Anna's farm

We had a chance to compare the glamorous buffalo operation to what farming has been like on the ground here for generations. Next door to our rental, Anna, the caretaker of our house, lives in a old stone farmhouse. She has goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits, olives, a small garden, and her husband keeps hunting dogs to go after pigs in the hills. Anna invited us over for a visit during milking and cheese-making time one evening.

We knew it was time to head over to Anna's when her husband brought the goats in from browsing around the neighborhood all afternoon.

The goats' pen is a lot simpler than the buffalos'--no massager in sight--but they do get most of the day out and about.








There's a happy billy, maybe a dozen nannies, and assorted kids.









These sweeties were pretty patient while we had a go at their udders.



Anna's husband got the job done more efficiently meanwhile.



The milk doesn't get any fresher--warm and wonderful.



Milking done, we checked out the rabbits, and some adorable, tiny bunnies.



We also looked in on the chickens in their coop tucked under Anna's house.





On to making cheese in Anna's workroom on the other side of her basement. Anna pours the milk into a pot to heat up:



Just add a bit of rennet:



When that curdles properly, Anna sets up the first round of cheese:



The cheeses age for some weeks in the next room (there's also a ham hanging in another corner).



Alongside, olives and sardines are curing.







Anna boils what's left in the pot again for ricotta ("re-cooked"):



Drained and packed into a basket, this is what you eat fresh; we took some home for dinner.





In these simple quarters there's a bounty of glorious food. It's easy to romanticize it--it doesn't get more real, down to earth, local. It's a living: Anna's husband sells their products out of his truck at the market in Agropoli. Reality also means that Anna and her husband work hard and are tied to the land and their responsibilities.

Mozzarella di bufala

People here take their mozzarella, from water buffalo milk (mozzarella di bufala), seriously. At lunch one day at a neighborhood place we were told that it would be a wait for pizza as the husband was still out getting the day's fresh batch of the cheese. Their pride is justified.

In the area north of Agropoli in the wide valley of the Sele River water buffalo have been part of the landscape for some 100s of years. One farm, Tenuta Vannulo, has tidied itself up beautifully as a tourist attraction as well as a producer.







There's a large covered stable where the buffalo are fed and milked and, we were told, serenaded with classical music in the mornings. Eight happy bulls mingle freely among the cows.

The silage has a sweet, tasty, fermented scent and the buffalo seem perfectly happy to accept a scratch on the head while they munch.



The cows have collars with chips that ID them as they take themselves to the automatic milking machine; the machine has a sight for finding the teats and can analyse the milk as it comes out of the cow.








They get an occasional cooling drench from some sprinklers.





They can doze in puppy piles if they don't want to bother finding their individual stalls.





Or they can head over to this machine for a massage:



The buffalo in the stable did seem, to our amateur eyes, to be content, if not outright cheerful, but we also got to see a herd of them released to surrounding pasture and these, like kids at recess, actually scampered into the grass, leaping and kicking, which is quite something to see in a water buffalo. Here they settle down in the greenery:



In this pasture there's a waterhole, center and left--you maybe can make out the backs of the submerged buffalo:



The farm has a small, busy shop for the mozzarella, which they sell only on the premises. You can look through big windows into the kitchens and for guided visitors they demonstrate braiding the cheese and tearing it by hand into the regulation sizes, mozzarelle, bocconcini, ciliegine. They also sell leather goods made in an onsite workshop. The leather comes from Tuscany; I think they send their old animals and their baby bulls for processing there? Most glorious, there's a shop for coffee, gelato, yogurt, cake with custard sauces, cannoli and more, all featuring buffalo milk. I should have grabbed pix but I was too distracted by the goodies.

And beyond all that there's a very nice restaurant. On our first visit (okay, so I went three times) we thought for sure there must be a place to taste the mozzarella, so I marched us like our own little herd of buffalo into this elegant restaurant, nearly empty at the time, unaware that it only serves lunch, only by reservation. The supremely professional waiter handled us with flair and courtesy, never a murmur that we might be out of line, and laid out a table with cloth napkins, wine glasses, tomato salads, breads, butters, and formal servings of two sizes of mozzarella and slices of ricotta besides. I was too embarrassed not to clean my plate and walked out of there with a mozzarrella-shaped belly, I swear--but happy!

A guided tour ends with a simpler tasting:

Monte Stella

We put our feast in Trentinara to good use the next day by climbing up Monte Stella, 3,700 feet high, for 5,700 feet of climbing from Agropoli in 38 miles. After quiet road to get there we saw virtually no traffic on the climb, which is barely more than a lane wide, with healthy pitches of 12-14% grade.



There's a radar (I think?) installation on top and a sort of blocky church.



And talk about views, you could see everything from there:

























The climb has some nice changes of scenery. Olive groves give way to some aspen- or beech-like forest for a while:

There are some stretches of oak woodland:



Here's a view from where the descent rejoins the main road, north through the hills and villages back to Agropoli:




Monte Stella is a stellar ride!

Lunch in Trentinara

The day after our cloudy ride to Trentinara the skies cleared, so we grabbed my sister, Ellen, and our dear friend Georgine and went back catch the views from there properly, and have lunch.



Walking the little streets of the old town was a treat:





Here's what we should have seen from there the day before:

At first it actually looked like lunch was not in the cards after all as the only restaurant we found was closed. Thankfully, a family nearby saw our disappointment and were able to point us to another (the other?) option, a small place with a tiny sign out front, Antiche Mura (www.antichemura-trentinara.it).



When we opened the door, a man who proved to be Giuseppe, the cook, turned on the lights and reassured us the empty restaurant was open. I  figured we were on the early side of the lunch crowd, but we were the only ones the whole time, along with Giuseppe and one server. No menus: Giuseppe simply announced there was only fish for the day and ran through what he'd serve for antipasto, first, and second courses. Fine with us, we were plenty hungry. And oh, was it good. Forgive me while I run through some of the dishes: an array of anchovies, octopus, shrimp, and other shellfish; some other small fish breaded and fried whole; grilled white fish, calamari, tuna, and zucchini tossed and sauteed with calamari. Add a wonderful white wine, a little tomato and onion salad. tiramisu, lemon gelato, apple liqueur.

We behaved ourselves--or wanted to be cool--and didn't take the photos we were dying to, so I've stolen these from TripAdvisor.

Here's Giuseppe:


Our table:


A dish very much like what we enjoyed:


We also stopped back at the bar Harlan and I had found the day before and ended up in a long enthusiastic conversation with a few people in there about where we're from, where they've lived, the merits of Orlando, or Berlin...

Here are just few more snapshots from walking around town: