**NEW: An American Family in Tuscany (Free Access Article)**
This article originally appeared in a recent issue of Dream
of Italy.
If you were to create the ideal
life in Italy, where would you
live and how would you spend
your time? Perhaps you would buy a
small Tuscan farm to call home. It
would be a place where you
could enjoy your family and
host treasured guests, as
well as indulge your passions
for food, writing and
art.
For American cookbook
author Pamela Sheldon Johns,
this imagined life in Italy is
actually a good description
of her current daily life, a
dream that was years in the
making. She first visited Italy in 1983
but since 1992, she had been traveling
to Italy from her home in Santa
Barbara, California for six to eight
weeks each year teaching cooking
workshops. Once her daughter, Alaia, was born,
Johns would bring her along for these
extended stays. It was when her child
was approaching school age that Johns
felt she needed to decide either to curtail
her cooking workshops
or move to Italy full-time.
Her husband, Johnny Johns,
was up for the adventure of
making a new life in Italy.
Early in 2001, Johns thought
she found the perfect house
on the real estate Web site of
a friend in Montepulciano.
This property offered six
bedrooms, six bathrooms
and breathtaking views of
one of her favorite towns, Monticchiello.
Johns had already been renting large
properties to host her culinary workshops
and she and her husband
thought it made sense to build equity in their own place to host these classes.
Johns flew over to see the place.
"The views were amazing but it just
needed so much work," explains
Johns, proving that not everyone wants
the challenge of renovations
a la Frances
Mayes and Under The
Tuscan Sun.
Disappointed, Johns
asked the real estate
agent if he had any
other places to show
her and he brought her
to Poggio Etrusco, a
17th-century villa on 15
acres that was once a
mezzadria property
under a local noble family.
(Mezzadria was the
Italian sharecropping
system particularly popular
in Tuscany in which
a wealthy landowner
provided land for the
peasants to cultivate in
return for half the crop yield. The system was abolished in
Italy in 1956.) Poggio was in great
shape, came completely furnished and
was move-in ready. Johns was sold.
"Within three months we had all of our
belongings (all of
those ceramic platters
that I carefully
carried to the U.S.
over 15 years of travel,
now returned
back to their homeland)
delivered in a
container and we
became instant farmers
and innkeepers!"
Bed & Breakfast
Poggio Etrusco offers
a country escape
with easy access to
some of Tuscany's
most interesting
towns. While sitting on
the patio looking over
the tops of the olive trees,
you can take in the views
of the nearby town of
Chianciano Terme. The
small town of S. Albino is
within walking distance
just up the road. The bed
and breakfast is just 15
minutes from
Montepulciano, Pienza
and Monticchiello, and
within a half-hour of
Montalcino and Cortona.
The villa offers three private
apartments and a
double room for guests.
Each apartment has a
kitchen and living area
with a fireplace. Johns
and her husband take
pride in running a B&B
with American standards.
They imported comfortable American
mattresses, are generous with the heat
when it gets cold and provide ample
help to guests who need touring
advice.
Europeans are also frequent guests at
Poggio Etrusco. In fact, Johns and her
husband take pride in the fact that so
many Italians choose to visit. "The
Italians love our place because we have
tried to keep it original and traditional
(even though we do now offer wireless
Internet). Many of them are young
people coming out from city life and
are reminded of their grandparents'
farms," Pamela explains.
Poggio really feels like the family
home that it is. You will see a child's
toys on the grounds and the Johns'
friendly dogs will be there to greet
you. Pamela maintains a kitchen garden
and encourages guests to pick
fresh, seasonal produce to cook in their
apartments. She makes homemade
jams and preserves from the plum, fig,
apricot, peach and cherry trees and
serves them at breakfast.
Culinary Adventures
While running a bed and breakfast
might seem like enough work, Pamela
Johns also continues her culinary
career -- teaching and writing. Her
15th cookbook, focusing on appetizers,
will be released shortly. Johns' books
tend to be devoted to one Italian food
at a time; there's one focusing on
risotto, another explores Neapolitan
pizza and there's even a book on balsamic
vinegar. (An excerpt from her
recent book Gelato! is featured in this
newsletter.)
