A long work of passion

Today was wet. Yesterday it drizzled on and off, but today it poured. Instead of making us labor outdoors, Pierro set us to work coring apples. The farm sells a lot of them, but the rotten and ugly ones get turned into “mousse di mele,” a delicious substance somewhere in between apple sauce and apple butter. We were tasked with cutting off the gross parts and removing the cores. After our mid-morning tea break, Josh decided that he wanted to get out of the kitchen and do some of the weeding that we didn't get to finish yesterday. I spent about ten minutes in the cold rain with him before hightailing it back to the apples and the warm kitchen.

After lunch (pasta with eggplants and capers), the rain let up briefly and Pierro had us out under a high tunnel picking the flowers off of basil plants. This sounded like an easy task at first. About an hour later, Pierro came to check on our progress and, seeing that we'd only made it 6 plants down the row, offered these words to us: “It's a long work of passion, no?” Cold, damp and tired, but ultimately having a good experience in Italy.