For The Wild - May 07, 2026


FAT OF THE LAND - APERITIVOļ¼š The Call of the Land S1ļ¼šE1


Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

158.69

Word count

4,839

Sentence count

103


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 hi for the wild community Ayanna here I am so excited to share our new series with you
00:00:09.600 fat of the land before we begin I'm just gonna put the kettle on and if you can I'd invite you
00:00:16.080 to do the same make a cup of something warm settle in a little I've been trying to start
00:00:21.360 my days like this lately just slowing things down enough to actually arrive right now I'm
00:00:27.180 drinking Ritchie, which I'm honestly very grateful to have found. I'm not someone who does well with
00:00:32.600 coffee. My friends and collaborators know this all too well. But Ritchie was made from roasted
00:00:38.000 chicory root and cacao and other delicious plants, so it has that dark, full-bodied feeling, but lands
00:00:44.960 a lot more gently. It actually feels grounding, like it settles into my body instead of speeding
00:00:51.120 me past it. And it's become a bit of a ritual, just having something warm in my hands and taking
00:00:57.420 a breath, giving myself a moment before moving into the day. So wherever you are, if you can,
00:01:04.060 take a sip with me. If you're curious, you can learn more at drinkrichu.com.
00:01:09.520 And thank you to Richu for supporting this series.
00:01:14.400 We're also grateful to Terra Elia, a retreat space in southern Italy rooted in enchantment
00:01:19.920 and renewal and sacred transformation. It's the kind of place that invites you to step
00:01:25.020 out of urgency and into a different rhythm entirely. And in some ways, that question
00:01:30.880 of rhythm, of how we live, how we spend our time, it's what brought me here in the first
00:01:36.920 place. I came to Italy because I wanted to immerse myself in a certain kind of life,
00:01:44.620 the one we imagine, where food matters, where meals take time, where there's a sense of
00:01:51.060 continuity between land and people, a life that feels well-lived. And I was curious about what
00:01:57.520 would happen if I followed that desire all the way through, whether it would actually satisfy
00:02:02.140 something or just sharpen the appetite. This series begins in Sicily. I spent time with Carlo
00:02:14.280 and jesse at slow life family farm just outside of noto we start on the farm with carlo
00:02:25.960 the colors are so beautiful yeah this is the second spring of sicily oh um and it's gonna
00:02:31.960 end in the next three weeks because we'll get frost so you can see these crocus there's lots
00:02:37.480 of brassicas yeah just the green and yeah with the white of the limestone so
00:02:43.740 here this is the east facing so this is the cemetery of the farm and yeah
00:02:51.240 wherever you see a tree there is a tomb oh these carved out yeah so the heads
00:03:01.500 we go there you could see that it's wider uh-huh there's another one there
00:03:06.860 another one there but for you coming back to the land or coming to the land it's both hard and also
00:03:19.660 full of creativity and excitement like you were saying when you left england and you found this
00:03:26.940 land it was really exciting for you to imagine and dream into yeah i mean for me it's been amazing
00:03:34.120 I mean, you know, the possibility to meet Jesse because I'm a city boy and to learn, I mean, to see how their family, because, you know, my family was a city family.
00:03:46.140 Even if my grandfather had the farm, he always come back to the city to sleep where Jesse family lived in the land and they were growing their food.
00:03:55.320 And this is what I dreamt. And this is what I want to experience because I didn't have in my life. I was coming from the city.
00:04:01.220 yeah and so you know we come back here and trying to relieve it in my home land what she was living
00:04:08.020 in england for me was like an absolute dream and what was dream like about it for you for me
00:04:14.060 is independency for me that my core question when i was in my 20s is what is independency
00:04:22.880 is independency having a bank account full of money or having a nice job or it's uh be able
00:04:30.080 to grow your foods and access the element in the nature.
00:04:35.040 I mean, it's nice to see that birds have no worries.
00:04:38.120 All the food is available there.
00:04:40.120 I think we are the only species that needs money to live.
00:04:44.680 Oh, there are other species in the world that can live without money.
00:04:48.340 After some time on the farm, Jesse and I leave.