Johns has achieved her dream of turning
Poggio Etrusco into a cooking
school named Food Artisans, giving
hands-on lessons in her kitchen and
dining with students at her long wood
dining room table. She utilizes fresh,
organic ingredients from neighboring
farms in all of her dishes. Her multiday
programs include visits to local
markets, cheese, wine and olive oil
producers and unique restaurants. Her
workshops have been so popular that
she's taken the show on the road, so to
speak, running culinary tours in other
regions of Italy. Food Artisans was
named one of Italy's top cooking
schools by Food & Wine magazine in
2007.
Now Johns and her family are getting
into the food production business
themselves, albeit slowly. Using the
bounty of the more than 1,000 olive
trees on their property, they're making
their own organic olive oil called Pace
da Poggio Etrusco. Johns has incorporated
the oil production into her cooking
workshops, organizing two weeks in
November when guests can join the
harvest.
Artistic Inspiration
Johns' husband, Johnny, has also found
creative inspiration in Tuscan life. At
his small studio at Poggio Etrusco,
Johns uses acrylics to paint colorful
and whimsical scenes on large swaths
of cotton canvas. His Circo Pazzo
(crazy circus) series was inspired by
the traveling circus that passes through
Montepulciano. Johns' pieces feature
monkeys and elephants, his imaginings
of what promotional circus
posters of the past may have looked
like.
Like his wife, this American painter
also has a fascination with Italian food
and wine. Designing and painting
olive oil and wine labels, Johns' efforts
is his tiny corner of Tuscany are gaining
worldwide exposure. He just sold a
painting of his interpretation of the
Wizard of Oz to Warner Brothers for the
company to use in an anniversary promotion
of the movie.
While Johns' original canvases sell for
$1,500 or more, he's now selling his
prints on greeting cards, aprons and tshirts
available on his
Web site.
Italian Family Life
The youngest Johns,
Alaia, is also thriving in
Tuscany. According to
her mother, the youngster
has excelled in the
Italian school system.
"She just finished 5th
grade. In elementary
school the children have
the same teacher for all
five years, which is great
if you have a good
teacher... Our teacher
was stunning. The education
is quite didactic
with a lot of memorization,
recitation, and lots
of writing in composition
books. She
participates in dance,
singing, and theatre after
school," says Johns who
only speaks English at
home, so her daughter is
completely bilingual. She
claims that she might be
the only mother who lets
her child watch the
Disney Channel for
extended periods,
as long as
it is in English.
"Having a
school-age
child has really
helped us understand the culture more as well.
We have been able to meet more people
and participate in more local activities,"
she adds.
When the Johns family first arrived in
Italy, they felt as if they had stepped
back in time. Pamela
Johns laments that time
seems to be catching up
to Italy.
"We've seen summer
entertainment go from
cinema sotto le stelle, a
projector showing
movies on the side of a
building, to a year-round
multisala with
nine theaters. By the
same token, I am utterly
dependent on the
Internet for our work
and personal things,"
she explains.
Still, Johns couldn't be
happier with her family's
decision to move to
Italy: 'There are still so
many wonderful things
about living here, not the
least of which is the excellent
food!'
Poggio Etrusco
Via del Pelago, 11
Loc. Fontecornino
(Montepulciano)
(39) 347 4716006 www.poggio-etrusco.com
Rates: Margherita, the only
individual room at Poggio Etrusco,
is available for 85 euro per night.
Ginestra is a one-bedroom
apartment that rents for 175 euro
per night or 1,200 euro per week.
Gelsomino offers two bedrooms
and rents for 225 euro per night
or 1,550 euro per week. Girasole is
the largest two-bedroom
apartment with stunning views
(275 euro per night, 1,875 euro weekly).
All rooms and apartments have
a two-night minimum stay
and include breakfast.
Food Artisans www.foodartisans.com
One-day cooking classes at
Poggio Etrusco require a minimum
two participants and generally
run from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The 175 euro fee is per person,
includes lesson, recipes in
English, lunch and wine. There
also multi-day workshops at the
bed and breakfast including two
sessions in November 2008 to
experience the olive harvest.
Johns also offers six-day workshops
in Campania, Piedmont,
Emilia-Romagna and Sicily.
About
