Seeds And Their People - EP. 24: Mary Menniti and the Italian Garden Project

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Mary Menniti grew up with her Italian immigrant grandfather growing vegetables, figs, and tending sheep in her family's backyard. She created The Italian Garden Project to celebrate the joy and wisdom inherent in the traditional Italian American vegetable garden, preserving this heritage and demonstrating its relevance for reconnecting to our food, our families and the earth. Over the past few years, we have been connecting over our shared love of growing Italian American seeds and their stories, and are now collaborating on preserving on various farms and sharing her seed collection through our seed catalog.  In this episode, we also hear the voices of Concetta Liberto, Antonino Machi, Fenice Mercurio, Charles Adornetto, Domenic Carpico, and Michele Vaccaro from interviews conducted by Mary.   SEED AND PLANT STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE:   Figs Broccoli Rabe Poverella Pole Bean from Concetta Liberto Cow's Nipple Tomato from Mariano Floro Lunga di Napoli Squash Cucuzza from Antonino Machi Cucuzza seed saving with Charles Adornetto Fagiolina del Trasimeno Long Bean Vinny's Neapolitan Friariello (Frying Pepper) Ischia Eggplant Nepitella Fennel from Fenice Mercurio Black Fava (Mora de Precoce) from Nicola Ranieri Swiss Chard from Caro Simbula Sabatino’s "Peppe Insalata" Lettuce from Sabatino DiNardo Floriani Red Flint Corn   MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Italian Garden Project (web) Italian Garden Project (IG) Italian Garden Project (YouTube) Italian Garden Project (Facebook) Bruno Garofalo's Bidente (Two-Toothed tool) Italian American Podcast on Unification Growers Grange Italian Heirloom CSA, Corbett, OR Eggplant Parmesan recipe by Cooking with Nona The Feast of the Madonna del Sacro Monte, Clifton, NJ ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Facebook  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Mary Menniti Concetta Liberto Antonino Machi Fenice Mercurio Charles Adornetto Domenic Carpico Michele Vaccaro Ruth Kaaserer

I was just whacking at normal. Welcome to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bolden Newsom, farmer and co-director Sankofer Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We're a seed company offering culturally important seeds grown by farm. who are committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by true love seeds and by our listeners.

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This episode features Mary Maniti of the Italian Garden Project. which celebrates the joy and wisdom inherent in the traditional Italian-American vegetable garden, preserving this heritage and demonstrating its relevance for reconnecting to our food, our families, and the earth. I'm excited to share this interview. It's our 24th episode, and the first one that really focuses on one of my ancestral foodways. I've been reconnecting to southern Italian seed stories for many years as part of my investigation into who we were before assimilating into a white, American culture. And as you hear in this interview, my work with Mary has deepened that sense of connection profoundly. Well, there's so much to say about this interview. You know, and I guess I do kind of say that about all the interviews because all of our interviews are so special,

you know, in the world. Mostly, of course, because of the people who are just gifting us with their story. But this one, I think, was one of the more powerful ones, particularly because it comes, you know, from your culture, from your ancestral culture of southern Italy. And so it was so exciting, you know, for me as your partner to, like, hear this investigation that I know for years you have been doing, you know, this recovery, cultural recovery, I guess maybe a better word. But to hear it played out, you know, in an interview with an Italian-American elder who has dedicated a lot of her life's work to the preservation of your people's culture. So, you know, just that as a starting point, I think, and as a deep touchstone for cultural relevance in white

identity today, just that, that I think is powerful. And so I hope that many people are inspired by it, because it can bear so much fruit. I was particularly excited in the moment that that Miss Mary realized that you had rescued some seeds, that you had kept some seeds that she thought were gone. I think it was Mr. Maki and his seeds and, you know, that you were growing them and just the delight that you could hear in her voice, and I could hear her smiling deeply, just seeing that. But I was also really, really impressed, you know,

I'm always, for me, like farming and just earthwork, agricultural work by the peasant peoples of the world, that we all come from is one of the chief and most powerful uniters of all cultures. Across language, religion and everything, ethnicity and tribe, you know, we all have this in common. And so I'm always looking for those ways in which my own people's culture, African, American, and African diaspora, you know, has cognates and relations in other cultures. And the idea of a food culture that is based in survival really stood out to me. You know, that also is very similar, both ancestrally for me as an African and then as an African American later on. So just this notion of having to constantly adapt and readapt your cooking methods, new materials coming into places where there are different foods.

and it was really, really illustrative to hear the voices of those Italian ancestors, you know, spliced throughout the interview. That was very powerful to me to hear their voices and to hear them talk about, you know, their evolving food cultures. I loved it that the beans are picked and cooked really similar to how my people cook beans in the South, fills and snaps, even though the beans you were talking about weren't. Black IP types. You know, and I loved also, too, speaking of those cultural connections, those moments of sharing around the origins of some of these crops that have become naturalized in Italian, especially Southern Italian, food waves. You know, her realization and learning about which species were initially African or Asian

and American and how those, you know, became Italian. trying foods now. I loved it hearing about the elder who insisted that her mother and uncles and relatives have been growing the long bean for years. And so how could it be, you know, something other than Italian? She didn't really say that. But I think that implication, I love that when we embrace a food so much that it becomes us, you know, and becomes a signifier and almost like a flag of who we are. You know, I think about the collard green. or the mustard green for black people in this country is very similar. Those being European and Mediterranean species that now, you know,

we've just brought them into the house and they become identifiers of southern culture and black southern culture particularly. So there's so much to say about this interview. You dart between spiritual and religious and social, historical, ideas, you know, to the practical notions of planting and harvesting and all of it, you know, so really, really powerful. And I'll say, you know, probably two, one last thing, you know, it was as a student of religion, for me it was impressive to hear you all talk about sort of the evolution, you know, and as a Catholic, of course, you know, to hear about the evolution of those agricultural-connected religions, you know, as they sort of evolved in Christianity and what was kept through Catholic practice. You know, I think you talked about the Madonna of Salento, the Madonna de Sacromonte, you know, being initially at a shrine of the goddess Hera. So all of that was very exciting and powerful to see how culture persist and may change, you know, forms, but it really persists.

It's a beautiful history lesson and a powerful narrative. And it's such an honor to be a part of that. persistence of the culture. And in particular with Mary, you know, she shared many seeds with me from the gardens that she's visited over the past, you know, more than a decade. And in this interview we do, as you've alluded to, go out and visit those plants growing. But we start out the interview at a table outside of our farm gate at True Love Seed sitting at the lunch table in the shade. And I believe it was in August. And we hear a little bit of a little bit of a little. bit from Mary about her work before we go on that tour around the farm.

So today I am really excited to be on our farm with Mary Maniti from the Italian Garden Project, visiting from Pittsburgh. We've been speaking for years online, on Zooms, on emails, on Instagram, and finally we get to meet in person and I'm so grateful that you can make it to our farm today. Thank you, Owen. I am so happy to be here to be in this people. to be in this beautiful setting and finally meeting you in person. Well, before we do a walk around and visit your beloved plants that you've gathered from Italian Americans, I would love to hear what is the Italian Garden Project? How did it come about?

And what does it look like today? Okay. Yeah, so I started the Italian Garden Project because I love all. all things Italian, all things gardening, and just anything environmental. So it really combines all of my passions. But I grew up immersed in Italian culture, and all of my grandparents were Italian immigrants, and my paternal grandfather had a big garden where I lived. He lived a couple miles away, but would come every day.

