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| A typical farm yard in one of the many cascine around Milan |
Milan has around 60 farms within the borders of the municipality. Many of them are abandoned but even more are still in use. All the farms still play a very important role in the landscape (their size, their architecture) and in the culture of the city (food supply, economics). With the upcoming Expo 2015 – which has as theme feeding the world. Energy for life – the city tries to bring the farms under the attention of the citizens again. Last week I started a report of my trip along some of these farms. This week the rest of the story.
The event I was visiting was meant to bring Milanese
citizens into contact with the producers of their food. Farms were open and
organized educational activities in which they showed the production process;
how do cows get milked (by an Astronaut),
where does honey comes from and what do you have to do to grow rise? Many farms
also offered some of their produce as part of the typical Sunday lunch which is indispensable for the Italians.
I ended up on an open farmyard were cows where fed and
where bulls silently enjoyed the sun. No sign of any activity except from about
30 family cars waiting for their owners to start them and drive them home again.
Then a door opened bringing a steady rumor of forks and knifes touching
porcelain plates into the yard. This sounds like food.
The warm and damp space we entered was full of families
enjoying plates full of pasta, cutlets, vegetables and the like. This is Italy!
We hooked on and enjoyed what the farmers’ family served us: home grown rise by
the sister in law, cutlets from their own cows served by one of the brothers,
homemade cheeses by mama and a pie
with apples from the farms garden by the padrone
herself.
As good as the lunch was, this is not what we came for. The
intention of the day was to show us what a farmer has to do to prepare our milk,
cheese and other products we daily eat.
So – dizzy from the food and wine - we stood some minutes looking at the Astronaut in which the cows resigned themselves to get themselves milk. No farmer is involved, except from those days the cows give an amount of milk which is different than their average. It seems very anonymous but on the other hand does it give the farmer and his family time to prepare the tasteful dishes we all eat the hours before.
I am sure that many people did not get the goal of the day. The Italian families ate like they did every Sunday only this time on a farm. And maybe that exactly is the beginning of bringing them closer to the process of food production. What will be the next step?
