Estate 2019
He got out of the car while it was pouring rain late at night in the middle of a tiny countryside road to look at a toad using his torch to guide it to safety in the bushes so it didn’t get run over by cars. Presenting Massimo Branca
That first time I was at Casa Cugni, I stayed there a month and really fell in love with the place. The amazing scenery, the isolation, working with my hands, it was like a beautiful dream. I didn’t return for almost a year and a half, but Massimo went back a couple of times.
Massimo is an Italian photographer / anthropologist / pianist / permaculture enthusiast.
His father is originally from Sicily and his family goes there every summer.
Summer 2019 Massimo went back to Casa Cugni as per normal but not with the idea of a vacation. Something had started there, something that needed a lot of work but with the potential of becoming very special.
So, in the words of Massimo Branca:
Estate 2019 (Summer 2019)
The very first day I arrived in Sicily, in August 2019, I decided to set up a place where I could sleep in the country house. After some months of absence, the space had gone back to not very neat conditions. Again, I started to clean every floor with a brush and a broken dust pan. It took some hours.
When it came to planning the best position to lie down during the night, I thought higher would be better. You know, maybe the area would be slightly less frequented by the variety of animals passing by. My first idea required a deep cleaning of the centimetre-thick layer of dust that had collected on the base of the millstone. To straighten the surface of my new bed, I used a wooden board, on top of which I put my thin almost useless mattresses. At the time, I underestimated the danger of that old flat piece of wood.
However, I was quite satisfied with the result, and not even slightly scared at the idea of that enormous smashing stone rolling for whatever unexpected reason.
Unfortunately doubts started to arise soon. I thought that being that one of the worst roof zones in the house and no tiles on the floor (only rock and compacted dirt), maybe that room was not the best place to spend the night. So, in a hurry, I prepared myself another bed in another room using a few dirty pallets to lift the bed from the floor - the playground of the multitude of insects who populated the place.
By this time it was dark and I had to use a forehead light to see what I was doing.
The new accommodation appeared even scarier than the previous one, but at this point it was too late and I didn’t care that much about comfort anymore.
Well, I laid down, mostly inside my sleeping bag. I kept it open, because it was august and the temperature didn’t really require a heavy blanket. During the night I couldn’t really sleep. For the excitement maybe. Or most probably because I kept feeling something biting me. Everywhere. At first I thought about mosquitos, but I couldn’t see or hear any around. Only spiders.
With a growing feeling of terror, my mind jumped back to similar and very uncomfortable experiences I had in other places
Blood sucking insects!
Allergic reaction!
Atrocious itch!
Some serious bloody nightmare.
I searched for several minutes, but I couldn’t spot any flees.
(In the morning I was covered with itchy red spots. Days after, I realized who might have been the author of this bad joke: the ‘acari dei tarli’ woodwork mites that probably lived by the hundreds inside the wooden board I used to build the bed. These unpropitious beings normally inject the woodworms larvae to paralyse them and then have a feast. That night they probably confused me for a giant larva.)
Since I was not really able to sleep, I decided to enjoy the moonless night, and see if I could spot a falling star.
It was San Lorenzo night, by coincidence.
Eventually, I actually did.
Eventually, I even took a picture of a falling star, in the frame of the milky way.
The following period was a mix between country living apprenticeship and desperate restorations of the living spaces.
There was a barrel inside a room… it was too big and there was no way they could have brought it inside intact because it didn’t pass through the doors. They had assembled it directly in place. But now it was so old and ruined and smelly and putrified, that it had to be removed. To do so, with some help from my father and brother, we cut it in two pieces.
At first the idea of using it as a tub crossed my mind, but when I stepped inside it I immediately changed my mind. To further discourage some crazy idea of intimate use was the discovery of the mummified corpse of an old tenant of the barrel: a rat of remarkable size.
I hope in the rodent world there is no thing such as the Curse of the pharaohs.
At times, there were chances to relax in some beautiful places.
But you had to deserve it, walking for 40 minutes down a steep canyon.
The reward was amazing, though.
I also started to meet our new neighbours. Around ten people in an area of 50 square kilometres.
One of them was Don Turiddu, a man over 80 who was still able to take care of 20 cows and calves.