He retired about the time I was born, so he spent his days in my entire childhood in our backyard. We had several acres, and he would garden, and my dad got him a couple sheep, some chickens. So he got to spend his retirement days doing exactly what he loved. And that, I think, is being present to that is where my love for Italian culture, gardening and the environment grew so I really like to give him credit for being the inspiration for the Italian garden project and so I you know grew up with him had the so lucky to have a big Italian family around me growing up extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins who were very much immersed in

Italian culture but you know we go on we move on with our lives and My grandfather passed away when I was in my 20s and I started raising my own family and you sort of get away from your culture. You don't get to be immersed in it like you were as a kid. But then my husband and I and the children moved to a community where there were a lot of post-World War II immigrants. So my grandfather came from the first wave of immigrants who came between like 1880 and 1920. he came in 1912 and now then immigration really slowed down and then from after the world war two after world war two

there was another influx of immigrants from Italy because of the devastation that Italy experienced during world war two so there was this whole community where we moved of more recent immigrants who were who were who were doing exactly everything that I remembered from childhood. And it was amazing, you know, right there in our community, these folks were living like everything what now we would call sustainable, you know, living eating locally and eating with the seasons and saving their seeds and doing all these things that I was amazed with and I wanted to be around. So I started hanging out with them all the time.

And then I started sharing them with friends. And every friend I brought there would be amazed that they had cured sausages that they just made hanging in the basement or wine that they just made and all the seed saving and these giant gardens. And so I started giving tours of these friends' gardens for a fundraising project for a local nature center. that I was involved in. And then I saw the interest. Every tour was sold out, and we had to add tours, because everybody wanted to see these gardens. And it's just, the project just grew from there.

I really saw that there was, that these folks were amazing, and they were under the radar screen, and someone needed to shine a light on them. And I really, from there, have felt it's my mission to give them the credit that they deserve to share them and their traditions and their entire way of life with all of us who I feel are so desperately trying to get back to that and need to get back to that for so many reasons. What's the timeline here? What years are we talking about?

Oh, so I started my first tour in like 2010. So I've been doing this a long time. And it slowly grew. I mean, first, I didn't really know what it was. I started, well, people were amazed when I brought them into the garden at all the fig trees, this Mediterranean fruit that was, this fruit tree that was growing in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they are not meant to grow. But people had a lot of the people remember their grandfathers, the first wave of immigrants doing it, and they wanted to learn how to do it. So I started giving fig tree growing classes, and then I started giving more tours. I would go around and visiting folks outside of Pittsburgh, you know, Cleveland and then Baltimore and Detroit. So I would just want to

meet these folks wherever they were across the country and learn from them and video them and photograph them. And then I started seeing that the seeds that they had that came from Italy decades ago, sometimes 100 years ago, would be just lost when they were no longer gardening so I started becoming the caretaker of those seeds you know over the years I developed a collection so it's the seeds and then I started collecting the fig tree starts because those were brought over to and those a lot of the next generations didn't know how to care for them and and even the tools the tools that I would find that were brought from Italy with these folks these folks that came from a way of life where they survived on what they could grow, found it important

enough to not only bring their seeds and their fig trees, but the tools that they needed, their garden tools. And these were, like, are unique tools that are, you know, I found them, you know, lying on a garbage heap when one of the gardeners died. And I said, can I have this? He said, sure, you want that. You know, he made that, he forged that in the mill because he couldn't find that tool, you know, in the mill where he worked because that's the tool he used in Italy and he couldn't find it here. To me, that's an heirloom. Can you describe the tool and what it's for and who was this and what kind of mill did he work in? Yeah. Shenango steel is in Pittsburgh. You know, of course, the steel industry is huge. It was huge and he, you know, these folks came in

the 50s, worked in the steel mills. And then, you know, would be the landscapers for the steel mill owners in the evening. The owners of these mills would sometimes want Italians to come and work, and they would send to the villages that they knew, say, Giovanni Machioni, this was a gentleman, and they would ask Giovanni to bring his relatives over to help not only work in the steel mill, but they knew they were excellent gardeners. and their biggest states, they would want the Italians to be the gardeners for these biggest states. This tool in particular is a bidente.

A bidente is, in Italian, B is two bidente, and dente is teeth, so two teeth. So it's a long sort of a rake hoe that just has two big prongs. And this is a very common one throughout Italy. They would use it in the springtime to turn over the soil. much like our rototiller today. So this was a Bidante that Giovanni Machioni forged right in the mill where he worked. Wow. It reminds me of my great-great-grandfather.

They came in, my Italian ancestors came between like 1900 and 1910, like yours. That first wave of immigration, right. Right. And my great-great-grandfather, Vincenzo L'Orielo, which turned into Lorella here, worked in a mill in Shelton, Connecticut. There it was textiles, and he was a dyer. And we found the article, my great aunt before she died, Aunt Rita, gave me the newspaper clippings, where it was 40 years he had worked there, 38 as a dyer, and they did a little biography of him. And they talked about his work there, but then they said, and every day at

3 p.m. he would go work the land until nightfall and grow beans, corn, and tomatoes and keep his wife busy canning in the kitchen. And so it reminds me, you know, they're coming over to work in these mills and then working the land. I mean, that's the same story. Exactly. I mean, they came from that lifestyle where they survived on what they could grow. So they had a completely different view of food than any of us do today. Food meant survival. It meant security. it meant like why would you plant grass if you could grow food on it because we need food to survive and once you live through that lifestyle where food means survival it shapes everything it changes your entire relationship with food you understand that food means security and that's for my

grandfather also you know they came over because you know a lifestyle of growing your own food to survive is hard and Italy was had a lot of challenges in the late 1800s and early 1900s and he knew he lived that lifestyle that if he did if that crop didn't survive that year you might go hungry you know so he would see us as young um you know kids in in the u.s having more than enough of everything but we didn't know how to use our hands to survive. And that worried him. I mean, this guy knew what food security was. So he, you know, was glad that he gave us the education,

you know, that his sacrifices could provide an education and that all the toys. I have pictures of him at Christmastime with his little silk scarf on and his ripped jacket from the garden. He looked like a typical Italian immigrant from Naples. but we're sitting on his lap with all of our toys, all of our plastics and toys. And I know in his mind he was conflicted because he was both glad that we could have all these things that he would never even imagine, but he worried about us. He worried that when we went out to the garden, we couldn't hardly do anything.

We would just barely be able to help him. At six or seven, he had a whole flock of sheep. that he tended that he cared for that the and would help slaughter and would help birth the baby so it was it was a completely different view of life in general than he knew that we had and I and that's one of the reasons I started the project because that's always sitting in the back of my mind like how really naively we live to think that food is always going to be available at the local grocery store and that we don't need to be responsible for growing our own food.

