Anything new under the Tuscan sun?

Sure, there’s plenty yet to discover in trendy Tuscany – if you’ve never been there before!

Technically I’ve been to Tuscany – I spent 3 days in Florence when I was 21 – but I don’t really count that, although I do remember standing in line at the Uffizi to see Botticelli’s “Venus,” and downing a lot of coffee ice cream.

My family will be in a less crowded bit of Tuscany, at the Spannocchia estate near Siena (www.spannocchia.com). There, a very old estate has been turned into a working example of self-sufficient, sustainable, organic agriculture. Guests staying in one of the farm’s renovated farmhouses or the main house are fed typical, delicious Tuscan food produced almost entirely on the estate; interns can come to labor and learn how human-scaled agriculture really works; all this in the lovely, rolling Tuscan countryside.

We’ll be there during the off-season when the weather is cooler, the time of year when farmers turn their attentions to fixing fences, and also to butchering pigs and making the salami and other cured meat products for which the area is so well known.

My grandpa Draper raised “contented” hogs on his Iowa farm, so I grew up with a love for pork, and no illusions at all about the fate of all the Babes and Wilburs of this world. I’ve never actually butchered a pig but I know it’s a lot different than butchering a chicken, which I have done. (Well, actually, my husband did the actual knife work, I just learned the fine art of the defeathering machine.) However, I figure that if I'm going to eat something, I should know exactly what's involved in its production. So I’m mentally preparing myself already for the hardest part of bringing home the bacon, which is, at this stage, one of my favorite foods.

My son, however, has no such worries. A couple weeks ago when he was fretting about another family living in our house while we're away, I comforted him with this thought: "In Italy, we'll be at a place where you can eat all the bread dipped in olive oil that you want!" THAT cheered him up considerably.