We travelled from Rome to Grossetto, by train of course.
Our host, Marco, welcomed us at the train station (this is the usual day for them to be in town, so he didn't waste fossil fuel especially for us) and took us to his farm and home called Fonte Nova several kilometers north from Grossetto.

This is our first official WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) cultural exchange experience. Marco (Italian) and Ulrika (German) Both live on a beautiful property facing south, with great panoramas of typical southern Tuscany scenery.

They have about 1100 olive trees which produces extra virgin olive oil sold later mainly through Ulrika's family up in Germany.
They also had a winter garden, which had lettuce, cauliflower, fennel, broccoli and other vegetables.
Marco has been living there for a decade, escaping his previous stage in life as a businessman. He has been doing everything manually, with no machines, living in his tipi, until he received a grant from the government for being an organic farmer, which "trapped" him (as he says it) to buy a tractor, build a big house, and other modern luxuries that now he complains changed the pace in his life in a negative way.

Anyhow, he didn't save on manual labor with us - ditch-digging, clearing bushes, sawing wood, etc. We got in good shape.

We had simple and good food (they eat mainly vegetarian), with a lot of olive oil of course. Ulrika makes great whole wheat bread. They buy only organic food, and we had no objection to this policy. Once we also went to a town on the beach nearby and had a nice walk after failing to find soy gelato.




We finally figured out how to use our carrier with Omo on the back, and if she's in the mood, we can do a lot more things with her, like cooking and hand wash laundry. Sometimes we just put her on the ground as we both work, and she occupies herself for a long time, eating mud and grass, cleaning rocks, with occasional EC/pee pee breaks.