16 Giugno 2015
My internship so far at lago scuro has exceptional and has been truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience! First of all living in a 18th century castle within what could only be called a perfect ecosystem. The cows, the chicken, the pigs, the cellar, the casaficcio, (making cheese), the greenhouses, the gardens, the preschool and the family, everything works in a perfect cycle everyday to maintain the farm and as natural as possible. For me this is everything! It would be a dream to work in this manner one day but now to learn how it works, to gain the knowledge and ask the questions i have. words cannot describe how thankful i am.
Luca although not very confident in the kitchen, is one of the best people i know and produces some very nice food along the way. How he maintains 3 young children as well as a farm to table cascina is still amazing to me! Fabio and Paola his parents are wonderful people and are the hardest workers here. Fabio is the cheese expert, milking the cows, making the exceptional raw milk cheese and maintains the farm, Paola runs the market in cremona, watches over her young grandchildren, and helps set up the dining room with her large family coming around every day to help as much as they can!. Luca’s wife does the cascina dei bambini during the weekdays and serves the food along with doing desserts on the weekends. Its beautiful how the family works together, whatever problems they have get sorted straight away and the help each other as much as they can in every which way! this is more a life lesson than a day at cooking school.
What I’ve been doing... The way Luca says it is “there is always something to do on the farm”. No buses come by the farm, i do not have a car and the bike ride is a bit too farm to town for me. Truthfully i wake up, walk downstairs, espresso, then start working. i am here to gain as much as i can so its more of a life to them rather than a job. The kitchen is beautiful, it has all of the toys a chef could want and everything almost 95% of all our product are either organic, biological or produced on the farm. The bread is the superstar of the kitchen, you have to taste it to believe it. We make a lot of preserves, giardiniera, soups and pasta to sell at the market but the weekends are the busiest. the kitchen does not have a menu so every service is different and we use whatever is fresh and good. And we play and create different ideas for each menu. Luca doesn’t have much experience in the kitchen as he says but has a lot of passion and knowledge so its nice to talk, discuss, and share ideas with him. Since we are only supposed to work 20 hours a week (haha) there is a lot of other time for me to go around the farm and see other different things among food production. I have been getting the cows in from the pasture to milk them in the mornings, making cheese from mozzarella, provola, scamorza, camenbert, ricotta and formigella (similar to taleggio). I have cleaned the barn inside and out, picked the eggs from the chickens, spread manure in the garden to enrich the soil, picked weeds in the greenhouse for a whole day, planted potatoes, set up water supply systems for the soil, and pick my own food. I feed the cows, the chickens the pigs, the soil, the kids in the daycare, the family and gardeners for lunch, the people who go to the market in cremona, the people who come to eat in the “osteria”, the B&B and myself! The extra free time i have off a good family friend of theirs has become a very good friend and my so-called wine tutor on only natural wines. we have gone to vinature in viacenza a few weeks past, and he also takes me out to different natural wine bars, to go meet producers and go out to restaurants. (we met ezgi at la creppa!)
This has been a dream come true to work at a farm to table, beyond organic place with a family that are truly inspiring in every meaning possible. It will be very difficult to leave this place to return to school, but with the contacts I have met so far, hopefully my dream of doing my second internship at dal pescatore could be achievable.
Thank you again for everything you have done for us. This experience has changed me for what i believe is of the best and something i will look back at in the future and smile!
