from Campofelice di Rocella: agriturismo

(Wednesday post)

So what’s it like to stay on a farm in Sicily? This is our third. Each has been different, but let me say a word on this last one.

It has no name and it appears to have a sole inhabitant, Signora Cristina. I did not correspond with her. She speaks no English. I’m guessing she has a friend handle any email in another language. She is gentle in spirit and manner as she has an expquisite sense of detail.

The house is very very old. She tells me it has been in her family for hundreds of years. The guest room is in the second floor, over the old olive press.





In all three farm houses, we have been left to ourselves. In Wisconsin, you have to be social if you go the bed and breakfast route. Most of the time, breakfast will a communal affair, whether or not it is your inclination to be bright and chatty from the minute you take a sip of o.j.. Not here. You are given space. But if you ask questions, you are given the moon (see post below).

These are all working farms. The first one was a serious producer of olive oil under its own label. The second sold grapes to the cooperative. This third one has the olive trees as well, but it seems more laid back – as if their livelihood did not depend on farming.



farmhouse, olive trees


The breakfasts have been typical Italian affairs: excellent coffee and then some stuff thrown in – usually breads and jams, sometimes a boiled egg, sometimes cheese. In this last one, we eat in the garden, bordered by lavender bushes on one side, and the sea coast, just a few miles down below, on the other.









view from farm to sea

There are no phone lines, no televisions. Tile floors, puffy quilts and a sprinkling of antiques. All have views onto gardens and all abound in the wake up calls of birds, or, as I write this, the occasional rooster.