Party on the "Farm"

This is a long one. Apologies.

Weekdays at Bosco Merrone are quiet, hot, vaguely disappointing. It's only the five of us, using up the supplies brought in from far-off stores, J and C and I washing dishes, reading, browsing the Internet, fighting the temptation to scratch mosquito bites. Work for the week consists of harvesting as many bamboo stalks as possible, pulling them free of blackberry thickets, stripping them of leaves and shoots with sickles, and dragging armfuls up over-grown horse paths back to the house, where presumably they will one day grace the roofs over the pool and patio. Every day, harvest bamboo and wash the dishes from every meal. It's thankless and there are few distractions. We consider our options and plan a premature departure for Sicily.Then suddenly Friday comes, and with it people. Mario and Gino and Nadia and Rosa are back, and Salvatore and his wife, and other friends besides. They all smoke and laugh and try to force Chrissy and me to form sentences, and bring in huge bags of exciting groceries, and cook. Meals always start after nine and the three of us finish toweling off the last wine glass at eleven thirty. On Saturday the gang (who of course stayed the night--where better to have a weekend-long party than a B&B?) dress their wrinkled bronze bodies with tiny swim cover-ups and then lounge and smoke and opine. Directed by Salvatore, we engage the disheveled yard in an epic battle: weeding, sweeping, washing, hauling, raking, killing spiders. It is hot and exhausting and satisfying, much better than endless bamboo, and we are rewarded with an excellent lunch of fried anchovies and eggplant pasta on the terrace, with eight of our closest Italian friends. And Kumar, of course. Dark Horse is gone for the weekend, so the guests can laugh about his watermelon addiction without him hearing.

We once again wash dishes and finish the day's work and "clean" ourselves in the pool because the water isn't working in our cabin. Then we read and nap and put on dresses, then are drawn back to the house like moths by the sound of karaoke blasted over the hills.

Yes, Italian karaoke. Soulful, boisterous, sincere. Suddenly, Bosco Merrone has a fully fledged festa on its hands. The gang has multiplied to maybe twenty, but because everyone is a noisy Italian, it feels like forty. We (even me) are persuaded to sing a round of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" and then, after a gut-busting and wonderful dinner of Neapolitan pizza, fried risotto balls, ricotta calzonitas, and assorted cakes, the DJ throws out some Italian pop songs and it's Club Bosco. We dance our asses off, then are promenaded around by old men to samba, salsa, what have you. Except Jamie (beloved by all for her red hair and excellent Italian), who is monopolized by Marc Antonio, a nineteen-year-old whose mama wants him matched up with my cousin.

Cooking goes on until midnight and cleaning until two, and we fall into bed pumped to have been included.
Sunday brings another solid morning of yard work, and then suddenly it's all hands on deck for Sunday dinner, where huge families of paying customers materialize, demanding ice and spoons and bread in their incomprehensible language. Waitressing nightmare. Course after delicious course pass through our hands and I long for a taste. We are pinned for three hours straight, and then we are ordered to sit down and eat, and we gratefully comply. Lasagna, flank steak with delicious peppers, mussels, fried dough balls of anchovies and zucchini flowers, huge bowls of grapes and plums and the ubiquitous watermelon. Wine and anise spirits and espresso and more dishes to be washed and then we collapse with fatigue, at seven at night.

Jamie and I rally briefly to run hill repeats on the wicked kilometer-long driveway, where we can see the sun set over the mountain range. On Tuesday we're taking a night train (and ferry) to Sicily and I don't regret leaving early, but my biggest issue with WWOOFing here--the utter lack of real Italian experiences--was totally obliterated by this weekend. Forty-eight unalloyed hours of working, eating, laughing, singing, in some obscure hilltop lodge two hours from anywhere--what more could I ask?