Pride makes fools of us all. Three days into my stint as a farmer at Monestevole, a 98-acre farm nestled atop a hill in Umbria, I was flooded with feelings of smug accomplishment. I was watering the patch of artichoke and tomato seedlings that I’d painstakingly planted the day before, when a farmhand named Brad walked by with a cow. I wanted to get Brad to acknowledge my efforts, but my Italian is limited to ordering and waxing enthusiastic about eggplant Parmesan.

Flailing, I blurted, “Io io fatto,” which I hoped meant “I did this myself,” but which is more accurately translated as “I I done.” Brad looked at me, baffled. “Whoops!” my brain computed, “I think I just told him ‘I am the fat one.’ ” So I frantically pantomimed the action of planting, whereupon Brad said, “Ah. Planta.” Plant. He nodded, so I nodded back. Brad’s nod conveyed “Nice job.” My nod conveyed “But I’m quite fit for my age, no?”

I attribute my egoism to my circumstances. You see, I wasn’t staying at your run-of-the-mill agriturismo. No, I was staying at the new property started by Tribewanted, the organization that creates sustainable communities by selling $16-a-month memberships to online “tribe members” who get decision-making powers and preferential rates when they stay at the properties (where they’re encouraged, but not required, to help out with chores).

Though the first community that Tribewanted started in Fiji in 2006 is no longer under the organization’s auspices, after an exorbitant increase in its land lease, its creation drew some 1,500 visitors and led to “Paradise or Bust,” a five-part series that aired on the BBC in 2008. The second property, in Sierra Leone, sits on a beach alongside a fishing village, and has been visited by about 450 guests, including the actors Rosario Dawson and Jeffrey Wright. A new Tribewanted community has just been started in Mozambique.

Continue reading the main storyMonestevole, being in the developed world, is a bit of a departure. Here, the hope is that the property — which sleeps 25 and opened in April 2013, only two weeks before I arrived — will become self-sustaining via paying guests, as well as through the sale of Monestevole’s olive oil and wine.

A large 15th-century three-story stone house surrounded by olive groves, vegetable gardens, a vineyard and pastures for farm animals, the lovely Monestevole was once a watchtower for a castle on the other side of the mountain. Staying there feels like living in a handsomely but minimally appointed garrison; it’s easy to imagine pouring burning oil from its upper floors’ windows.

Though I could ascribe a slew of adjectives to the week I spent at Monestevole — relaxing, mysterious, slow-moving — none seem so accurate as self-designed and spontaneous. I arrived thinking that I would volunteer as kitchen help, but when my offers to cut vegetables or wash dishes were gently rebuffed, I realized that I’d be more helpful as a planter of artichokes and tomatoes. So most mornings and some afternoons, I’d devote a few hours to the small garden next to the house, aided by Filippo Bozotti, the handsome, animated, 33-year-old former documentary maker who co-founded and now runs Monestevole.

Given that Tribewanted is rooted in nobly democratic ideals, I was fairly desperate to be perceived as a committed member of the community. And yet ... I am only human. “Tomorrow we will plant vegetables,” Mr. Bozotti told me shortly upon arrival. I said: “I’d like to help. But are you looking for someone to dig holes in the ground, or someone to put plants in holes with precision? Because I’m more of a precision man.” Mr. Bozotti said both types of workers were needed.

I figured that my prissy enthusiasm helped establish my reputation. As did the fact that the only other guests were two Canadian pediatricians who were on a kind of delayed honeymoon with their 11-month-old and, understandably, didn’t want to do many chores. But I worried vaguely about a story about Diana Ross that New York magazine had run in 2009. Ms. Ross, anxious to meet her ancestral tribe, traveled to an island in Lake Baringo in Kenya. The meeting with the Pokot people went well until the grandmother of an important chief showed respect by “sharing water” with Ms. Ross — that is, she spit in her face. At which point Ms. Ross screamed, “This is not my tribe!”

I didn’t want to pull a Diana. So I inserted tomato and artichoke seedlings into the ground with a vigor I usually reserve for hailing bartenders. I tried, too, to bring a dash of candor to my fieldwork: “If it appears that I’m wearing makeup, I’m not,” I told the wife of the Canadian couple one day while gardening. “I had to buy some moisturizer in Rome and, not speaking Italian, ended up with tinted moisturizer.”

The impromptu, seat-of-your-pants nature of life on a working farm initially frustrated me but ultimately became my favorite part. Though a continental breakfast was reliably available in the oak-timbered dining room from 7:30 to 10 a.m., other mealtimes were tinged with mystery. Most nights, I lurked in the dining room’s adjacent parlor, pretending to read a book, lest I miss one of the delicious, family-style dinners of roasted vegetables, hearty pastas and grilled meats. Other patches of unknowing included: Why was the pool closed during my stay? Should I be watering the plants I’ve put in, or will one of the farm’s seven or eight day laborers do that? How come, when I milked the cow and then boiled and drank the milk, it tasted like a chèvre-accino?

