market day, tuscany

claudio of podere campriano sells sheep's milk cheeses at the sovicille market

the grand pyrenees dogs, podere campriano, 2013

Tuscany, February 2013

Cold morning, Podere Campriano

 On the few days when the ground wasn't frozen, the mud was deeper than knee-high boots.

The cheese room, Podere Campriano, February 2013. It's unheated and in the winter I wore five layers and three layers of socks and still shivered the whole time, with my toes going so numb my feet felt like pegs. After lifting the curds out of the immense caldaia, we put them in forms and placed them under a tarp filled with steam, which was so hot it burned my eyes. In the cheese room not a second was wasted--we were either stirring, cutting, putting curds in forms, or rinsing, washing, and mopping at all times. Claudio made a lot of cheese, from fresh, custardy ravaggiolo to piquant pecorino stagionato, but by far his most popular sale at the market is his ricotta, which would all be gone in an hour or two.

Around Podere Campriano, Tuscany, 2013

Lambing season, Podere Campriano

Podere Campriano, 2013

February afternoon, Podere Campriano

Above: Claudio, a man who once crashed his car and ended up in the hospital because he had been trying to kiss his girlfriend while driving.

February mornings, Podere Campriano

 Above: beautiful hot milk, the reward for getting up at dawn and undergoing two cold, hay-dusty hours of milking and feeding

There is a sign on the long dirt road to the property that warns hunters of the Podere's three dogs. "That's good, that way the hunters won't get near and accidentally shoot your dogs," I said to Claudio. "No," said Claudio, "It's so that the hunters don't get near, because if they do, our dogs will eat their dogs." And in fact there are corpses of deer and skeletons of sheep all over the property.

Podere Campriano, 2013

Podere Campriano

Podere Campriano, 2013

Podere Campriano, 2013

Podere Campriano, 2013

Lamb slaughter

Click through for some more pictures that are kind of sad

First Sight by Philip Larkin

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First Sight

Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow

When their bleating clouds the air

Meet a vast unwelcome, know

Nothing but a sunless glare.

Newly stumbling to and fro

All they find, outside the fold,

Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,

Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies

Hidden round them, waiting too,

Earth’s immeasurable surprise.

They could not grasp it if they knew,

What so soon will wake and grow

Utterly unlike the snow.

Podere Campriano, 2013

lambies

Podere Campriano, 2013