The Rural Tour!

Good Morning Wednesday and Ladies!

On this morn, I chose to do Anne's rural tour with her. Now, by rural....I mean rural, folks. Not like small town backstreets....I mean up in the mountains with the "real" Italians of this world! Living their lives off of everything that they make, grow and maintain. Real people. The ones that won't even know if the end of society comes because they are their own society, not depending on anyone for anything. A true lesson in living.... So our first stop was Giovannino and his grocery store.  Anne is very close to him and in fact, his family cooked the food for her wedding reception many yrs ago. He is like a father to her...and it's obvious in his smile for her when she walks up! He is 80 something, I believe, and still works everyday in his store. Geeze, he was SO sweet! Just wanted to hug and hug him.

his granddaughter works for him in the store

of course, we had tastings of their fine meat and wine there!

 

Then, we came to Peppas! Sweet sweet Peppa. A woman who has worked her whole life on her farm and to this day, altho besieged with arthritus and minus her husband who passed, still works from sun up to sun down. Because she says she has to. (Keep in mind that not one of these people I'm going to tell you about spoke one word of English!) We drive up and she is feeding her babies..

.And so happy to see us because that meant she had some company for awhile. She lives alone here but her kids do come to check on her. She and Anne, our tour guide, are buddies from way back and they are very good friends. Often eat dinners together at one another's houses.

She was VERY excited to have some men around so she took great advantage of their company for the time we were there!

and took the opportunity to tell him a few things!

she ALWAYS had a smile on her face!

the D.C. girls had never held a chicken before...Peppa made sure that was taken care of!

she hangs her plastic sacks out to dry after washing for re-use

I love her!

Just take a look at the views from her door!

the bread house where she made many many loaves of bread over the yrs.

Then it was time for her to bring out her home made wine for us!

My new friend jackie took this and sent it to me cuz she said I just looked so happy to be living my life........um....si senora!!

Peppa cut lavendar from her wild bush for all of us to take home. made lil bouquets for all the girls!

and crazy Pauola didn't like us bringing all that "stuff" into his clean car!

And all of this was only the first stop of 4!!  Much more to come....

as we're driving off to the next farm......look at the perfect picture!!  a picture perfect Italian afternoon!