On the flip side, there were moments I will never forget. One afternoon while I was gardening, Mr. Bozotti called out, “Ciao, Henry! Want to help move the pigs into another pen?” I assented and ran down to the barn. I’d been told the day before that the folks at Monestevole don’t feed the pigs meat, as “otherwise they’ll start to think of us humans as meat.” So when Mr. Bozotti handed me a pitchfork and said, “Use the handle end to guide the pigs — but if the mother pig starts coming at you, use the pitchfork end,” I gulped. What if I didn’t turn the pitchfork around fast enough? I imagined a grainy black-and-white photo of my gored body, and a tabloid headline that screamed “Prosciuttoed!”

Fortunately, I escaped goring. Four of us tool-wielding farmhands delicately guided the mother pig and her 10 babies down the dirt road to another pen, from which we then tried to decant a much larger black pig from a scrum of her noisome cohort: The whole operation seemed to be an elaborate metaphor for the Italian political system.

Equally memorable were activities involving Alessio Giottoli, the head of the farm, who, with his wife, had bought Monestevole as a ruin in the mid-1990s and restored it. (The Giottolis no longer work for Tribewanted, but now live next door.) A longhaired, wild-eyed 39-year-old, Mr. Giottoli charmingly refers to all males as “Giordano” and all females as “Giordana.”

On Day 4 I joined Mr. Giottoli and Mr. Bozotti for a three-hour adventure in which we three Giordani drove to Calzolaro and bought some 500 grapevines and a truckload of sand for the vineyard. Driving our haul back, Mr. Giottoli said: “Tonight, after planting, we will have a traditional party in the vineyard. There is a famous song about how grapevines are better when you ...” I took a stab: “... when you make love on them?” Mr. Giottoli said, “Yes. This.”

That evening, while the Canadian guests and I were enjoying a glass of wine and playing boules in the backyard, Mr. Giottoli’s wife, Valeria, stuck her head out of the kitchen and said: “We are going to the barbecue in the vineyard soon. If you want glasses, plates, silverware, you must bring them, otherwise we eat with the hands.” She disappeared into the kitchen. I looked at the Canadians. The Canadians looked at me. I said: “This is a test. The test is called, How Urban Are You?”

We decided to each bring only a glass. Mr. Bozotti approached us and said: “This meal will be rustic. We can come back and have a full dinner if you want.” The Canadians and I, eager Tribe members, sang out, No, no, no, Rustic is our middle name.

We wandered over to the vineyard, where we joined Monestevole’s eight full-time residents and seven or so workers, some of whom were sitting on the ground, none of whom were making love. Red wine aplenty; two guitars leaning against a fence. On a small, portable grill, Mr. Giottoli was grilling glistening ribs, chicken, pancetta and boar sausage; we’d slice a hunk of bread that was sitting on a napkin on the back of a pickup truck, then wrap the bread around the meat. Or, you’d simply take a piece of meat directly from Mr. Giottoli, an action best suited for the calloused fingertips of the career farmer. I felt as if I was in a Bruegel painting.

By Day 5, I felt that I’d shown myself to be a semivaluable member of the Tribe, and I increasingly holed up in my cool, dark, comfortable room, with its antiques and carpet-laden stone floor. I stared out its windows, slowly morphing in my mind from volunteer farmer to executive farmer. I’d made my mark as a planter, after all, but then showed diversity with pig-decanting and grapevine-purchasing; I’d also paved the way for frank discussions in the agricultural community of male cosmetics.

So I decided that I deserved a treat: a day trip with the two Canadians to nearby Perugia and Assisi. Mr. Bozotti lent us the farm’s Chevy Volt and we zoomed off noiselessly, the car’s GPS guiding the way through the hilly, mist-shrouded landscape. In crowded Perugia, about a half-hour away, we ate chocolate and wondered where Amanda Knox had lived, and in gorgeous Assisi we marveled at the pink rock the city is built of and then descended into a church basement and viewed St. Francis’s tomb. Delightful.

On my last day, I walked down to the corrals and barn and said goodbye to the 10 piglets and the five horses that I’d visited each morning. Then I surveilled the artichokes and tomatoes and asparagus I’d planted, and glimpsed the vineyard I’d help set in motion. From time to time during my trip, I’d been doing this inventory, making a kind of mental tally.

But now, knowing that I was skipping out on it all and leaving its care to others, I could see my contributions for what they were: tiny ripples in Monestevole’s ocean. I’d arrived anxious to have my individuality and efforts acknowledged, but I was leaving, having realized that I was a sole Giordano in a network of Giordani.

Moreover, I now feel toward subsequent Monestevole visitors how Laura Ingalls Wilder must have felt toward prairie transplants: They are all my Giordaninni.

Source:The New York Times