where fish wear crowns 255walked slowly along on his knees, planting lettuces. When he fi nished his
row he came over to talk with us, making agreeable use of his one word of
English, “Yes!” Nevertheless we managed to spend an hour asking him
questions; he was patient with the linguistically challenged, and his
knowledge was encyclopedic. It takes 100 kilograms of olives to make 14
kilos of oil. The pH is extremely important. The quality of olives grown on
this farm were (naturally) the best, with some of the lowest acid levels in
all the world’s olive oil. This farm also produced a nationally famous label
of wine, along with beef and other products. I was curious about winter-
time temperatures here, which he said rarely dropped lower than freez-
ing, although in ’87 a Siberian wind brought temperatures of –9°F, killing
olive trees all over central Italy. On this farm they’d had no harvest for six
years afterward, but because they had a very old, established orchard, it
recovered.
All the olives here were harvested by hand. Elsewhere, in much of
Italy, older trees have been replaced in the last two decades by younger
orchards trimmed into small, neat box shapes for machine harvest. Mech-
anization obviously increases productivity, but the Italian government is
now making an effort to preserve old olive orchards like the ones on this
farm, considering their twisted trunks and spreading crowns to be a clas-
sic part of the nation’s cultural heritage.
Our new tour guide was named Amico. We seemed to be working our
way through the alphabet of colorful Italian patriarchs. And if Amadeo
was poetically devout, Amico really was Friendship personifi ed. He
showed us the field of saffron crocuses, an ancient and nearly extinct
Tuscan crop that is recently being revived. Next came the vineyards. I
asked how they protected the grapes from birds. He answered, by pro-
tecting their predators: civet cats, falcons, and owls patrol the farm by
turns, day and night. Amico was also a big fan of bats, which keep down
the insects, and of beneficial ladybugs. And he really loved the swallows
that build their mud nests in the barns. They are marvelous birds, he in-
sisted, rolling his eyes heavenward and cupping a hand over his heart. His
other deepest passion appeared to be Cavolo Nero de Toscana—Tuscan
black kale. He gave us an envelope of its tiny seeds, along with careful