For The Wild - May 28, 2026


FAT OF THE LAND - CONTORNI on Inheritance and Taste S1：E4


Episode Stats


Length

29 minutes

Words per minute

158.24

Word count

4,688

Sentence count

104


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
00:00:21.300 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
00:00:44.580 lands a lot more gently. It actually feels grounding, like it settles into my body instead
00:00:50.580 of speeding me past it. And it's become a bit of a ritual, just having something warm in my hands
00:00:56.760 and taking a breath, giving myself a moment before moving into the day. So wherever you are,
00:01:03.000 if you can, 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 out of
00:01:25.320 urgency and into a different rhythm entirely. And in some ways that question of rhythm of how we live
00:01:34.380 how we spend our time it's what brought me here in the first place. I came to Italy because I
00:01:40.260 wanted to immerse myself in a certain kind of life the one we imagine where food matters where meals
00:01:46.800 take time where there's a sense of continuity between land and people a life that feels well
00:01:53.040 lived. And I was curious about what would happen if I followed that desire all the way through,
00:01:58.520 whether it would actually satisfy something or just sharpen the appetite.
00:02:07.340 We've arrived at Quintorni. Across Fab of the Land, each episode has followed the rhythm
00:02:12.660 of a long Italian meal. And this is our final savory course before dessert. Quintorni are the
00:02:19.040 dishes that accompany the meal, the vegetables from the garden, the preserves, the smaller things
00:02:24.760 that arrive beside everything else. This episode moves between Sicily and Tuscany. Back with Carlo,
00:02:31.600 our conversation continues through farming, taste, ancestry, and memory. Then north to Tuscany,
00:02:38.540 where Ariana and her family have spent generations making wine and sheep cheese on the same land.
00:02:45.200 Again and again, the conversation moved beyond the table.
00:02:49.640 Walking with Carlo through the terraces and caves outside of the farm,
00:02:53.820 we kept returning to taste.
00:02:56.020 He spoke about how quickly it can shift,
00:02:58.780 how people lose familiarity with certain foods,
00:03:01.960 and how something once common can disappear.
00:03:06.700 Carlo had chosen to come back to Sicily,
00:03:09.240 and I wanted to understand what had brought him back here.
00:03:12.840 There's a string here.
00:03:20.540 And if I were to not necessarily play devil's advocate,
00:03:24.880 but in the conversation we were just in up on the hill below your home,
00:03:30.800 it's like, well, why is it important to protect this rare variety?
00:03:36.540 And why is it important to, you know, like I guess for me when I think about why I'm attracted to slow food or why I think it's important to preserve the seeds or the ancient traditional ways of growing or cooking or recipes, maybe the first thing that pops in my head is selfishly it tastes better.
00:03:59.680 where so much of the modern food tastes whether it's bland or like it leaves a weird flavor on
00:04:05.220 my tongue or it it feels almost lifeless or soulless and when people love their food and
00:04:11.740 they care and they they tend these varieties that have been tended for thousands of years to be able
00:04:17.720 to grow abundantly or flavorfully it's like oof like my my human animal that hunger in me so these
00:04:24.760 are some of the things that come up for me but i'd be interested to hear yeah i think they change
00:04:29.080 our taste your word your central word was taste um we don't have a taste anymore the taste is
00:04:36.580 dictated sorry to use that word by the supermarkets um so if you give uh something that for 20 30
00:04:44.960 years people think that is the taste and they don't know how the taste yeah and so how they
00:04:49.680 can know when something tastes better or not they all they try is that one so you are one of the
00:04:56.960 lucky one they try good food so now when you test the others say what is this yeah um but other
00:05:03.020 people you know you know millions of people live in cities they don't have possibility to have a
00:05:07.560 garden yeah um and so they don't know other than that and so that's why we open the farm and we
00:05:15.040 open the possibility for people to visit family farm so that they can taste they can connect to
00:05:21.160 themselves with the taste and and they can see this because sometimes we can't dream something
00:05:26.620 if you haven't seen it and so the possibility to open a space where people can see a different way