I mean, you, thank goodness, would survive, but most people, as educated or wise as they are, just couldn't survive. I often wonder about that process of becoming American and assimilating and living a more comfortable life. and like how that generation would see us, not just around food. I found a clipping on the other side, my dad's mother's father's side, my great-grandfather Michael Vigilanti, who is from Fagia area. I found an 1980 article about Italians in the town he was in, in Westport, Connecticut, and he's quoted several times saying things like younger generation doesn't understand, they don't

want to learn, and he was the president of the St. Anthony's Society, and he was saying he's closing the doors to young people because they're not respecting the culture. And as someone now, several generations later, trying to reconnect with the culture, I'm like, is that counterintuitive? I can't put myself in his mind, but I can imagine he had so much of that frustration, seeing the privileges of the younger generations and feeling like, oh, they just don't get it. Right. Right. I think maybe part of that, though, was if you came, like, long enough ago,

like if the children of the parents that came in that first wave, it was difficult. It wasn't cool to be Italian at that time. I mean, there were some challenges, so you wanted to assimilate as much as you could to give up your total. culture and um like that's why i feel like we're so lucky we have enough distance like we are firmly rooted in our identity as americans and we're not threatened now by our italian past that we can be so lucky that we can go back we're in such a privileged position that we can go back and

really embrace it maybe it was necessary for that generation to just you know you have to you have to do what you have to do and to assimilate and be part of the culture and you can't blame them you can't judge them that was the process and maybe now you know i mean i'm sure he would be incredibly proud incredibly proud of what you're doing um so maybe it's just you know the evolution um of that can you speak from your understanding of why was it so difficult for italians at that time period here And I also would like to go back further and talk about what was happening back in Italy, that in southern Italy in particular that brought so many people here. Right.

At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, there weren't a lot of more Southern Europeans in the U.S. You know, I was just traveling in New England and it was very English, you know, it was very. But then when you had, you know, in the 1880s, you had that influx of more Southern Europeans. it's an unfortunate part of human nature to sometimes reject, be threatened by people who look a little bit different. I mean, these folks were darker, they spoke a different language, they spoke a language that a lot of people who were already here more established, they ate different foods, they had different customs and habits, and it just was.

isn't so easy to assimilate right away. And especially in the numbers that we're coming over, you know, the people that were here and established started to feel threatened by that. It's an unfortunate part of our brains sometimes that can't accept change. And it's our, unfortunately, our survival animal brain that is always protecting itself. So Italians were, it took a while. The Northerners were sometimes more easily assimilated than the Southerners. They were more lighter skinned and sometimes a bit more educated, but not always. And they assimilated. So it was difficult. It was really difficult in the 1880s to the 1920s. And then there was so much aversion to all these immigrants that were coming over, that the laws were actually passed to

slow down immigration in the 20s. So it was much more difficult to come to America from 1920 until post-World War II when they opened up immigration again. So it really slowed down during that time period. But people needed to leave Italy during that time. Because between In 1880 and 1920, Italy was in a really difficult economic situation following the unification of Italy in 1861, when the north, prior to that, Italy was just a bunch of different kingdoms, that we don't, it wasn't a country at all. So Italy is a fairly new country. When the north and the south united in the 1860s to form Italy, unfortunately,

especially in the South, the South didn't fare very well. They didn't benefit a lot from the unification. And poverty began to really, and even famine became a problem. So that's why Southern Italians really left in droves into all parts of the world where they were where they could find work. South America, Canada, Australia, so you'll find these really large contingents of Italians in different pockets throughout the world, which I find really fascinating. And then that same pattern followed after World War II when that second wave,

they went to those same places, Melbourne, Australia, and Toronto, Canada. and if they could get into the U.S. So there's really a diaspora across the world of Italians who had to leave because of the economic situation after the unification. Also, the economic and physical devastation after World War II led that second wave to leave. So you're fully Italian, right?

Yes. But you come from a mixed family. And what was that like? like in your family because I know I have Italian-American friends who were like from Naples and Sicily and that's a big deal you know so to go from southern and northern well even if you're from one town that that's 20 minutes away from another town it's a big deal they're very very very regional very but no my northern thank goodness both of my grandparents and families the maternal side that was from the north and

but but also contadini also farmers also you know peasants basically, which I used the term proudly, and my southern family that was the same, they got along because they were just humble people, but it was a mixed marriage. It was definitely the north and the south were just decades before two different countries. And so my northern grandparents could barely understand my southern grandparents because of the dialects different. My southern grandfather said my northern grandmother's Italian dialect, she said, oh, she speaks French. So it was almost like French dialect. And my southern grandfather had a really, you know, like a Napolitan dialect.

But they got along just because of who they were, I think. What were the differences you saw between their food cultures? Yes, they definitely did eat differently. my mother's family ate more risotto many more rice things meat with very little tomato sauce there was very little tomato sauce in their diet it was more like pot roasts with root vegetables more dairy-based things butter whereas my southern family you know it was the classic tomato sauce a lot of tomato sauce well both ate from the garden both grandfathers i didn't know my my maternal grandfather because he passed before I was born but they say his garden was legendary so they both ate from the

garden so I wish I knew what things the northern grandfather grew that was different than the southern I always imagine them sitting together like at a baptism party or something and and talking about their gardens and you know finding that as a commonality I have actually both of their fig trees so I've saved the fig tree that my grandfather grew at his house, my paternal grandfather, and the one my maternal grandfather grew. And they look so similar that I would love to have genetic testing to see if they're actually the same tree and they actually share them between each other. I can just see that conversation like at a birthday party with one of the kids, grandchildren,

you know, talking about their fig trees because fig trees. because fig trees were such a big deal for them. I would like to walk around because I think we'll crack open a lot of stories that are similar to this, but I do want to ask about figs just because we're now talking about sharing fig trees. I really want to grow, inspired by your work, a fig tree collection, even though we don't even have permanent land yet. And someone recently gave me cuttings from their fig tree, and they just didn't work. So I'd love if you could give the nutshell version for how to share fig tree cuttings

and have it work. Can I run to the car and get the cuttings this woman just shared with me? Of course, yes. I just visited a lovely woman, 91 years old, Erminia Iani, in Warwick, Rhode Island. And this is what I do. I just go around wherever I can find these lovely folks and visit them and try to learn from them. I was lucky enough to hear about her through her granddaughter who followed me on Instagram and said, oh, I want to show you this photo of my grandmother's fig tree. And it was

truly one of the most amazing fig trees I've ever seen. A fig tree grows naturally and survives the winter if it doesn't really go much below 20 degrees in the winter. But of course here, we have lots of days below 20. So you have to protect them in the winter. And that's what I love about seeing these trees that often were brought from Italy, often smuggled decades ago in the lining of a coat, sewn into the lining of a coat or stitched into the hem of a skirt, just the little cutting, a little piece of branch and brought over and then grown. And these ingenious ways that these immigrants figured out how to grow this Mediterranean fruit in this cold climate. And there are as many methods for protecting them over the winter as there are people who

grow figs. Everyone seems to have a bit of a different method. But this one, and I just visited Armenia in Rhode Island on Saturday. She grows hers on a slight hillside. They've dug a trench in the hillside and then the tree grows actually horizontally, but the canopy of the tree turns upward and was just filled with figs. So then in the winter, all they have to do is tie the canopy branches back and then lie plywood over these trenches, basically, that the tree always lies in. It's just ingenious how the methods that they've come up with to keep them surviving. I mean, this large, very large tree, probably 15-foot tree, grows literally sideways year round and we produced dozens and dozens hundreds and hundreds of figs.

She has two trees growing like this and she was kind enough. She just got down on her hands and knees. She said, oh, if I dig this piece right here, I can send you home with some starts. I go way, way deep down so that way I can get some of the roots. See if we've got some roots. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. That is just beautiful. Thank you. You've got lots of roots on that. So you can make yourself a plant. Absolutely. That's such a gift. That's okay. Wow. Anytime there, we can help someone, why not?

