The old farmhouse

When we visited Italy as children, I loved being at the old farm.  This is where my mom grew up and the people living there were still her relatives in one way or another.  I'll never forget when everyone came to harvest the grapes.  It was a big community venture.  I wasn't much help.  I ran and laughed and played with all the other kids.  I remember the press, and the vats full of pulp.  I learned later about the still, guarded and secret, as the legality was questionable.  Everyone seemed happy to help and there was plenty of wine for all.  None for sale, just personal consumption and gifts.  

What I learned today is my grandparents were tenant farmers when they lived there (1940s?).  There were three other families living there, also tenants.  They raised crops and kept animals and the owners had a share.  The farm provided everything they needed.  Selling wheat and the occasional beet or rabbit, brought in some cash.  Everything you did had to be for the good of the property and families living there.  To someone who grew up in that place it felt like harmony, if smothering.  Mom looks back fondly as one is wont to do with one's childhood, but then a cloud passes over her face and she remembers the frustrations of a rebellious child.  On one hand she was a spoilt brat.  On the other hand she was a free spirit chained to tradition.  She said it was all about survival, the way the farm worked.  In the next breath, she says she had to come to America to get away from it.  Who survived?  

One fun nugget about farming.  What do you do in the winter?  For a few winters they decided to raise silk worms!  The worms did their thing, then cocooned up, then were harvested and sold to the silk makers.  It turned out to not be worth it, so they stopped after four years or so.  The cocoons looked like golden peanuts.  That's all I got, but I found that particularly fascinating.  

so back to the times of Mom's childhood, shiny on the surface rotting underneath.  Let me tell you what the problem was.  Grandma had three girls and one boy.  Like in so many older cultures, the girls didn't count.  Girls don't count because they get married and leave.  The boys turn into men, marry, and work on the farm and establish the next family of tenant farmers.  Mom calls it survival.  To me, a girl raised in the US of A, it sounds like sustainable poverty.  Maybe i should explain more.  the rule was you don't send the kids to school.  If you send the kids to school they might realize tenant farming is for suckers and move on to bigger and better things.  Well grandma was no dummy.  She figured this out and decided to send the boy to school.  so they got booted.  Doesn't that sound like a vicious cycle keeping the poor, just poor enough?  and if you don't buy in, you risk living in destitution.  

Luckily it turned out well.  consider this paragraph like a montage in a movie.  and go!  grandma was practical and strong and wise.  My uncle and my mom both were educated, mostly in the hospitality industry is my understanding.  That might not sound impressive but in Europe that means you know four languages.  Grandma knew when to buck tradition and when to make it work for her family.  She "strongly suggested" to whom my uncle marry.  She was a hard worker, and helped my uncle build his business.  My uncle opened a restaurant in Germany.  That's where my uncle and mom were working because that's where the jobs were at the time.  Anyway, my uncle asked my mom for whatever money she had saved up.  mom handed it over without question.  Apparently that free spirit was lying dormant.  He opened his own restaurant.  from there he was able to bring over grandma and grampa and they all worked at the restaurant.  Mom worked morning and night and fell asleep totally exhausted every night.  She met my dad, a US army man.  Grandma (the wise) said go for it.  She moves to America.  The rest of the family moves back to Italy to open a restaurant in their hometown and build a beautiful home and farm just for themselves.  end montage.  

What happened to the old farm and its tenants?  When i was a child, it seemed just the one family was living there, i assume the owners.  Parts of the building were falling apart, but it seemed a nice home.  Google earth shows the building still standing today.  I'm guessing it is 500 years old.  Now i wonder who were all those grape pickers?  if felt like a community, but maybe they were tenants that just lived elsewhere on the property?  I don't think so.  A flourishing tenant system with hundreds of workers would have repaired and kept up the main farm house.  I think the tenant system must have eventually withered away.  Isn't that what happened in the later seasons of Downton Abbey?  

Its nice to think the oppression of the system failed, but the harmony of the community survived.  Ah the powers of good wine!  Something we can all agree on!