00:05:31.920 of life it happened to me once i went in a community i was coming from the city i didn't
00:05:36.260 believe that people could live like that and i said i want to live like them but i didn't see
00:05:41.520 until then and so expose yourself to different reality different way of living and different way
00:05:47.440 testing is essential for you know finding your own way in this world um but of course what the
00:05:54.320 world wants is you just move from city to cities and and it's all the same i mean you can go in
00:06:00.500 mumbai you can go in new york you can go in rome and you can still find the same um poor people
00:06:06.400 at the train station you know it's uh it's the same it is where we are you know and um you know
00:06:12.760 I've been going and tapping into these alternative scenes, a new age, you know, where, you know, people pray for Mother Earth.
00:06:21.340 But I haven't seen them going to a garden.
00:06:23.660 I haven't seen them really trying to make an effort to really connect with the land.
00:06:28.160 They make sacred fires, they pray with the fires, but they don't plant trees.
00:06:33.480 So we arrive to an age where having a garden is part of a spiritualist practice.
00:06:39.300 growing food need to be integrated in the spiritual practice of every aspect of our life
00:06:46.100 because otherwise we are still stuck in on this farmer grow the food so we can pray we can
00:06:53.720 we can light sacred fire we can do things and we don't need to worry about that yeah
00:06:58.520 but i think the mother earth is really you know asking us to touch the soil and it's telling us
00:07:05.780 through the fact we are dying younger there is lots of disease they are given through the food
00:07:09.340 and so it's not enough just to pray you know if you buy a food with pesticide you you think you
00:07:15.520 pray and you clean the pesticide no the pesticide stay there you know i can i understand that with
00:07:20.560 praying and song we can again change energy of things but we are right to the level of now is
00:07:26.900 tangent you know we need to put our hands in the soil but that's my perspective i mean you know
00:07:34.800 that's why i think and so yeah for the same in the last few years i've been disconnecting myself
00:07:42.540 to the spiritual movement that in knowing body ecology because it's very good to talk and pray
00:07:48.280 and put the flags and strike very important but the most important thing is to really that if you
00:07:56.160 want to do an impact in this planet is start to grow your food it's not just for your health for
00:08:00.760 your body is also for the health of the land but it can be utopic what i'm saying i i really follow
00:08:07.260 you and i'm wondering too um the fact that you came back to your place of origin to sicily
00:08:16.500 to practice this spiritual the spirituality of being with the soil that you were born on
00:08:23.580 like that feels i don't want to say even more powerful but i think there is something to that
00:08:30.440 that you have your ancestors are from this place i mean even it was even interesting as you were
00:08:38.180 walking us through the the tombs it's like you probably were somehow connected to those people
00:08:44.820 and it gets right i mean so it's it's deep for you like this is that's why when i first asked
00:08:50.860 you know i was curious about the choice you made to come back to sicily and set down roots and have
00:08:55.620 family and grow food and to buy a farm or a home that you had to basically rebuild but in this
00:09:05.720 place where there's so much history and the hands of other people that built the stones um yeah i'm
00:09:13.300 just seeing this all for you and then also remembering you said a few days ago that you're
00:09:18.020 even a foreigner here because you're from saracusa right 25 kilometers and that just even makes you
00:09:24.720 like not from here i'm not for me i know i'm a foreigner for them yeah i mean many people say
00:09:31.940 carlo why are you coming back here and i was a challenge i was very scared of survival but i had
00:09:36.760 this trust if put your hands in the soil like the birds like every other animals you're gonna make
00:09:43.580 it because then you know it's the best bank you know wherever you put a seed she's just gonna
00:09:49.960 an issue you know and uh and also the the fact that when we arrived um we won't stay small
00:09:56.780 and so often people go in the land and they think big yeah um where you know all our neighbors
00:10:05.520 farmers say carlo why you're not playing your field why you're not planting you know thousands