00:04:51.020 We drive out to an ancient city, one of those places that isn't marked,
00:04:55.520 and we were the only ones there.
00:04:57.300 walking with her feels different she moves to the landscape like she's in conversation with it
00:05:03.720 pointing out what used to be here what's still here what most people would pass by without
00:05:09.260 noticing we wander through the ruins down into the canyon toward the water and she dives in like
00:05:15.840 a mythical creature and for a moment it feels like time isn't stacked neatly behind us it's just all
00:05:23.860 here
00:05:24.640 as we walk we'll see
00:05:29.820 the city
00:05:31.260 exactly as you said was made
00:05:34.080 is made of the rock that is from
00:05:36.140 here, everything that they use
00:05:37.900 so I can show you what they use for the building
00:05:39.660 the roofs, for building
00:05:41.760 the ceilings
00:05:43.900 for the plaster, all
00:05:45.820 the materials come from here
00:05:47.400 and at the same time this was an ancient
00:05:49.960 city that was also a trading point
00:05:51.900 So to think of the materials that weren't from here, but were being brought, being traded, being shared all over Sicily and then later, you know, sort of across the lands.
00:06:05.560 And one thing that I heard, so the Egyptians, they used a particular salt for embalming the mummies and it was called Naotum.
00:06:15.020 and this is almost identical to the ancient name of of of noto and and what i've seen and what
00:06:23.160 what i've been told is that the the ancient prehistoric sites are usually are often on
00:06:29.600 deposits of salt and i wonder whether because there were connections with egypt here and it
00:06:35.940 was like i wonder where the salt deposit is and because definitely they would need the salt and
00:06:40.260 and um yeah and there was you know definitely trade going on bronze age times you know different
00:06:47.080 raw materials that were needed and and that also source of of exchange and well so i wanted to show
00:06:54.480 you this this tree so this is an olive tree and you can see so it's like it's like it's been copsed
00:07:01.500 so there are many sort of uprights coming out um but you can see from the base that this is actually
00:07:07.480 all one tree and it was it's very old so maybe a thousand maybe two thousand years old and so to
00:07:13.820 think that this tree that has you know been destroyed by the earthquake has probably been
00:07:18.240 eaten by goats and sheep and burned and but it was standing in the main square of this city and
00:07:24.900 for me it's just like wow how many memories do you know who's sat under there conversations like
00:07:29.500 recorded in its in its being and um yeah that it's been witnessed to this sort of rise and fall
00:07:37.180 of human activity
00:07:39.340 and I should have
00:07:41.020 gone down to being silent again
00:07:43.440 and this is a monument
00:07:45.100 to the city but it's like a birth
00:07:47.280 and a death date of the city
00:07:48.720 so it says how it was founded by
00:07:50.700 Giuchezio in 428
00:07:53.420 BC
00:07:54.220 and then destroyed in 1693
00:07:57.100 and it says
00:07:58.420 you know, great Madonna
00:08:00.520 protect us
00:08:01.680 or protect the new city
00:08:04.020 and i really get a sense here that um you know there's such uh a strong you know sort of
00:08:19.820 love of the of the madonna who also feels you know is the mother goddess and really giving thanks
00:08:28.340 to the life that she provides and the fertility of the land and the plants that she gives and
00:08:33.420 you go to the springs and usually there is the statue of the madonna with her baby and you know
00:08:41.400 sort of as i say you know sort of actually saying we you know this this water is is your milk you
00:08:47.700 know we live thanks to this water that you give us i could see how you fell in love with this
00:08:53.060 place nice and this land has we're talking and driving and walking and i can feel the land
00:09:01.340 through you and i can throw your love and i can i can imagine why it's a beautiful lover it's very
00:09:09.020 romantic the stories and i think it's also hard sometimes to fall in love with humanity
00:09:16.200 and we're such a challenging species to love sometimes so i i can see why this place and
00:09:28.960 the stories even the challenging ones even the ones that are show us at our worst uh-huh there's
00:09:36.260 still beauty to be found in them i feel i really feel i was called here and i really feel that this
00:09:43.420 land the land itself is calling for human for for human touch
00:09:51.200 makes me almost want to cry but for human touch and for for a sense of healing because um
00:10:00.580 i really feel that this land has been raped
00:10:03.940 oh yeah and i really and but it holds so much beauty and so much magic and so many stories that
