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Life on the Farm
The phenomenon of agritourism—or agrotourism, or rural tourism, or farm stays, or guest ranches, or farmhouse B&Bs, or whatever you choose to call the chance to stay on a working farm—has been growing in Europe since the 1990s.
Some pecorino and a bottle of the red wine grown on those very vines in the background at La Rignana, an agriturismo in Tuscany's Chianti region.
The goose pond 30 feet from my bedroom seemed lovely... until I discovered that Honking Hour started at 6am.
La Cascina del Monastero (www.cascinadelmonastero.it) was a mixed-use farm in the heart of Italy's Piemonte wine country. Several slopes were strung with grape vines, others planted with fig and olive. There was a chicken coop out back, several fruit orchards... and that infernal pond. I got my revenge, though: breakfast included the most delectable goose liver pâté.
Farm Stays 101
Even if you can't afford your own farmhouse in Italy—or Provence, or Ireland, or Andalusia, or wherevever your European dream countryside resides—staying on a working farm, or agriturism, gets you up close with the rural heart of Europe. You don’t even have to milk the buffalo for mozzarella or stomp the grapes for wine (though sometimes being a temporary farm hand for fun is an option).
I've stayed at loads of agriturismi: vineyards and dairy farms, barns amid olive groves and frescoed villas next to horse stables. Sometimes you just hole up for the night in a B&B converted from a farmhouse. Sometimes you actually stick around to do volunteer work for a few days (a week, two months, a year), as with the worldwide WWOOF network (more on that on the resources page). Sometimes, just renting a cottage in a rural area where sheep wander past your window is enough to count.
Each stay has offered me a different experience of European farm life for a fraction the cost of a hotel; double rooms run anywhere from $20 to $200, but usually around $40 to $70. Many agriturisms require a three-night minimum stay (for some, a week). Roughly half accept credit cards.
A country-comfy room at La Rignana, an agriturismo in Tuscany's Chianti region.
Sometimes you get four-star luxury and satellite TV. Sometimes you’re a straw's-width from sleeping in a stall. Most, though, are just what you'd expect from a farmhouse B&B: simple comforts, solid country furnishings, and rural tranquility—barnyard noises excepted.
Ideally, the property's owners live on-site and are farmers who derive the bulk of their income from agriculture, using this new-fangled form of tourism merely to help make ends meet. In some countries, the practice of agritourism is highly regulated; in others, it's a wild west of opportunities, and you have to pick carefully to avoid spending the night in a barn atop a pile of hay (unless that's what you're looking for).
The hosts tend to be a sight friendlier than your average hotel desk clerk. Some invite guests to dine with them, family-style, in the farmhouse. One shepherd let me stir a bubbling pot of sheep's milk to help it on its way to becoming pecorino cheese. Vineyard owners love to crack open bottles of their best to guide you through the finer points of wine tasting, which brings me back to that farm in Piemonte.
Life on the Farm—Italian style
Friendly vineyard owners is how I ended up, at La Cascina del Monastero, sitting on the back patio with Giuseppe and Velda di Grasso until well past midnight, sampling bottles of Barbera, Nebbiolo, and Barolo culled from the ghostly, moonlit rows of vines around us.
Their seven-year-old son played shy until he found out I was from Philadelphia. "Just like the cheese!" He said. His parents laughed, shooed him off to bed, and explained that American cream cheese was a current fad in Italy.
Our talk drifted to the subject of agriturismo itself, how it has become a way for farmers to make ends meet, and how family vintners even in this storied, storybook corner of Italy are having a rough time in this era of shrinking subsidies and growing wine conglomerates. Giuseppe told me of a neighbor who had recently died in a tractor accident.
"The family doesn't know how it can keep the vineyard," he said. Velda said she still shudders to imagine the poor wife, explaining to their nine-year-old son that his father was gone and never coming back. Giuseppe leaned forward in his chair with a sober look.
"The morning after he died, the widow was woken up by the sound of machinery," he said. "She went into the cellar to find her son running the grape press. She asked what on earth he was doing, and he said 'Papá is gone. Now it is up to me to make the wine.'"
Velda shook her head and excused herself. Giuseppe and I stayed up an hour longer, draining the last bottle and talking of happier things. As I climbed the outer stairs to my room, Giuseppe mentioned that he'd be leaving early tomorrow for a business trip, but would leave breakfast out for me.
Next morning, after my clamorous 6am wake-up call, I padded down into the great room to find a sumptuous spread of cheeses and prosciutto, warm bread, homemade marmalade, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and milk so fresh it mooed. There was a clanking noise coming from behind a pair of giant barn doors, and I cracked them open to peek inside.
The Di Grassos' young son was in there, running the bottling machine, making the wine while Papá was gone.
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This material was last updated April 2006. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998-2008 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
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