Will you give it a name or does it have a name? Oh, this would be Herminia's fig tree. I never really know the varieties. I know this is a way. white fig with a beautiful red interior that's incredibly sweet, has a nice thick skin that can be peeled. But if you want to know a formal variety name, don't ask me. I never know. No, that's perfect. Figs are so resilient and so hardy. I always say they're as resilient as the immigrants that planted them and as adaptable. What are these seeds in these jars here? Yes, so she also has a garden, of course. She tends. Her son now helps her turn it over in the spring and planted, but the rest of the year, like I said, she's 91. She tends the whole garden herself

and then saves the seeds every year. She handed me this jar of seeds and said, would you like some of the seeds? And I said, yes, tell me a little bit about them. And she said, Well, these beans came from Italy, and they're pulled beans. They're variegated, and they're very sweet. They're very good. So a lot of people like these beans. And so how do you know? What do you know about them coming from Italy?

I know my mother-in-law had them. Oh, they were your mother-in-law. They were my mother-in-laws. So she was born in Italy, and she came over. And then she planted these here. All the time. She planted it here. This was her.

They weren't her garden. Now, then I took over the garden. Now that my garden, and that's it. Beautiful. You plant these and think of me. And actually it was the same with the fig tree. She said it was her mother-in-law's fig tree, and now she's caring for it. Hermione is from Frozenone.

She's from a different part of Italy, and she married a Calabrese, so it was a mixed marriage. It was a mixed marriage there, but it seemed to work out. And then also there's a little jar of rapa. She called them Rabi. So everybody has sort of a different name for these, this very early spring green. There's so many variations of it that I can't even begin, but it would be known as Rapini or Brocoletti, maybe, but Brocoletti is sort of a different family.

It's a very confusing genre of. of greens but it's almost always will I find it in these Italian gardens because it grows easily, it's self-seeds and it's up early in the spring and she had just planted it two weeks before and it was just coming up and but she won't harvest that till next May. No next earlier than that it'll be the first thing up so probably April she'll be harvesting what she planted two weeks ago in Rhode Island. When I saw it, she had one that was still in full, that had, you know, grown later and was still growing. It's like none that I've seen, like a completely different variation. It had reddish in it. It was the leaves were almost furrier. And there's so many variations.

I mean, variations of everything, variations of these beans, variations of rap. And that's why it's so important that we save all of them because some of these aren't even grown in the villages from which they came anymore. I've been on the trail of a bean, a pole bean, like, well, actually it's a bush bean that is a flat like Roma bean that I found growing in Northern California, and it's called a Bacitia bean. It was brought from Genoa and grown, passed around, and I'm tracing the different places where it ended up in Northern California in these communities of Italians who came from Genoa in different parts of Northern California.

And then I found out that several years ago, they discovered that it's no longer growing in Lugoria, in Genoa, where it came, and had to be reintroduced from Stockton, California, back to Liguria in order to have the Bacchica bean. So, in a way, we're like a little time capsule here. You know, we are preserving things that have, you know, sometimes aren't grown there. You know, they, you know, in the villages, it's like the language, you know, things evolved there. You know, the language evolved, whereas the dialects here are preserved better than if when they, if they had stayed in Italy.

because as the Italian language and the dialects evolved, people forgot words, whereas here they were only speaking among themselves. So the language is that the dialects are actually preserved better here than in some parts of Italy. And the same with the seeds. And also there are restrictions in the EU with seed saving. I was so shocked. I was talking recently to Evan from Portland Seed House,

and he's actually farmed in Italy, and he said they had to get all their plants. They couldn't plant the seed. They had to get them from starts already started. They weren't allowed to save the seeds if you were a market gardener. There are regulations restricting seed saving, which just blows my mind. And the fact that here we have seeds from Italy that we can save and we can be the caretakers of makes this work even more important. Absolutely.

Well, why don't we visit some of these time capsules, these living time capsules. Before heading to the field, Mary offered to give me one of the two fig tree cuttings from Miss Armenia. If you want to one of these as you're... I'm afraid to take it. Are you afraid? If you're saying it's very likely to survive, I'd be happy to. It's very likely to survive. Because the cuttings I got didn't have roots.

Oh, that's the thing. And no good. But I don't want to mess. This seems so precious to me. But I can also, I can get more cuttings from the family. But if you want to caretake Hermione's new little tree that she shared, I'd be happy to share it with you. I am so grateful to you, Owen, for all that you've done for my work.

I mean, I was saving seeds in my basement, in my closets, trying to grow them on my own every year when I could, when I wasn't traveling with the project. And it is such a relief to have a professional doing this work, saving these seeds. I mean, it breaks my heart. One time I did lose. Well, we have this story about Mr. Antonio Maki, so we can talk about, that I thought I lost those seeds.

And I have, and he passed, and I thought those seeds were gone. I, you know, I, yeah, with all my moves around different homes lately, they just, I didn't care for them well enough. Let's just put it that way. And I thought they were gone. And the family said, oh, no, I'm not sure we have anymore. But when he did pass, the family found some more and shared them with me. And I shared them with you, and you got them going. And I am so grateful.

So anything I can share with you, I am more than happy. I mean, you and Bianca and Ethan with Growers Grange. I mean, they are just a lifesaver for me and these seeds. So I am eternally grateful to all of you. Oh, I am grateful. Let me give you a hug with this. I'm grateful because, you know, for me, what started as just, you know, very little connection. I remember my Italian great-grandparents pretty well, but a food culture wasn't passed down. And so, you know, starting to order from seeds of Italy, starting to get whatever I could find from other catalogs was a great start.

but actually meeting other Italian Americans and building relationships is far more profound. And so this relationship means the world to me, especially with you, but also the way that you've held stories for so many other Italians and Italian Americans, it's just like, this is the realization of a dream for me. So I'm very grateful. My dream as well. Having these seeds in the hands of someone who I know will care for them, just you know it's like I've been trusting you with my my children and I appreciate it so much

maybe we better put these guys in the plastic while we I just don't want them to dry out until we can can get to them so they're in wet paper towels and a closed zip lock yep yep yep just keep them damp not overly wet but not let them dry out okay let's visit some of your babies A lovely place to spend your time, Owen. It's awesome. I think about, you know, my grandfather and all of those immigrants, most of the immigrants that came from Italy came from a lifestyle of surviving on what you could grow,

spending their days in places like this, out in the nature, in the country, connected to the earth. And then when they came to the U.S., it was such an abrupt change when they spent their days in dark smoky mills and coal mines. So any chance they had to have a garden, even if it was just a little plot in their backyard, they planted things. So it was a way for them to reconnect to the lifestyle that they knew. I mean, when they had to leave things that were, there was hardship and, you know, want to overly romanticize the lifestyle that they came from, you know, but it was connected to nature and it was a beautiful way of life. It was hard, yes, and they had to leave the bad part, but they had to leave the good behind as well. So this bean is from Conchetta Labrto, from Pittsburgh. She's originally from Myrato in Calabria.

I visited her two years ago, and she shared these poe beans with me. She showed me a handful, and she called them Poverella beans, which I love because Poverella is like poor, poor thing. We call Oh, fagola, poverella. Poverella? Uh-huh. Ah, why do you call them that?

Do you know? I don't know. When a poor, I'm mother they call, you know. Fagola, Poverrella. Pomerella. Uh-huh. But I've noticed that, and most of the Italians I visit, they don't plant just one variety of pole bean,

and they don't care that there's a mix of poter. pole beans in their uh where whatever they plant so i'm guessing that um this is what they planted this type of bean they called poverella and it might have been a mix of of a couple varieties it i see at least two varieties but this is this one with the sort of variegated that's a very common common one they're the flat roma beans and when i visit armenia on um Saturday, she, of course, prepared a whole meal. And it had a big dish of those flat Roma beans. Very similar, the ones she shared with me. And they are the most delicious bean. They're meaty, and they cook them very well, so they're nice and soft. And they also cook them the fresh

bean and then they'll mix the if there was a bean that has developed a little bit they'll shell it and then cook the bean right along with the fresh ones so you have this mix of you know a shelled bean and a fresh bean together and just oil garlic and they're just like the most delicious i could make a whole meal of that with some bread sometimes they'll make a boil a potato and cut it up with it but oil garlic and those beans are they're just heavenly and meat and delicious. My partner's from Mississippi, and we grow some of the field peas that, you know, they would grow there, which is a different species.

