Some of you know that my sister's a farmer. She lives in central Georgia where she has an organic farm. They grow vegetables, fruit and herbs, and they have goats, plus soon, chickens. I'm a locavore type myself, and a gardener, though I only grow flowers for the butterflies and bees to eat. (Well, and the deer and rabbits.)

Here in Assisi, right below the Hotel Giotto is San Pietro, the church I've photographed incessantly and in every weather for years now. The churchyard behind this impressive place has been derelict since I first saw it. I even wrote a haiku about it the year I first came. Worse than derelict, actually; after the big earthquake in 1997, people dumped earthquake debris there.

Can you see where this is going? San Pietro's churchyard is a farm now. Julie, a 25-year resident of Italy originally from Nigeria (who speaks English) and her Italian husband (who doesn't) made an arrangement with the church. They've hauled the debris away (using some as walls in the field), tilled and planted, revived the 40-year-old grapevines, fed the fruit trees, and brought in ducklings and rabbits. "Naturale," Julie says to me. Organic. Three mornings a week they open the gate and sell their vegetables and eggs and other local farmers' organic fruit -- their trees aren't producing enough yet -- at a little stand at the front. They do a brisk business, too. When the stand's not open I can see them from my room, working in the vegetable rows.

Besides the peacock, this is my favorite discovery of this year's trip.



san pietro, early morning



julie the farmer and her husband



ducklings



earthquake debris makes a fence



quince tree



vegetables



san pietro from the farm