ME AND FARMER G

It’s fall, and loss is in the air, but also the milestones of new babies and the first fall visit of our granddaughters. Maybe you’ve heard me refer to our neighbor and mentor, Farmer G, before. He died last weekend, leaving us very sad. I have been trying to figure out how to honor him and our special relationship. Here’s my attempt.

 

Although Letters to Men of Letters is my first published book, every year since 2008 when we moved to the Umbrian countryside, I have produced a handmade gift book for Farmer G, who tried to teach us how to live here. Each was loaded with photos documenting that year’s misadventures, as we learned about life in this valley from a master of many generations of wisdom. We were his ungifted students, but he never lost patience with our clumsy, ignorant attempts to find our way. 

To watch Farmer G wield his zappa was like being at a ballet. “Zappa” translates as “hoe”: a long-handled tool with a metal blade that is used mainly for weeding. But that definition in no way does justice to this simple but multitasking instrument. With characteristic economy of motion and intelligence, Farmer G and his trusty zappa could make a vegetable garden in no time at all. The trenched beds would be angled perfectly so that to lay a hose down at one end would elegantly water the rest. 

We would watch admiringly and try to be helpful, but the best we could do was stay out of his way. Left to our own devices, our specialty was getting tangled up in hoses and mud because we didn’t anticipate where we should be standing while watering. 

Surrounded by know-it-all architects and so-called professionals, he liked to say, with characteristic modesty, that he had an advanced degree in the art of the zappa. 

He would listen to my crazy ideas with a twinkle in his eye—“there she goes again”—Colorful Swiss chard? Taking his rose prunings and sticking them in the ground with high hopes—what have I got to lose? Whether pulling my car (or that of our visiting cousin) out of a ditch, he never made me feel like the nincompoop that I was. 

When a serious health crisis that would have felled a lesser man put an end to his ability to work, he still came by to check on us. On our walks thru the property, nothing would escape his knowledgeable eye. 

For me, Loreto was one of a kind—a link to the not-so-distant past when contadini worked the Duke’s land. During December, our mutual birthday month, Loreto would have turned 83 and I will be 75. But eight years convey nothing of the generations of experience of farming this valley that separate us. Never mind that I have been a lifelong teacher. Our tenth anniversary year of my apprenticeship to him, when he was no longer able to work, marked my forced independence. But as every good parent and teacher know, we work in order not to be needed. He had a favorite expression: “Andiamo avanti!” Onward! 

At first his dialect, and in recent years, our mutual hearing issues were obstacles. But I like to think that we understood each other perfectly.