Our Hosts
We will spend nine nights at an enchanted working alpaca farm in Umbria, very near the border to Tuscany. The farm has several stone buildings which will serve as our home away from home. Most of the sites we visit are within a 10-45 minute drive from the farm. The houses are roomy and very comfortable, with lots of access to the lovely out door patios and fabulous views. We have our own kitchens, dinning rooms and living rooms and feel very at home. Each house has several bathrooms and washing machines.
We are perched on the side of a ridge with amazing views from Umbria to Tuscany on an east/west valley. You can sit in one spot and watch the sun travel all day across the valley and finally set over the hills of Tuscany. The far side of valley, is dotted with villas and castles. Our side of the valley has grazing animals, fields of poppies and olive trees.
Making Fresh Pasta
Most all of our tours include at least one day of cooking classes and how can you not have a pasta course. This is a picture from one of our classes taught by my good friends who live in a 12th century guard house on the side of the hills outside Cortona. We go to the neighboring monastery built around the original “cell” of St. Francis, Le Cella, and hike across the organic olive groves to my friends house, where we spend a long afternoon of cooking a multi course dinner. Of course at the end, we sit down, eat it all, and wash it down with local wines! Food never tastes so good as when you make it from scratch and use home made organic olive oil from the land you have hiked across. Look at the marble table top, perfect for rolling pasta.
Ancient Art of Weaving Linen
There are several amazing museums of weaving, featuring the traditional methods of weaving Italian linens. This is a museum, working laboratory and shop in Citta di Castello, where we can see women working to weave and do the hand sewing to make fabric the same way it has been made for centuries. The museum includes one of the first Montessori schools in Italy, used in the early 20th century to educate the children of the women weavers.
Tuscan Views
Driving through Tuscany and the Chianti Region is difficult because there are so many amazing vistas it is hard to keep your eyes on the road. The roads are narrow and twisting. There are cyclists and tourists taking in all the glory of the views, snapping photos, standing and posing for memorable shots. There are many hidden treasures along the way as well. There is the famous Rooster signs designating Chianti Region wines, that beg to be tasted. There are very large wineries but there are also very small family establishments that should not be missed. Every photo begs to be on a calendar!
Eating Italian Treats
So many special flavors, you must go back every day and try a new one! If only it was just the gelato begging us to indulge, but there are pastry shops, cheese, salami, and pizzerias the beckon us. The good news is that most of the cities we visit are on hill top cities that give us a challenging workout so we must eat to keep up our strength!
Making Olive Oil
Olive oil is a way of life in Italy. Olive trees dot the scenery every where and it seems every olive in the entire country is picked and made into oil in early December. Each family has a special place to turn their olives into their years supply of olive oil and the trip to have it pressed is a special yearly event. One more reason to have a special meal and wine! Never turn down an invitation to go on such an outing. The olives a deposited in a line of baskets to be crushed and then you join all the families in the waiting area, usually a large room with a long table and often an open fire for cooking your dinner meats. Once your olive oil is ready, every one must have a taste. You can pour a generous amount of oil over some bread and cover your meat. Wow, that first taste is always so peppery! You must drink some wine to make sure you don’t cough. Oh, such a problem.
Natural Foods of Italy
Italians love to eat fresh seasonal foods. Most towns have a mercato day, where you can buy most anything you will need to prepare a fabulous meal. You can buy veggies, fruits, cheese, pastries, meats, fish, candy, as well as house hold goods, clothing and even hardware supplies. If you know the region, you can find a mercato day in a nearby town any day of the week.
Pecorino Cheese
Cheese, cheese, cheese and more kinds of cheese! How do you pick your favorite? Pecorino cheese comes infused with herbs, truffles or wrapped in leaves. You can get it soft, hard and aged cheeses. Then there is the ricotta cheese that is made daily, oh don’t forget the fresh mozzarella! I always eat so much before dinner, I wonder why we’re even having dinner!
Heading out to harvest plants for natural dyes
On our Textile Tours we often start with a two day natural dye workshop. A local expert is our workshop leader and starts by taking us out to collect local plants that we will use to make extracts we will dye use to dye wool, alpaca and silk. After two days of fun and hard work, we have a very colorful notebook full of amazing colors. We often dye with flowers of the season, leaves from the fruit and nut trees, olive tree leaves, and bark. The colors can vary based upon the time of year, how much rain there has been that year, and of course, how much dye material we use per gram of fiber.
A fabulous wine shop in Montalcino
Montalico is famous for it’s wine; the home of the world famous Brunello wines. This shop specializes in Brunello wines and almost every bottle you see in this picture is a Brunello. This wine shop is the Fortezza a 14th century fortress complete with ramparts built by Cosimo I in 1571. We visit a number of local wineries in the region on our wine tours, each having a distinct character very dependent upon it’s position on the side of the mountain and it’s soil, daily temperature and amount of sun light.