00:10:09.800 of wheat seeds and and i would say i i don't think that you know making big farming will change my
00:10:16.740 life um because there's so much little profit on it that you need to have more land yeah and i don't
00:10:24.580 want to gain that story of more because i already got enough yeah and but how are you gonna do it
00:10:31.440 i mean i just think that i think if i can grow the food of my farm my family and then maybe find
00:10:37.400 something else i will survive and they were very worried for me how you're gonna make it and see
00:10:42.300 there's no work um but you need to invent your work sometime and then you know we have so much
00:10:48.480 beauty and that's why i concentrate on beauty on the beauty of our landscapes on the memory that
00:10:54.640 is in our landscapes and and i notice that people can't see things they don't know and so i found a
00:11:02.280 very big value on that and i was kind of uh when we arrived we said how are we gonna move and how
00:11:07.900 the world is moving and the world is moving that is the touching of nature so one day there is
00:11:13.060 going to be a need for people to reconnect with nature we need to have spaces where people can
00:11:17.840 come and see the flower of potatoes people can come and touch a strawberry growing in the field
00:11:22.700 because everything is becoming so artificially that so when i told this to my farm they said
00:11:28.320 You're crazy.
00:11:34.080 From Sicily, we traveled north into Tuscany.
00:11:37.300 Ariana walked me through the vineyards, and we spoke about harvest.
00:11:41.140 No year repeats itself, and each season arrives with its own conditions.
00:11:46.460 We came to Italy through the story of slow food,
00:11:49.380 but the conversations kept widening,
00:11:52.620 and somewhere along the way, food became a way of reading people's lives.
00:11:58.320 why we came to slow food was for the last decade we've been interviewing people about
00:12:06.020 relationship to the earth the predicament wherein we like you know we look at climate change or
00:12:11.760 the issues that humanity faces and we try to get to the root cause and with slow food um
00:12:18.780 when you're connected to your food you're connected to the land and you're connected to the water and
00:12:25.320 if you're connected to the land and the water, you
00:12:27.680 look out for it. You create
00:12:29.820 different types of relationships.
00:12:31.860 And so that's how we came to Slow Food.
00:12:34.700 And
00:12:34.900 we've, yeah, it's been really
00:12:37.660 interesting talking to
00:12:39.460 people in different regions
00:12:41.180 about their relationship with
00:12:43.700 Slow Food. And
00:12:44.840 it's been fascinating because
00:12:47.760 of course it's about food, but it's about
00:12:49.860 so much more than that.
00:12:51.600 I think it's a movement that represents
00:12:53.840 a certain way of working
00:12:55.880 I think a certain way
00:12:58.180 of thought
00:12:59.080 it's a connection between
00:13:01.800 makes it
00:13:03.980 more, makes the
00:13:06.020 outside world know how
00:13:07.820 certain people work at and how
00:13:10.040 and also
00:13:10.920 shares really what
00:13:13.160 products are about
00:13:15.340 they're not just a product but there's a whole
00:13:17.840 life behind them
00:13:18.900 It's so rare to
00:13:21.960 have families stay together and work together and live together and and grow up to do what they were
00:13:28.740 born into that's feels like a rare story these days it is but at the same time we all most of us
00:13:35.080 actually went away to appreciate what we had like i after being homeschooled until the age of 13
00:13:41.420 i was sent to boarding school in ireland so completely another thing but being away i missed
00:13:48.580 home so much and i initially i wanted to do something completely different but then when i
00:13:53.900 was 18 years old i decided to come back on the farm and i studied viticulture and eulogy because
00:14:00.420 i just wanted to be here i wanted to this place really gets under your skin and it's hard to go
00:14:07.120 away then what did you miss like was it the smells was it the just being on this mountaintop like
00:14:13.960 what was it for you for me it was actually the physical work and this um at the end of the day
00:14:21.660 when you when you work with animals you work in agriculture at the end of the day you're tired
00:14:26.800 you're finished but you feel your skin this you know tight from the wind but you have this
00:14:32.020 tiredness that's almost energetic you know it gives you more energy and and that's what i missed
