256 animal, vegetable, miracle
instructions for growing and cooking it. We were going to have Tuscan
kale soup for supper that very night, a secret he disclosed with one of
those long Italian- guy sighs.
At dinnertime, we were surprised when Amico took his place at the
head of the table. He introduced himself to the rest of the guests, open-
ing his arms wide to declare, “Amico de tutti!” This kind old man in dirty
jeans we had taken that afternoon for a field hand was in fact the owner of
this substantial estate. I took stock of my assumptions about farmers and
landowners, modesty and self- importance. I’m accustomed to a culture in
which farmers are either invisible, or a joke. From the moment I’d spied
draft horses turning the soil of a glamorous city’s outskirts, Italy just kept
surprising me.
That does it, I told Steven later that night, retrieving our well- traveled
Zucche de Chioggia from the car. They’re not going to kick us out of this
place for possession of pumpkin with agricultural intent. At worst they
might tell us it’s doo- doo because it was grown in a different province. But
no, the housekeeper admired it the next morning, and the kitchen staff
without hesitation handed over an enormous knife and spoon. They sug-
gested we butcher it down by the chicken and pig pens, where any fallout
would be appreciated.
Indeed, the enormous pink pigs sniffed the air, snorted, and squealed
as we whacked open our prize. Its thick flesh was custardy yellow, with a
small cavity in the center packed with huge white seeds. We took pity on
the wailing hogs and chopped up the pumpkin flesh for their dinner rather
than ours, distributing the pieces carefully among the pens to avoid a por-
cine riot. Back in our room, I washed the sticky pulp from the seeds as
best I could in our bathroom sink, but really needed a colander, which the
kitchen staff also happily supplied. For the rest of our stay we spread out
the seeds on towels in the sun, but they weren’t completely dried by the
time we had to depart from the fattoria. They would mildew and become
inviable if we left them packed in a suitcase, so the rest of our Italian va-
cation (in the rain, on the train) was in some way organized around op-
portunities to spread out the seeds for further drying. Most challenging
was a fancy hotel room in Venice, where I put them in a heavy, hand-