It's the African species, we might call cow peas. And they will also do what they call peas and snaps, where they shell the plump peas, but also snap the young, tender ones. Of course, they cook them very different from what you described, but same idea. Same idea. I mean, if you're picking, you just pick whatever's there and cook them, together and um and and usually the same same recipe you know because they're so good you don't have to do anything else with them i really like this mixture of types i mean the fact that some are

striped purple and green and some are just this gorgeous purple and some are both like with the darker purple stripes beautiful oh my goodness these yeah well i hadn't seen um them growing on the vines when she when I visited her all of them because it was later in the season so it's beautiful to see them growing now these are just beautiful go can you tell us about this tomato yes this tomato was shared with me by my dear dear friend mariano florro who unfortunately just passed in May of this year he was one of those guys went no matter how bad a day I'm having, how down I am, I would just go to his house and spend the afternoon with him,

and I would feel 100% better. I mean, he would immediately go to the refrigerator and pour out his, actually the freezer. He kept his crema di limoncello in there, a homemade limoncello, a creamy limoncello that he would make, and he knew I loved it, and he had immediately go to the freezer, pour me this little shot of basically a limoncello slushy and the day just would keep getting better from there and he was he grew up in that lifestyle you know he would tell me about his being

a shepherd and how he was so proud of his goats and how he had planned to expand his herd until he had got an opportunity to come to well to go first to France to work and then to the U.S. where he then became an electrician and raised a family, but always, always had a large garden in his backyard. And he had shared these seeds. He called these his cow nipple seeds because they are shaped like the nipple of a cow. And he would grow them every year, save the seeds. and then I was lucky enough to have him share them with me and now they're just so dear to me because they remind me so much of him.

Is this the one-sauce tomato he would grow? Oh, no, he grew lots of several different kinds. He had different garden plots, so he had renovated homes for his children throughout the little town. Behind his home, he grew these ones, his daughter's other daughter's home he grew a big like an ox heart and a quarter and and another daughter he did grow another variety yeah in the summer when things were ripening like the eggplant

and the peppers and the tomatoes he would just mix them all he'd stand there and just in a frying pan get all these fresh vegetables and just fry them up you know just mix them together and with adding some basil and some garlic. And, yeah, it was just, I don't, he had a mescalata, mescatura. There was a name for it when he made it like that. And then he'd always have really good bread and his homemade wine. And a meal like that was just heavenly. I mean, just tomatoes, you know, sauteed with some eggplant and peppers.

And, yeah, what else could you want? Since we're right here, this is. is the Lungo di Napoli in here and you can see some of them forming now to go all the way back in this tunnel of sunflowers that's so cool that is so cool yeah that I I think I collected a seed about a year ago from a woman from California and I need to share it with you because we need to find out if it is this she called it a Napolitan a zucchini as a kuguts you know they call all the squashes like that kukut kuguts that was what my grandfather how he he would refer to them but I have that seed and I need to know if it is that that will be

great so you can experiment for me next year I'll speak with her as well yeah I would love to figure out how to isolate it and try it out they've been growing this one for maybe seven years or eight and the ones you're seeing now are still quite small. Oh, they're so large. They're unbelievable. I love that. Well, just like the cuckoosa, they just let them grow. Like, you know, a chef might say, oh, harvest them at like 12 inches or something. But it would be rare, even for zucchini, for an Italian to let it, to harvest it when it's just a tiny. Because if you had to survive on what you could grow, you weren't going to just get petite little fruit. You know, you would grow it to a pretty big size. I didn't even know that

zucchini was supposed to be harvested small. I would just hand my friends these really large zucchini like my, I mean, not huge, but larger than, and they'd be, oh, that's really large. I was like, well, that's how we ate it, because you want to maximize your food, you know, even if, and they would, you know, my grandmother would cook everything to be delicious. So I never thought you had to harvest it when it was nice and tender and little. We take these at their ultimate size for the seeds, of course, but they're still really good eating at that point. I mean, it's a winter squash.

Yeah. It can be eaten as a summer squash, but it's a winter squash also. And I remember taking one to a meeting that I went to, and I cut off chunks for people that were big enough for at least a meal, if not two. And I think I gave away 10 or 12 chunks from one squash. Yeah, you could get 10 or 12 meals from one squash. That's when you're eating to survive, that's a very smart thing to grow. Well, let's see one of the older cucurbites that have been grown in Italy for even longer.

We walked past the lufa vines and over to the cuckooza gourds, which shared the same trellis. And this is Mr. Mokkes? It is. You don't know how happy I am to see those. I thought I lost those seeds. Antoninomaki, he passed. He was a Sicilian fisherman, and he used to grow these. I would visit him, and he just loved to show off his garden.

He was so proud. He had been a Sicilian fisherman, and he then went into the produce business when he came to the U.S. But he loved everything about the garden, about produce. His garden, he would every year, construct. all his trellises and the trellises that were strong enough to hold these, which you know, like you said, they're just pulling your trellises down, he would construct them out of old pieces of wood. He would make these frames out of old pieces of wood with little pieces of string, only with pieces of string that he would construct these trellises out of because he knew all these special knots from being a fisherman, and, from repairing his nets so he could do amazing things with string and he could create trellises of pieces of wood with string that were strong enough to hold these i mean how many pounds would you say one of those is i have no idea they're probably at least three feet long three feet

oh and maybe maybe you know three or four inches wide so long and skinny and um quite heavy They're probably at least 10 or 15 pounds. Right, right. So can you imagine every year constructing trellises out of wood that his son would say? That wood's 40 years old. I don't even know how it's standing. But he would do that with just pieces of string and tie them and create these trellises strong enough to hold those.

And then those are the seeds I thought I had lost after he had shared them with me. But after he passed, the family found some more. And they hadn't been planted for, who knows how long, at least five or six years since he had been gardening. And then I shared them with you, and here they are. And now we have fresh seed. I go, I got a little bit of school, ma'am. Four years of school. I had to work when I was a 10 years old, miss.

The biggest fish of catch, it was about 500 pounds. The other big fish I catch was a shark, a dolphin. When you got the point, you know, you call them swordfish. Swordfish. Yeah. Those, you know. After that, I used to catch a fish by 10, 12 pounds, they used to call it Lalonga.

It's like a shape like tuna. Okay. Yeah, really nice fish. They have almost to be precious, the sardine and chow, you know. So you caught everything in nets, even the 500 pound? Yeah, in a net. Not with a pole. No, no.

Everything was nets? With a net. I have to admit something to you that when we planted them, it was our first time growing in a new greenhouse at this high school, and we didn't realize the extent of their mouse problem. Oh, oh. Oh. And the mice dug up and ate almost every seed.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh. That was what they wanted. They dug. Oh, I'm so sorry. You must have been devastated. That was the worst out of all the things we were growing. I was like, this seed is extremely precious.

