Ferrenti Farm

"John! You go in...in there!¨ Massimo is pointing at his old lamborghini tractor trailer and I gladly hop in. The trailer is a large red metal box attached hydrolically to the back of the tractor. After I swing in, he lifts the box about 3 ft off the ground and begins to drive up the road to the chestnut grove about a kilometer away. We drive by where I talked to the old man with a magpie in a cage who was weaving leaves into a chianti bottle yesterday. All of Italy, it seems, is rediculous mountain vistas and vinyards. A spunky brown stray dog yips at the tractor and even chases it a ways as we pass by. After a while the stray slows to a trot and then gives up completly. About a hundred yards later an IDENTICLE stray dog does the same thing. I lean back and enjoy my ride. When Massimo stops, I think we have only pulled off the roat into a short deadend. ¨There are many herb" he says. Beneath several feet of brambles and vines and even small trees, there is a red fence just barely visible. We hack away with our slashers until the gate is clealy visible. It is on runners and using the slasher as a lever we are just able to open the gate about an inch. Using the gate as a batteringram we eventually manage to open it completly. This feels very much like a secret passage we are uncovering. I hop back in my box. Massimo lifts me up and with the tractor and we barrel over a whole road of the overgrowth it took us so long to cut through just a few feet of with the slashers. Massimo drops me off at the top of a hill where I meet up with Rosa (Massimos wife and the owner of the farm) and Jennifer (an older woofer from London.) I spend the rest of the day collecting chestnuts from the ground into a wicker basket. Jennifer points out that I can brag to my friends about my first ride in a Lamborghini.

joe