00:10:15.000 I think are so important for us to acknowledge and remember and also move beyond and I really
00:10:25.600 um like I grew up in a garden and I grew up in a wild wood and I grew up next to a beautiful river
00:10:33.340 that yeah that that um I I really have carried since a child a sense that a role for humans is
00:10:42.740 sort of as as gardeners as nurturers as you know sort of um taking care and and and that there is
00:10:52.440 a place for human humanity and that there is a place of walking the past but also respecting the
00:10:57.420 paths and following the paths of the animals and and it's what i love about this place is that so
00:11:02.920 much of this land you know people life was hard here for for thousands of years and in the 19
00:11:10.520 early 19th century 90 percent of the local male population emigrated they left they were they were
00:11:18.140 they were told you know you'll have a better life in in americas in venezuela in different places
00:11:24.340 and they left and to send money back and this land was abandoned but this land has also been left to
00:11:30.900 to become wild again and um and and also there is a deep sort of there's still such a deep
00:11:40.960 connection and you know people had to survive so so they so many people
00:11:48.500 still hold the knowledge of the plants to feed them and they're from the wild not from the
00:11:55.400 cultivated and um the medicines that that you know they can use to to keep their babies well
00:12:03.020 and to to tend for their old yeah so yeah i i feel very like honored and privileged to be able to
00:12:11.900 to live here
00:12:13.060 i've been thinking a lot while making this series about how long things actually take
00:12:23.980 And I'm not referring to just growing food or learning a place, but building trust, staying in conversation, letting something unfold instead of rushing it into a conclusion.
00:12:36.940 Most of what you're hearing in this series didn't come from a single interview.
00:12:40.620 It came from time spent walking and returning and asking the same question in different ways and being willing to sit inside the parts that don't resolve quickly.
00:12:50.760 and that's also how we approach the work for the wild more broadly over the years we've started
00:12:56.780 to move away from one-off conversations and towards longer more intentional storytelling
00:13:02.340 projects that are built in collaboration over time and with the people and places they're
00:13:08.140 actually about that's what the studio side of the work is we partner with organizations brands and
00:13:15.080 initiatives who want to tell more complex stories. And we build those stories together.
00:13:20.800 If you're working on something like that, something that asks for depth, nuance, and
00:13:25.920 care in how it's told, email us at connectforthewild.world. And now back to it.
00:13:33.820 later we head back to the farm carlo and i go for a walk along the creek that runs through the
00:13:47.280 property and the conversation picks up again but more directly this time about why people leave
00:13:53.740 the land why others feel pulled back to it about what independence actually means whether it's
00:14:00.300 something you find in a place like this or something else entirely and there's the sense
00:14:06.120 underneath it all that we're often reaching for what we don't have imagining something better
00:14:12.420 on the other side of it it is interesting that idea of leaving and coming back or like the back
00:14:22.140 to the land movement people were on the land but it was hard they wanted to move to the city and
00:14:26.880 then the people in the city were like oh i just want to move to the land and so it's really i've
00:14:31.720 been thinking about that a lot as i've been recording these conversations with people
00:14:35.280 like what is that that desire we always want to live what we have not lived
00:14:41.680 so i was i grew up in the city and i just had this craving of being in the land and then i
00:14:48.260 remember that jesse for example grew up in the farm and went to live in london for five years
00:14:52.940 yeah so and i suspect that is gonna happen with them you know you want to live what you haven't
00:14:59.340 so yeah but do you think there's something to wanting a connection to land but then the people
00:15:08.120 who may maybe had that connection to land felt it was too challenging and wanted an easier life
00:15:14.100 because maybe with life being so hard it was hard to actually connect to the land i feel stuck in
00:15:20.340 that question right now of people either wanting connection to the land or wanting
00:15:26.880 to find comfort away from the land i mean i think it's um this place has been so poor the
00:15:34.680 you know everything it was about survival and um in the farm you have abundance of life but you