What I was taught, though, is to never plant every seed. Yes, good job. And I want to pass that to the listeners. And this is why the mice ate every single seed I planted of the cuckooza. And I had, I think, three more. and I planted two of the three because you don't plant every seed. And these are the two.

So we have two single plants taking this 40 feet of fence and each of these fruits must have hundreds of seeds in them and you can see there's dozens of fruits. Yes, yes. I mean, yes, everyone is going to have dozens. And there's a little tutorial on my website from a Sicilian gentleman

from Nutley, New Jersey on how he saves his cuckooza squash seeds. Oh, do you remember the tips? Well, he said he dries them for a long time in their hang. They turn all brown on the outside and then of course the inside dries out and then the seeds themselves, you can almost hear them rattling in there, so he cuts a hole at the bottom and then gets a stick and shoves it up the hole in the bottom and loosens the seeds and

then they all fall out and he still has the whole shell intact. And what I do, never dry, when it's dry, I put a hole underneath, I put a stick, and it makes it coming down. That sounds way easier than what we do. Oh, okay. I'll send you the video. We get them at a certain point when the stem turns brown, and the fruit is still kind of green and hard. It's a little browning. And then we set up a whole tarp with kind of a rim to catch flying seeds, and we dance on them. Oh, that sounds like more fun.

Because if you cut them open and try to work with them, they actually can cut you. The skin is very sharp. Oh, after it's dry, you mean as it draws. When it's still kind of green. Oh, okay. And you cut, slice it with a knife. It's too sharp. So we dance on it.

And, you know, we have a grower friend who grows it for us as well, and she does what you described. We found our seeds to germany a little better, which helps when you're a seed company. Absolutely. But when you're at home, if you still get 70%, it's plenty. Yeah. That's more than enough. Well, yeah, or maybe dry both methods just in case with these ones. Yeah, for sure.

Well, there's already some drying down here. This one has already come off the plant. Yeah. Wow. So we'll bring that in ahead of the, before the mice find it. Right, exactly. They would have literally a field day on that one. Absolutely.

And this is an African species. I don't know how much you think about the origins of these Italian vegetables, but they are often not from Italy. Absolutely. I mean, tomatoes aren't from Italy, basically. Peppers, eggplants, the flat beans you were showing me. Those are all American. Tomatoes, peppers, not eggplant.

Tomatoes, peppers, the common beans, zucchini, the Lungo de Napoli, those are all American species. And this is African. And the fact that this is typical Sicilian, you know? Think how close, you know. Africa is not that far. from Sicily so it makes a lot of sense that this is you know a typical Sicilian vegetable and this of course long predates the zucchini and all the other American squashes so you think often associate those things with Italy just like

tomatoes peppers and beans very classic Italian food but of course there were foods there before you know the 1400s and this was one of them wow and like the favas were before the common beans you know and the chickpeas and the lupini beans and things like that those are old world species compared to a lot of the ones that we see now in italian gardens yeah i mean i i wonder even about those uh fajolini lungi the real long thin um bean that we were talking about my friend tomasina i thought they were an asian species um because i see them in so many Asian gardens and but Tomasina swears you know her mother's been planting them

it was planting them in Italy and her uncle was planting them you know for generations but who knows they you know has still have an Asian orange origin and the well it's a interesting story that species maybe we'll visit that species next because they have an Italian cow pee basically field pee that's the same species as the long beans as we call them which do originally originate as a species, a domesticated species in Africa, you know, it's the black-eyed pea, it's the cow-pea. And they, over thousands of years, make their way east through Asia, because there's so much trade, you know, between Africa and Asia, and then, of course, Europe, because they're all on trade routes.

And so the cow-pea or the black-eye-pea becomes the long bean by the time it gets to East Asia, in South Asia. It's selected in India and East Asia for this long, tender, pod. And then, of course, trade happens, and I'm sure it came back to Italy during, you know, it's hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Exactly. Exactly. And now, you know, it's just considered part of the cuisine. After this conversation, we visited the Black IP from Umbria, and then the long bean from Indonesia. Here's a bit of that last part. Yeah, those are quite long. Those are quite long and hardy. Yeah, and you would eat them.

You see the row there that was planted later. Okay. So you'd eat them more like in that stage. Right, when they're much more tender. Yeah, they're a beautiful, dark purple. The family from Indonesian that gave them to me call them long purple peanut in their language or long purple long bean, you know. So this one is a frying pepper. Okay.

From, so I, I had been, okay, so one of my previous farms, I was driving home from work and saw that I always get pizza on the way home because it's like, when I learned that pizza was an ancestral food, I was like, yes, I can eat it every day. So I stopped at a pizza place that said, what was it called, Napoli pizza and pasta? And I was like, oh, Napoli. I go, perfect. I walked in and I was like, hi, I'm a farm. I ordered my pizza. Hi, I'm a farmer. I farm down the road and I love growing southern Italian things and my people are from near Naples. And he had been grown up there, Bruno. And he started showing me pictures on his phone. He was like, oh, I've got a big garden at home. I got a garden outside the restaurant. He's like grape vines and basil and tomatoes and stuff like that. And he said, you got to find this pepper called pepperoni friarillo. And it's like a big deal, I guess, in Naples area. And the only one I could find was from a seed catalog, and it was delicious. And apparently you use the green ones.

I don't know if you know this pepper or this recipe. Not particularly. But it's basically just a frying pepper where you'd use the green ones. And as simple as olive oil and garlic, kind of like what you were describing before. And if you want to make it, you know, a little more warming, you'd add tomato sauce. And it's so good. I don't usually like green peppers. I like ripe peppers, but that's such a delicious.

So they would just fry them, fry them green. I'm sure they let some, well, guess for the seed, you have to let them go red too. But they probably taste lovely red too. Oh, the red is awesome. But in all the videos I looked up on YouTube from Italy of people showing this recipe, they were green. The green peppers. Oh, yeah, my grandmother would fry green peppers all the time. They're fried peppers are so delicious.

Fried peppers, just the simple, the way they turn sweet and just frying peppers and just the smell of frying peppers that like brings me back to my childhood. And I am sure these are wonderful when they're fried, just a whole. And they're all sweet, right? They are. And I'll send you home with a bunch of them if we remember before you leave and you can try it. But what happened was I started selling that pepperoni free area. hello. And this guy wrote to me through our website and was like, I love the way you talk about

your great-grandmother. Anyone who talks about their grandmother that way should get some free seeds. Oh, lovely. And I guess in one of my descriptions, I forget which one I was describing the village and the mountains that my great-grandmother came from and telling her story. And he said, I'm from Naples to I live in southern Connecticut. He's from Norwalk, which is where next town over from my great-grandfather lived and where my parents grew up and they were born in norwalk hospital you know and so he was like let me send i've tried your pepperoni frerello they're good mine are way better of course that's so typical so typical and these are his so i called it vini's pepperoni friarialo oh lovely um they are actually i mean i like them all but these i love the shape of these

I love that they grow with their, like, upside down. Oh, great. Yeah, I love that. And they're so prolific. And, you know, we also have in our catalog, the classic Italian-American heirloom, frying pepper, Jimmy Nardellos. Right, right. Which is the same idea.

Right. It's just a little longer. Yeah. Yeah. I love that he called and he just needed you to know that his were better and that you really should be eating his. He was right. I mean, he was honestly right.

I like the other ones too, but I'm in love with this pepper. But this one in particular, do you know any more about him? Can we, do you think he's still with us? Oh, he is still with us. We talk maybe once a year on the phone. I haven't met him yet. I mentioned I would love to interview him. That's a road trip.

