PIETRO'S BOOK: THE STORY OF A TUSCAN PEASANT

Hardworking, pragmatic, humorous, Pietro is a typical Tuscan peasant. He worked the land with hoe and plough from his earliest youth. Born, he explains, "in the Middle Ages", he has lived to see the world he knew and loved pass into history. Here, Jenny Bawtree provides an account of that peasant culture which is now dying.Pietro grew up during the Fascist regime on a farm not far from Florence. As sharecroppers under often unscrupulous landowners, the peasants lived in conditions of extreme poverty and were thus well equipped to face the rigours of World War II. War or no war, work on the land went on. We learn how Pietro made wine and olive oil, planted the wheat by hand and made baskets and ladders from chestnut wood - skills that are swiftly being lost as Pietro's generation passes on. Storytelling, music and poetry enlivened their days, all seasoned with a salty humour.