00:15:41.960 have high risk of robbers coming because you have no protection around you so anybody can come and
00:15:47.980 everything can happen to in the city people feel protected because there are defensive wall and
00:15:52.700 but it's more difficult to find food and so i don't know if at that time or this connection
00:16:01.560 with the land was still in there i think it's something new you know before it was more about
00:16:06.680 survival yeah but we all come from there right yeah and then some people find comfort with the
00:16:13.320 land because they can feel safe and connected yeah to the non-humans I didn't grow up in the
00:16:22.220 city but I grew up in the suburbs and I went to the land because it felt safe in certain ways
00:16:29.340 dangerous in others yeah like I longed for those relationships and it is hard I mean no doubt it
00:16:36.080 is so exhausting yeah it's so challenging um both mentally and physically but i also wonder
00:16:44.780 who chooses to go back to the land versus the people who have been more forced to be on the
00:16:52.580 land and they want to choose not to be there if they could yeah i mean for us at least in
00:16:58.680 this movement of moving to the city um it happened mainly in the in the 50 and the 60 when the
00:17:05.060 industrialization came and you know living in the farm working the land is difficult because you
00:17:11.820 never have sure money you plant something and maybe there is a big drought and everything dies
00:17:17.820 and you have no money and you have no food and and the idea that the industry give a certainty
00:17:23.380 they give a steady salary and so people believe you know that it was much easier to have a salary
00:17:31.820 than rely on the, you know, lack of nature for the abundance of the crop
00:17:37.740 because he's never sure what happened.
00:17:39.800 That makes sense.
00:17:41.360 But also we had, like, Syracuse in the 3rd century BC,
00:17:46.000 2,300 years ago, used to have 300,000 people living in the city.
00:17:50.960 So here we are at the beginning of, you know, this massive city.
00:17:54.660 It was bigger than Rome.
00:17:57.240 You know, can you imagine 300,000 people back then?
00:18:00.840 No.
00:18:02.340 Today, the city of Syracuse is 120,000.
00:18:04.580 So the old city was almost three times bigger than the city of today.
00:18:08.520 So the same question, the same story we're having today,
00:18:11.740 they were happening back then.
00:18:13.480 Because with this large mass of people,
00:18:15.720 people living in the city are not producing food.
00:18:18.380 So they need to rely on the farmers.
00:18:21.300 And so there is always this division.
00:18:26.340 Well, it's almost like farmers should be more valued.
00:18:29.940 yeah farmers should be paid more money yeah i mean what you're just telling me just made me
00:18:36.500 think about a story that my grandfather told me about how back in this day everybody had the
00:18:41.220 garden and it was a community of small gardens and and people exchange and and the idea that
00:18:48.500 you go to the supermarket in your garden and so you know this this where we are today and maybe
00:18:56.920 where they were back then it's been this education that you know we don't need garden and people can
00:19:04.960 do it for us and we can do better thing with our time than putting the hands in the soil but you
00:19:10.680 know it's a cut this running behind this tail because we are what we eat and by you know um
00:19:18.380 giving the responsibility of your food to somebody else you don't know what you're eating and so now
00:19:25.140 we could see there is lots of disease that were not there before um you know my grandfather lived
00:19:31.340 until 99 and six months and he was always saying to us you know the food is the medicine that you're
00:19:38.260 not gonna pay in the future so you have good food now and you're gonna save medicine in the future
00:19:44.260 and i think this attitude or removing the land of educating people to the fact that the somebody
00:19:52.060 else can grow and brought us today to this. But my grandfather said, everybody had a garden
00:19:56.760 before. Now, if you ask, almost nobody has a garden like that. And so it's, I think we
00:20:06.300 are in the hand of somebody up there that moves choices for us on how we can educate
00:20:12.460 people. And I think also that comes from education and the schooling. He was saying to me that
00:20:18.220 You know, the child used to stay with the mother under seven.
00:20:23.060 And then after seven, he would go and work with the father.
00:20:26.380 So the school was the family.
00:20:28.880 And you do the work of your parents.
00:20:30.980 So if you are a lawyer, your children will be lawyers.
00:20:34.680 If you are a doctor, your children will be...
00:20:36.080 If you are a farmer, your children will be farmers.