Absolutely. He also sent me an Iskia eggplant. So from across the water, the little island of Iskia, if I'm saying it right. In that Norwalk area, there's several folks. folks I've heard of from Iskia and that's great no and that's that's a great and you don't often find seeds that came from that area so no that's that's lovely it's a beautiful eggplant we have it in the catalog now for a couple years I've seen farms around the area growing it and beautiful harvests it's just and and now like my one of the dishes I've adopted as one of

my Italian dishes is eggplant parmesan and um I think that's my favorite food in the world It's the best, and I have to say I make a good one. I follow a recipe on YouTube from cooking with Nona. Oh, yes, yes. With the mint that's in the batter. Oh, okay. So good. Oh, eggplant parmesan is just, it's always so good.

I'll order it wherever I am if it's on the menu. It's just, and it just a total throwback to my grandmother. She made amazing eggplant parmesan. And of course, eggplants are an Asian species, at least the kind that we're familiar with. Okay, yeah, I think I knew that. Well, let's check out this other plant right up here. I think this is actually one that may have originated in the Mediterranean and in Italy. I could be wrong.

This is Nepitella. I first had it at a restaurant, actually at a bed and breakfast during one of our anniversary weekends, and it was a garnish on the plate. on the plate at an Italian-American run, bed and breakfast. And she grew all of her own food for the restaurant in her garden. This is up in northern New Jersey. And this was one of the plants that she grows from Italy. Out of many, I mean, she grows a lot of Italian plants.

And I just never heard of it. And it's pretty delicious. If you want to try a leaf. Tell us what you think. So interesting. It has like a minty, but it's got a little bite to it. it's timey you know it has it's a blend of different things yeah i feel like there's like oregano thyme mint really nice very flavorful so this now is our biggest patch we've had and it's

actually very close to going to seed now as you can see but it's got these little light like lavender flowers yeah the bees love it and you know i i recently my partner and i gave a talk at longwood gardens out here and went to some dinner for speakers the night before and they had this homemade ice cream with each with a sprig of Nepitella in the top. So nice. As this nice, like, kind of fancy feeling, flavor and experience to a meal. Pretty. This is the Finocchio. The Fenno, yeah. This is most likely from Calabria. I'm sure this is the one I gave you from the Macchioni, family. And they brought, it's, I have some video of Finiche from the same hometown that this came from, teaching me how to, when to pick it, when the right time to harvest the seed. Yeah, you have to let them dry, okay, when they're dry like that. If you put them on the sun, it gets a little bit more like a dry, and then I just go like this with my hands, see, in the between your hands.

Or you could do this if you want to, but your finger I get a little sore from doing it. It's better the other way because it's a little easier and the quicker. And that's quicker. So you get it just when it's nice and dry. Now it's on a kind of a little bit damp yet. It's not really, really dry. And I won't be able to do it too much because on the kind of, the more it's dry, the better it is. And sort of comes apart easier.

How long ago did you pick this? It's immature. I feel like that some on the plants are there. It should be picked. I keep an eye on it whenever I think it's ready, I pick it because I don't want to get too dark. I don't like it too dark. I like my nice and green.

Because the more it gets darker, that means it's more mature, which is okay too. But I think when it's green, it looks more. It looks more like Finocchio. And you use this for the Supersata? Yeah. Yeah, for Supersata. And you can use some in the soup, you can use many, many dishes stew.

Sometimes if it's not too big, you can even put a little bit, maybe a pinch, even in your spaghetti sauce. Yeah, you can use it anywhere you wish, really. it's good for anything. Mealove, you can put a little pinch in here in a meal loaf and give them a different flavor and sort of make it a tasty nicer and you get a little bit of that flavor

all of the season in here and it makes extra special. Do you see any that are close to ready for a harvest? It might be a little early. Oh yeah, no, they are not ready yet. No. I think I saw some further along the other day maybe on the other side or okay these are getting a little plump up here oh yeah

yeah there they go they're turning into the seed but no they they need to be like a little um bigger plumber and a little slightly still green and but like looking like they might be turning dark at any minute but um and they just you know make a fennel tea to calm the stomach Did you receive any planting instructions for fennel? Oh, for fennel? I guess it's a leading question because I was told by my partner who's not Italian that he had heard that someone said when you plant fennel you're supposed to curse it. Oh, I love that.

No, it's probably some part of Italy that's, I'm sure that's a tradition. Yeah, curse it so that it grows better or you don't get the evil eye. around it or something yeah so I planted some of this with my kid in our backyard and of course I had to do kid-friendly version of cursing so which was probably like you're bad don't grow well the stream of words you could have used yeah oh that's great no I love those traditions about like don't plant on the 17th of the month because that's in 7 17 in Italian is an unlucky number so you can't plant anything on that day, whereas 13 is a lucky number in Italian lore.

So, yeah, there are traditions. I mean, even when I go into these gardens, I have to watch when I admire them too much because there's this, some folks believe the tradition is that if you're admired, if someone's unwittingly, not intentionally, but putting the malocchio on. you, the evil eye. So when I've seen, especially Mariano, if I'm raving about a plant, I'll see him doing this, doing like this with his hand. Bull's horn. Yeah, which is words off the evil eye.

And I'll laugh and I'll say, what are you doing? He's like, I want to make sure you don't give me the malocchio. And because, you know, they, who knows, you know, they really believe it and it's a way I think to it they don't like too much too much self-pride you know it's sort of and it's a way to keep you humble if you're you're not you're not supposed to brag too much you're not supposed to have too much attention given to you and so I'd love learning these traditions these beliefs as I go Yeah, that sounds really useful. I know there's a lot of ways people go ward off the evil eye.

There's including wearing like a horn. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the corno, the corinche. It's, yeah, like a horn. Like it looks like a little pepper, little red pepper. That's supposed to bring good love. Or keep the evil eye away, for sure. What might happen if you don't keep the evil eye away?

Yeah, well, then you get, if you're, if you're, if you're, you've been cursed, you can tell because this is from my friends who, you know, have lived this. And when they would get sick as a child or get a little fever, their grandmother would say, oh, you got the Molokio. So they would, the grandparents or somebody in the town that knew the curse reversal would do this chant over you to remove it. And, um, to remove it. And, Actually, the folks I visit now, they tell me how it actually works. You start to yawn. You start yawning to gain your energy back.

It's like the curse takes your energy away. And as the chant is being told to them, if they start yawning, they're actually getting their energy back, and then they start to feel better. Have you noticed any, I imagine most of the people you meet are Catholic. Yes. Have you noticed any kind of Catholic? rituals or beliefs or traditions that manifest in the garden. Yeah, well, I love, on my website, I have a whole photo gallery of the garden statuary.

You know, having the Madonna watch over your garden, having St. Anthony as a statue in your garden. And I love it. I love that because, you know, when you think about it, if food meant survival and, you know, not having food meant that, you know, a child mind eye, that you wanted to invoke divine protection over that food. So it makes sense that, you know, La Madonna is watching over your garden or St. Anthony's watching over your garden. And I love them, and they're beautiful, this statuary. I learned from Pat O'Boyle from the Italian-American podcast, which is also where I first heard of you, that his people are from this.

same area in the mountains south of Naples called the Cilento and that originally there was a statue to Hera the Greek goddess Hera up there that people would make pilgrimages too because that little area is a lot of Greek people historically that escaped that came to the coast then escaped the pirate attacks from the coast up into the mountains where they settled and then with the Christianization of the area, it became a statue to Mary. Oh, I love that. And then with this pilgrimage annually up to the statue, you know, people walking and singing

and praying and eating, and he's revived a similar festival in North Jersey based on that historic pilgrimage. And so me and my sister went a few years ago to meet him finally and give him some seeds and plants. And hopefully someday I'll have him on the podcast, too, because he's a wealth of knowledge. He is. He's the walking Italian-American encyclopedia. I mean, he knows the history. It just blows your mind.

