Dateline Siena, somewhere near Santa Colomba

I’m sitting outside at an old wooden table, under a roof that used to cover the pigsty and sheep pens that were appended at some point to a 13^th century tower.  I just picked up the clippings of a laurel/bay leaf shrub that Sergio had trimmed and hung a few to dry from the rafters in front of me.  Sure, bay leaves are dirt cheap at home, but how many people can say that they dried them themselves? 

This is a beautiful agriturismo outside of Siena, near the tiny village of Santa Colomba.  That’s all I really know.  I was just glad to see Sergio at the train station last night!

Things were pretty iffy at the first farm after my first week, and I was thinking about leaving but wasn't sure how to extricate myself from the situation since this was my first wwoofing gig.  The surroundings were beautiful, and I loved the goats.  The main problem was a complete lack of organization, so that I didn't know when or if I could ever make cheese or really work with the animals (as the wwoofers who arrived earlier had those jobs), or if my primary wwoofer job would be the lunch and dinner dishes.  (This seemed to be a wwoofer job though nothing was said explicitly about any responsibilities.  Ever.)    

So when I had a chance, I arranged a ride to Asti with an American cheesemaker and his photographer wife, who had come to see their cheesemaking process and whom I'd met at the Slow Food "Cheese!" fair.  Otherwise, I thought it could get pretty awkward hanging out there for several days until someone went into town, with everyone knowing I was trying to get out of there.   These folks were fantastic, one of them a teacher of cheesemaking, and they were travelling around Italy after the "Cheese!" fair to visit small cheese producers.  What a great trip!  They were kind enough take me, and it made me feel so much better to have that option. 

When we left the next morning, they drove me to the train station and Robin wanted to make sure I was OK.   Jim, by the way, is a very knowledgeable cheesemaker and his stories about various traditions of cheesemaking are fascinating (http://www.cheesemaking.com/JimW.html).  A big thanks goes out to both of you!!  

But the first farm wasn't all bad.  It wasn't a great place for a first wwoofing gig, but there were some good things.  In fact, traditional hand-milking (which is rare these days) and cheesemaking had a lot of potential.  There were just too many wwoofers and no direction at all, not to mention that the lodgings were--shall we say--hostel-like at best; and I think that it's enough excitement to be learning the language and the culture, without the additional, unnecessary chaos and the uncertainty about why I was even there.

Turns out that it wasn't such a difficult conversation to tell Mario I was leaving, and I generously just said that it just wasn't a good fit for me.  And turned the conversation away from the reasons for leaving (what would be the point?) to teach Mario my father-in-law's expression to describe our situation:  "There's an ass for every seat," which made him laugh.  Naturally, I kind of left out the part about that expression implying "there's no accounting for taste."

So far this place seems to be great, but more on that when I've gotten my bearings a little more.