00:20:39.220 And then they say at one point, the women want to get freedom, you know, want to work,
00:20:45.920 which is good.
00:20:47.040 I mean, I think it's really important, the freedom.
00:20:50.260 But at the same time, to get that freedom, she gave the kids to the school.
00:20:54.560 And then when she gave the kids to the school, the school can transform your kids in whatever they want.
00:20:59.720 And suddenly the kids are not doing any more of the work of the parents.
00:21:03.220 Yeah.
00:21:03.860 And so the tradition of their parents, the lineage, you're broken.
00:21:08.960 And I don't know if it's good or bad.
00:21:10.620 Yeah.
00:21:11.180 Right.
00:21:11.800 I thought about that too.
00:21:12.920 It's not, but it's announced to understand that, you know, we are today here, you know, it's through education.
00:21:19.620 They educate us to not have garden.
00:21:21.340 They educate us to not use our hands.
00:21:23.760 They're educating us to become consumers, not producers.
00:21:27.540 And I think that's, you know, where all this comes from.
00:21:31.300 And people that have this care, I felt, connected with this needs to come back to the land is because they want to come back to be producers rather than consumers.
00:21:41.880 and I think that's where we are getting now,
00:21:44.820 producers and consumers.
00:21:46.580 That makes a lot of sense to me.
00:21:48.400 Yeah.
00:21:51.040 When people were in the city here,
00:21:53.000 when it was 300,000 people,
00:21:55.540 did people have little gardens then?
00:21:57.420 We don't know much about that.
00:21:59.640 Yeah, the society of the city-state of Syracuse
00:22:02.540 was similar to what we have today.
00:22:05.000 It was based on slavery.
00:22:07.400 So of 300,000 people, there was 100,000 slaves.
00:22:11.880 So in the farm, the rich men owned the farm
00:22:15.280 and then employed slaves to work the farm
00:22:17.700 to feed and sell produce in the city.
00:22:20.940 So already back then, there was already a lot of mess.
00:22:24.800 It's not like something of today.
00:22:29.400 But yeah, mainly the easiest way to make food back then,
00:22:34.140 at least what we know, it was through growing animals,
00:22:37.820 cows herding yeah because they did have huge power tools they could plow thousands and thousands of
00:22:44.160 hectares um yeah but um probably they're i don't know what i'm telling you it was from my
00:22:52.420 grandfather memory and you have to imagine when my grandfather was young at the age of alfeo the
00:22:57.680 city of sargus did have more than 40 000 people oh so it was very just in ortija island so and
00:23:05.940 everybody had gardens around surviving who had no gardens was fishermen so trying to get free food
00:23:13.000 from the sea and but there was always that there was no slavery as such but there was a very low
00:23:22.240 paid and so that condition was kept where you have you know advantage and disadvantage
00:23:29.460 um it's so fascinating to be here in a place where the history is so alive in a sense like
00:23:38.620 we're seeing i'm looking at it right here on your homestead yeah i think for some back the land
00:23:44.200 people in america that i know even myself or people who want to be in the movement towards
00:23:51.540 earth connection or or more justice it's really easy to romanticize back then yeah oh but back
00:23:59.480 then people were really connected to the land back then we didn't have all these injustices
00:24:03.980 or there was a time when humans were better or something and it's so fascinating that we keep
00:24:10.940 hearing these stories not just in Italy of course like all over the world that it's like well we
00:24:16.440 didn't really quite have it figured out then either there's these moments in time where maybe
00:24:21.120 it's a transition moment like you were saying where people did have to have gardens because
00:24:25.800 there was less people it was less abundant industry was less abundant people had to grow
00:24:31.460 their own food because it was out of a necessity who else was going to grow their food for them
00:24:35.200 yeah that's what i was trying to go across you know the land that was a necessity
00:24:39.060 and now it's not anymore a necessity and we saw that during covid time this became a necessity
00:24:44.860 and people start to pick up gardening again because there was no food in the shelves there
00:24:50.240 was not much and so people start to go foraging, people start to go and ask
00:24:56.120 allotment to the council and something happened because people start to see how
00:25:01.640 much the system is fragile.
