Planting Potatoes

I'm officially legal!

Yes, after six months in Florence, we have finally been given our permessi di soggiorno (permissions to stay), the document (now, in the age of technology, it's actually a snazzy electronic card) which informs anyone who needs to know that yes, we our allowed to stay in Florence longer than two months.  Or is it three?  I can't remember.  Regardless, we were supposed to have them by the end of December.  On the other hand, last year it took so long that they never got them at all.

And you have to realize that this is with American students who not only speak decent Italian but were guided through the process by Italians who know how the system works--we get preferential treatment, and it still took six months.  Standing there in a room full of mostly immigrant families, I kept thinking about what it would be like to try to go through this process while dealing with a language barrier and discrimination on top of complicated Italian bureaucracy.  Monica started chatting with an elderly woman from Sri Lanka, who, it turned out, had gotten there at 5:30 am to get in line for a number (they don't start calling numbers until about 8:30), because she had to get to work afterwards, and we, arriving at 8:15 or so, had been bumped in front of her and had the first numbers.  By the time we discovered this, we were almost done and she was next, but we still felt awful.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out what classes I'm taking next semester (Smith, alla italiana, didn't put up the course catalog until a week before course registration), trying not very successfully to get some homework done, and worrying about the work I need to get done this semester and my plans for the summer, etc, etc.  By the afternoon, I'd had way too much time to sit and brood, and it was time to go and do something more productive with the second half of my day.  Planting potatoes, for example.

Usually, when you say something like "I'm planting zucchini", what you really mean is that you're planting zucchini seeds.  But when you say you're planting potatoes, that is precisely what you're doing.  On Friday afternoon at La Talea, Davide (one of the guys from Peru who works there) and I sat on overturned plastic buckets with a burlap sack full of sprouting potatoes between us, filling another pair of buckets with chunks of potato while talking about the difference between Italian and Peruvian cuisine, potato-planting methods (he never seen anyone cut up seed potatoes before--he said at home they would just plant the potatoes whole, sometimes even more than one in one spot, if they're small or have few sprouts) our families, and our studies.  He gave up studying communications technology to come work in Italy, he said, because he wouldn't have been able to find a job in Peru.  His brother, on the other hand, is studying communications technology here in Italy--I wonder if Davide's farm work helps to pay for his brother's education?  I didn't ask, but it made me wonder, because his (Davide's) Italian is very good, nearly fluent, so I don't think the language would be a barrier to studying here.

The next step is to lay out the potato chunks in long rows, cut side down, sprout side up, at the right spacing.  The right spacing happens to be the length of my foot, which was handy, because I could simply walk down the row, one foot in front of the other, laying a potato half between each step.

Later, Laura (who is married to Antonio, who runs La Talea) joined us, and as she and I set out long lines of potatoes in the dirt and Davide followed along behind covering them up, the conversation ranged from health care and politics to the importance of voting (Antonio apparently doesn't vote, as a form of protest, while Laura can't imagine not voting, even when it's difficult to choose because she doesn't see her views in any of candidates), architecture, the history of Florence (have I mentioned that Florence abolished the death penalty in 1786?  And the rest of what would later become Italy followed suit not long after), mountain-climbing schools in Peru, and the usefulness of hope.

Lastly, the chickens have arrived!!!  Since I first started at the farm in November, there has been an empty chicken coop and a story that at some point, there would be chickens to live there.  I think they belonged to one of the neighbors, who used to come over to get vegetable scraps to feed them, and brought Antonio eggs in return.  Now they have moved to the farm (perhaps to save the neighbor all the walking back and forth?) and have become Antonio's chickens; no eggs yet, but I'll keep you posted.

I know I still haven't caught you all up properly on winter traveling, but trying to do that was getting a little intimidating, and if I wait to write about what's going on now until I've caught up on January and February, I'll wind up not writing anything at all, and meanwhile the list of things to write about isn't getting any shorter...