00:14:39.560 and those deep sleeps that you get afterwards.
00:14:41.780 And also the sense of community.
00:14:46.720 I remember when I was little, in the evening, the door would always knock
00:14:51.900 and people would just come in and sit and eat all together.
00:14:55.820 And that was always a joyful thing.
00:14:58.980 And people from all over, you know, we had people all over the world come in.
00:15:02.920 Then some people stayed, some people went, and they all had experiences.
00:15:06.100 Like, modern humanity is climate, you know, control the temperature of your house, control everything you can.
00:15:12.280 Everything, AI, everything can be done for you.
00:15:15.920 Yes.
00:15:16.240 As the climate, it's something that's beyond.
00:15:20.500 In some ways, we can control it.
00:15:22.620 We are changing the climate and making it more challenging for us to do our job.
00:15:28.440 That absolutely, the climate change is a big factor right now by making it the more.
00:15:34.120 because of like droughts or heat extremes extremes you have extreme heat and then you have extreme
00:15:42.200 storms this year we had a very unusual harvest like so much rain in september wines that were
00:15:51.260 completely different from anything that i've had in the last 20 years but the general trend is wines
00:15:57.880 that are very suffer from the extreme temperatures and that poses other challenges that we have to
00:16:06.000 learn to work and do you feel like you learn to adapt every year I'm not maybe it doesn't get
00:16:12.020 easier but are you able to kind of be like tango with it because you're like you're accepting and
00:16:18.180 you're maybe kind of expecting there to be challenges in some ways at the same time it's
00:16:25.600 always heartbreaking yeah it's always heartbreaking or very satisfying and it's yes you do you do
00:16:32.140 learn yes but you also learn that there's no year like the other there's absolutely no year exactly
00:16:37.740 like the other it's always different and that you learn to accept that you're always going to learn
00:16:44.640 so much and that's what also you know every year when you finish a harvest you're like
00:16:48.280 what would I've done differently and then you want to do another harvest because you want to
00:16:53.460 apply what you learned in the past and it always goes on like this
00:16:58.860 there's a point in a conversation where people stop performing usually it happens later after
00:17:08.380 the walk after the meal after you've circled the same subject enough times that the polished
00:17:14.360 answer falls away you hear it in this series that authentic human relatability and that way
00:17:23.020 of working has become central to what we do at For the Wild. Through the studio, we create long
00:17:28.220 form audio and narrative projects with organizations, brands, and initiatives who care
00:17:33.480 about depth, place, and stories that stay with people long after they're heard. If you're building
00:17:39.020 something that wants that kind of care, reach out to us at connectatforthewild.world.
00:17:44.040 fun so this is the farm of corzano and on the lower horizon you see where those tin roofs are
00:17:59.000 where the hay bales are that's where our sheep stables are and on the right of that there's the
00:18:04.740 villa of paterno and that's where we were born and that's where we still live my mother lived
00:18:09.800 in a park, I live in a park, my sister
00:18:11.740 in a park.
00:18:13.320 And we all live together. And then there's the agriturismo
00:18:15.820 that's further down the hill.
00:18:17.920 There's a house there.
00:18:19.620 And all the land around it, as you can see,
00:18:21.580 it's pasture land, and we also have
00:18:23.540 3,500 olive trees.
00:18:27.860 Sangiovese tends to be
00:18:29.100 much more
00:18:31.140 on the floral side.
00:18:33.520 Not so powerful, concentrated
00:18:36.060 and
00:18:37.520 more elegant due to
00:18:39.560 it's the nature of the soil, that's alluvial soil, very rich in these round stones.
00:18:44.840 I'm assuming that the stones that built the structure we're looking at were from here.
00:18:50.360 Exactly, exactly. So often we go and clear the fields by collecting the round stones and there's
00:18:57.240 more and more and more and more. And the thing is, if you look at the stones here,
00:19:04.040 they're round and then you look the stones towards siena
00:19:08.180 they're square i was like oh their houses must be much more staples than ours you know
00:19:13.060 so i was getting in this thought around um the romanticization around italian food and wine and
