense about their work schedules as they made out to be on day 1. We got going around four and put up the plastic covering for the winter greenhouse, including stringing rope over it to hold it down and digging trenches along the sides to ensure the side tarp was held down. We took apart the old greenhouse doors and then the day was over, Tim was tired so we went in for the day with plans to finish the doors tomorrow.

Before dinner I did a little front yard yoga session and practiced headstands with Marina before we made our way to the outdoor dinner table under the terrace for a lovely meal of roasted bell peppers, potatoes and salad. We had a lovely bottle of red wine from the local vineyard Vaudano and then these absolutely heavenly amaretto cookies called Amaretti di Mombaru LLO (last three letters are the initials of the three Asti ladies that made these cookies so popular in the region). They're honestly heaven.

And with extra wine for this evening, we had a table debate on the classification of music into genres and, well, just one of those conversations about music that last until everyone is rather intoxicated and ready for bed. Another wonderful day gone by here!