Mountains and the Sea, Liguria

I next arrived at Casa del Sole, in a quiet valley south of Genova. Liguria is a very mountainous state and includes the cinque terre, and has many rivers and creeks reaching long fingered into the mountains creating these village dotted valleys. The farm, Casa del Sole, was a terraced farm close to two beach towns called Chiavari and Levanto. In the large three story house lived Massimo and Marco. Massimo, who owns the house and farm was a vegetarian who almost practiced a form of yoga and was usually singing operatically. He had farmed for about 25 years doing most work by hand. Marco was a recently arrived vegan and activist working with Massimo. His experience farming amounted to less than mine but knew about anything there was to know about trains in Italy, and had a super vocabulary which greatly increased my knowledge of Italian. 

We had some awesome vegan meals, I took a few trips to the beach, and learned so much about so many summer crops.  I also got some great vegan recipes and made the famous Genoan pesto (pesto genovese) with home made pasta. We would go to an organic market every Friday that Massimo had organized in a neighborhood of Genoa. We would prepare all the previous day for the market and then spend many hot hours under the umbrella selling and chatting to customers. The variety we had was spectactular :)