00:19:26.980 and and the culture or the historical culture and i know many people come to italy for that
00:19:32.640 I came to Italy for the story of slow food, because of course it was created here. And as
00:19:38.020 we're walking up to the shop, you know, I see this, the sticker slow wine. Yes. Um, so I wonder
00:19:43.440 if, as we're closing, if you could talk to us about what slow wine is, like, what is your
00:19:50.480 connection to that? And do you feel that romantic connection to producing food in that way or wine
00:19:59.080 in that way so slow wine has always been a very important part of our of our farm in the sense
00:20:08.800 since the beginning when we started with the with the cheese and my brother used to go to the markets
00:20:15.640 a slow cheese and bra and um slow wine was always a big connection my sister also worked for slow
00:20:24.040 wine and the the news in the department also in bra in the news i think it's a movement that
00:20:33.040 connects people that work in a certain way the land and work the land with respect towards the
00:20:40.820 land the work the land with a vision to maintain the land and improve it even for the next
00:20:47.780 generation and I think that's what's really slow slow wine slow food is in the end it's
00:20:54.720 it's not looking to the land purely as a marketing tool or monetizing it but also
00:21:06.420 seeing it as a way of life as a way of you know as a support for your life and a support that
00:21:14.560 has to be respected and that I think that always for me that's what slow slow food slow wine the
00:21:21.540 slow food movement is in the end obviously the romanticity you know it is very romantic to
00:21:27.800 live on the land and work the land it is also back breaking and you know you can't take that
00:21:34.860 I do get sick in the winter to have to load the crates of woods up to my house I do get sick of
00:21:41.480 the mud and this house is old houses that you can't really heat and i do get sick of
00:21:48.280 the storms coming in the summer but you know it said you oh you wake up in the morning and you
00:21:54.860 have this beautiful sunrises and you see your children running around freely outside and that
00:22:00.740 makes it all worth it there's one thing that's really annoying though and that's the bureaucracy
00:22:06.780 bureaucracy is killing slow anything that's slow i think when i started i used to have to spend
00:22:18.080 maybe two hours a week in the office now if i don't spend at least an hour a day in the office
00:22:26.120 at least it's just controls controls controls and terrifying and make you feel like a criminal when
00:22:34.880 in the end you just want to work the land and make so that's something that's another chapter
00:22:39.960 but that's something that's really taking away really chopping at the romanticism behind
00:22:46.880 behind living on the land maybe it's the big corporate way of edging out people that are
00:22:56.760 doing things slowly exactly exactly but that's exactly we are also members of this organization
00:23:02.380 called FIVI, which is Federazione Italiana Vignaiole Independenti, which is all small
00:23:09.840 winemakers that grow their grapes, bottle their wine, and also sell their own wine.
00:23:17.420 And it's a group that formed itself because they cannot make these laws that apply to
00:23:26.980 the big, big, big wine industries and to the small wine industry.
00:23:30.120 We don't have the same resources.
00:23:31.540 We don't have the same capacities of structurising.
00:23:38.080 And so this movement was created and we hoped that people would,
00:23:44.300 the government really would understand that we have,
00:23:46.980 they have to understand that we have different objectives in many ways.
00:23:52.940 I hope that for my children it's not going to be so much bureaucracy
00:23:55.780 because it really takes away from the beauty of the farming.
00:24:01.540 Before leaving Sicily, I wanted to ask Carlo more about returning.
00:24:05.580 Part of what drew me here was curiosity about ancestry.
00:24:09.960 Living in the United States, and as someone shaped by a settler colonial history,
00:24:15.560 I was interested in Europeans who remained close to the places their families had known.
00:24:21.340 I wanted to understand what returning had meant for Carlo.
00:24:26.960 Where we come from is very important to understand where we're going, you know?
00:24:30.700 We don't know where we start.
00:24:33.460 We really don't understand where is the next destination.
00:24:36.900 And I was one of these children that was always going to grandfather
00:24:41.440 and asking questions, you know, and telling me stories, you know,