00:25:07.240 I mean I when I learned about slow food when I was in my 20s what I really like
00:25:13.160 about this there is an opposite movement to the new movement it was coming out
00:25:20.120 in the 80s and the 90s which is fast food fast produced food food that is going a chain belt
00:25:28.760 there has no energy that it's a monocrop that doesn't care about any other species
00:25:36.120 miles and miles of one plantation and where the slow food they say well we need to look back
00:25:43.880 you know how was made food in italy in a slow way in a way that you know it's not just the
00:25:51.700 production and that's uh touched me a lot because the fast food came because we became a faster
00:25:59.280 society where there is no time for nothing and so if there is no time for nothing there is also
00:26:06.160 no time for growing food and there is also no time to cook food and so they see wow like the
00:26:13.360 grandmothers are not cooking anymore their grandfather giving up their gardens we need to
00:26:17.860 stop this we need to stay on that speed because otherwise we don't know where we're gonna go we're
00:26:24.860 gonna go we're gonna lose our seed we're gonna lose our speciality we're gonna lose our identity
00:26:30.320 because everything is gonna be pre-packed and with instruction and expiring dates
00:26:37.060 and so yeah they saw that this could have led us to a less healthy life and and that's what
00:26:45.640 you know allowed me also to think about you know maybe i need to slow my life down maybe i need to
00:26:52.000 take time to go and gardening you know just people say oh it's so much work to have a garden
00:26:57.660 no it's not even if it's big it's not it's an illusion they give us there's so much work
00:27:04.840 and then if we don't work what do we do we're scrolling or you know we have time to use it
00:27:10.680 not just to to relax and and so this slow food movement um allowed me to meet other minded people
00:27:19.000 they think like this and to not feel lonely because the most fear thing that we also have
00:27:25.760 at least i am is to feel lonely in this way of life in this um you know meeting other people
00:27:33.980 that think like us because they're becoming less and less yeah it's uh and so meeting people that
00:27:40.840 care about how things are done and how things look after other things and interconnection and so
00:27:47.540 you know working with slow food and supporting this charity for me helped me also to have a
00:27:53.060 better sense of my life because of course you know we are a family farm and we produce the food for
00:27:58.760 ourselves so we are we are not really giving our food to the cities and but um allowed me to
00:28:08.840 have a higher purpose in my life say okay i'm doing this but at the same time i'm donating some
00:28:14.380 or our income to the charity and so the day can do what i can't do because i can't save the world
00:28:21.420 and i can't you know and do all the things that a big organization like slow food can do
00:28:27.040 But with my little bit, I can send something back to the mother charity and, you know, they can do something and allow me to feel that maybe, you know, I am also contributing to something greater than my own family, than my own little farm in the middle of nowhere.
00:28:47.860 As we leave this conversation, a few threads start to come into focus.
00:28:52.360 Questions about how we got here, how we've come to understand progress, growth, and what it means to live well.
00:28:59.840 In the next episode, we stay with Carlo and Jesse, but the conversation widens.
00:29:04.660 Into deep time, into the patterns of human desire, and into the roots of what we might call the Western mind.
00:29:11.640 thank you for listening to this episode of for the wild series fat of the land we would like to
00:29:23.060 thank the sponsors of the series rich you and tara elaya you can find more information about them in
00:29:29.480 our show notes as well as a special for the wild link to order yourself some rich you for the wild
00:29:36.500 is produced by Ayana Young, Victoria Phan, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Ulri Bittle.
00:29:44.180 This series features music and sound design created by the For the Wild studio.
00:29:49.540 You can join us on Patreon for exclusive Fat of the Land Spotlight episodes, spanning from Mateo,
00:29:55.620 a truffle hunter, with his dog Wendy, through to a visit to a cheese cave. There's so much more of
00:30:01.440 the Fat of the Land world to explore, and you can join our community to also access uncut
00:30:06.140 Conversations, and our full archive and publishing library. As For the Wild continues its transformation
00:30:12.800 into the For the Wild studio, we invite you to stay close as we explore new creative offerings
00:30:17.880 and ways of listening together. To stay connected, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our
00:30:23.160 newsletter for updates and upcoming releases. Thank you for being with us, and as always,
00:30:28.680 thank you for listening.