Yeah, I love that. I love seeing the pre-Christian, you know, the more pagan roots and how it, you know, turned into Christian symbolism and yeah even the the I have I was able to record the chant the curse reversal chant from an woman who's passed from Abruzzo she was in her 90s and living in the Bronx she did the chant for me and then there was a lot of Christian elements but you could tell I couldn't understand all of it because it's an ancient Abruzese dialect but you could tell that this was pre-Christian.

This was, you know, this didn't originate with Christianity, but they blended Christian themes in it. So it's really fascinating to see how those things were adopted to

make Christianity work for them, even though they, to keep their pagan roots and things. We walk over to a table with some recent seed harvests from our farm. But these are the favas you sent me. I had nine seeds.

Wow, you did pretty well. And so they've multiplied. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is Nick Ranieri. He is from Bari, a Moladibari in Puglia, and he grows these. He has a garden in Long Island, New York. Actually, these would have come from his original garden

that we're doing a documentation for the Smithsonian Archive of American Gardens. His will be the second of the gardens that we've documented for the Archive of American Gardens. We did all the fieldwork, we have all the photographs, and we saved seeds, and we did video, and thank goodness because that garden no longer is there. He had to move. He's older. He moved. He still has a small garden, but the original amazing garden from which he has.

these seeds came is no longer there. And so these are even more precious now. Say more precoche are the dark precocious ones. They're the early ones. Moro precoche is like the early fava. And he swears these are the best fava ever. It's the best fava I've grown. Oh, good, good.

We don't have great success with fava in this hot, humid climate. Okay, that's good to know. And they are just so pretty too. They're really dark, dark, deep purple. and have a little purple, lighter purple hint to them. And it's, you know, favas aren't usually this color. This is a very unusual color for a fava beam. And they had really nice long green pods, like very long.

Okay, really nice fruit. Oh, and this is Swiss chard. This seed came from California from my friend Kayo Simbola. He's originally from Sardania. But this seed he got, he said he got it in California from a Sicilian. family that brought this in the late 1800s. So this has been planted for a long time in the US, much more tender and lighter color than most Swiss chart. I mean, it's just light and very tender. It just melts in your mouth and easy to grow. And then one, you let one plant go to seed

and you get so many, so many seeds. You did great. Oh my gosh. You got so many. Yeah, and this is the good seeds and then these are the ones that are lighter weight. Oh, okay. So there's quite a lot. There are, yeah, but still wonder what the germination rate would be for those ones even. I think these ones will all still grow too. Yeah, right. Because there were even lighter white ones that I tossed. That's great.

Oh, so exciting. And kind of lastly, we are already offering one of your varieties in our catalog, which also represents a beautiful relationship that you've alluded to. So I just wanted to mention that family and that project. Yes, yes. So our first release with the true love seeds is an abruzzo lettuce, that Sabatino De Nardo from Pittsburgh grew for decades. And after he passed, the family asked me to help them save his fig tree.

So I went, and I do that often. I love to help people save a fig tree when someone passes and they don't know what to do. So I went and I was helping and in his garden was still growing. It was early spring, but there were the small starts of this lettuce that he grew. So we saved them. The family said he always called it Pepe Ensalata because Pepe was his, Giuseppe was his father-in-law. And they were seed that his father-in-law gave him from Italy. So he always called it his Bepe Ensalata.

So don't ask me what scientific variety it is or what type. For me it will always be pepe and salata. And it was grown by Bianca and Ethan at the growers' grange. Right. Lovely Bianca and Ethan in Corbett, Oregon are growing that one out. And they love it. They do some for Market Garden and they send me photos of these giant heads of Sabatino's lettuce and it's just beautiful.

So I am eternally grateful to them. And they've been, you know, we met them a couple years ago when they were apprenticing at Rodeale Institute and started coming and spending some Fridays with us on our farm. And we successfully recruited them as growers for us. And then we learned we both had a connection to you. And they also grow these different red flower corns from Italy for our catalog and seem to have a whole CSA just focused on Italian vegetables. So they're kind of an inspiration to me. Oh, absolutely.

Yes, to have such a passion to focus your CSA on Italian heirlooms. And for us to all meet each other is just, you know, a gift from the heavens because we all are, you know, have such a shared mission and a passion. And it's just so wonderful to be around kindred spirits like that. Thank you for sharing this work. I mean, it's, I've been doing it as a passion project. but it really is so much bigger than me. I don't know if I mentioned that I call it the Italian Garden Project,

but it really is growing into the National Foundation for the Preservation of Italian Gardening Heritage. That's what it needs. I mean, with all of these different aspects, and that is way bigger than me. So, you know, your help, Bianca's help, and, you know, this project is growing, and it needs to grow.

and for the sake of our ancestors. Awesome. Well, thank you again, and I can't wait to see you next time. Please come back. Come to Pittsburgh. I will. I will. Maybe we can go interview some people together.

Yes, let's go visit some of my friends. Oh, let's do it. Okay, great. Let's get you some of those frying peppers. Oh, lovely. Thank you. so much to Mary Maniti for sharing these stories with us. And thank you for listening and sharing

this episode of Seeds and Their People with your loved ones. Please share this episode with someone you love and subscribe to our show in your favorite podcast app. Thank you also for helping our seed keeping and storytelling work by leaving us a review and also ordering seeds, t-shirts

and more from our website. TrueLoveseeds.com and again, if you'd like to support our podcast for $1 or more monthly, please join our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future. Don't go yet. Here's a couple little snippets from the Italian Garden Project welcome video from their website

I wanted to leave you with. featuring Miquely Picardo and Dominic Carpico and Mary Manitti herself. Now where'd you get these seats? Is this, do you buy these over here? There's one Calabres gave to me. I work in a mill, I lay bricks with him, and we start talking about a bricklayer, say, I don't got him for a long time, they said,

but I had him back there, you know. So he said, I got some. He'd bring him some, and then, there we are. The best thing he ever did, he ever did. Maybe you've got a love with the land. You have to have an inside of you. That's what my family was always the farmers. I start to do the outside.

That's what I like. I love that outside work. The other day, I wanted the spaghetti with oil and garlic. I went up there. I got to the parsley. I got oregano. I got the pepper, onions, all fresh. fresh. Man, man, I ate like a blow, but the real stuff.

We want to make sure that the wisdom and traditions of these gardeners live on. We feel an urgency and responsibility to preserve this knowledge and share it with all of you. That's what the Italian Garden Project is all about. I love spending time with these gardeners and I think you will too. Benvenuti, welcome. Hello again. I know we're past the end of the episode and we're kind of in the secret bonus track section, but I wanted to introduce this final clip that Mary sent to me that was part of a tribute video after Antonino Maki passed away. And it's of him singing with his family, and I thought it was just a very beautiful way.

to end the episode. It's a song that's really a love song, but I like to imagine not actually knowing his relationship to this song that maybe he's singing to the garden or to those cuckooza plants that he was talking about earlier in the episode as a way to keep him connected to a time that was simpler. And so here we go. Make the world Make the world go away Make the world Go away

Hang it up in my shoulders That a thing he used to say Say the things he used to say Make the world the way Make the world The way I like that song