00:24:46.700 and reconnecting with all the knowledge that he had.
00:24:52.200 But, you know, like the United States,
00:24:54.100 we've been a place which has been dominated many times.
00:24:56.940 so we have this oppressor and oppressed you know this domination they come they erase and start
00:25:05.400 again so this is so for me coming back and reconnecting and seeing the value of the life
00:25:14.300 of my grandparents see how valuable is the the way of life today what i most of the thing i do today
00:25:22.760 it's an inspiration from my grandparents or jesse's grandparents so we really find that in
00:25:29.500 looking at grandparents life we found many answers to our life today and and so that's why i'm
00:25:36.780 involved today a lot is protecting this knowledge the knowledge of our grandparents the the way how
00:25:42.960 they decide to live this life and and so they were just focusing on the belly grandfather was
00:25:51.200 always saying and paradise is a full belly and so start from the belly and then slowly slowly go
00:25:59.460 back to you go up to your mind but you see that if the belly is not happy you know your mind is
00:26:04.380 not ready to receive information because if sometimes we are stuck on survival we can't
00:26:09.220 think about higher things the work we do it's conserving the words conserving the saying the
00:26:14.940 all the wisdom that stays in the phrase that have been passed from generation to generation like
00:26:20.980 you know right tool for the right job and stuff like that you know that simple phrase but they
00:26:28.660 they bring us back to the wisdom that is being kept alive with this um phrases of course we live
00:26:37.540 in a world where you know we are all a mix there is no such thing as we are we are this and we are
00:26:46.140 that you know we are all a mix of love stories i have some red beard red hair here you know and
00:26:53.940 and i look like arabs and um you know i go in africa and they think i'm africa i go to india
00:26:59.780 because we have all this mix but i think identity it's a very important identity of um you know
00:27:08.240 lineage as you said of indigenous tribe you know what happened there in in in the united states and
00:27:15.360 canada with the native americans and it's happened everywhere in the world they are not the first
00:27:22.100 they did it not the last because we are still there and and we are all living that
00:27:29.080 way to survive to this power that erase and then start new keeping the memory alive of
00:27:39.420 our previous generation is very important.
00:27:43.080 And I think in keeping alive this kind of knowledge,
00:27:45.800 you find some peace.
00:27:46.900 You're finding some peace
00:27:48.220 and you're finding that you keep alive our belonging.
00:27:56.300 Next time, we arrive at Dolce,
00:27:58.820 the final course of Fat of the Land.
00:28:01.740 Back in Sicily, the series closes around the long table
00:28:04.740 with friends, family, music, wine,
00:28:08.180 and the conversations that had been moving through this journey all along.
00:28:13.740 Until then, thanks for listening.
00:28:20.280 Thank you for listening to this episode of For the Wild's series, Fat of the Land.
00:28:26.580 We would like to thank the sponsors of the series, Ritchie and Tara Elia.
00:28:31.500 You can find more information about them in our show notes,
00:28:34.540 as well as a special For the Wild link
00:28:36.780 to order yourself some Ritchie.
00:28:40.040 For the Wild is produced by Ayana Young,
00:28:42.920 Victoria Pham, Erica Ekrem,
00:28:45.680 Julia Jackson, and Ori Bittle.
00:28:48.480 This series features music and sound design
00:28:50.740 created by the For the Wild studio.
00:28:53.700 You can join us on Patreon
00:28:55.340 for exclusive Fat of the Land Spotlight episodes
00:28:58.220 spanning from Mateo, a truffle hunter,
00:29:00.960 with his dog Wendy,
00:29:02.280 through to a visit to a cheese cave.
00:29:04.540 There's so much more of the Fat of the Land world to explore,
00:29:07.600 and you can join our community to also access Uncut Conversations
00:29:11.180 and our full archive and publishing library.
00:29:14.840 As For the Wild continues its transformation into the For the Wild studio,
00:29:19.260 we invite you to stay close as we explore new creative offerings
00:29:22.220 and ways of listening together.
00:29:24.040 To stay connected, follow us on Instagram
00:29:26.280 and subscribe to our newsletter for updates and upcoming releases.
00:29:30.220 Thank you for being with us, and as always, thank you for listening.
00:29:34.540 There's a string here.