My parents moved to Italy, from Chicago, when I was just short of six years old. My father, then a talented but disenchanted architect, decided, in a radical but not incongruous twist, to learn how to build violins. And so it was. In their mid-thirties, with little money, no language, and no roots at their destination, my dad and my mom, a brilliant pianist loyal to my dad’s vision, courageously packed up my brother and me and moved us to Cremona, the home of Stradivari, setting us down on a completely different path from our predicted, normal trajectory. They scuttled the plan entirely, and I am grateful.

Life for me seems to begin more or less there. Soon thereafter my parents bought – and embarked on restoring – a fourteenth-century dilapidated watchtower and adjoining stalls in the Medieval town of Cetona, in southern Tuscany, population circa 2,000. Our home faced on one side onto Via Sobborgo, the outermost street circling the town; on the other our back terrazzo faced out to the picturesque textured landscape of Monte Cetona, with its vineyards, cypresses, olive groves, and orchards. It remains, to this day, one of the most beautiful settings in the town.

One of my first memories of Cetona is of being at the farmhouse of friends for the trebbiatura – the wheat harvest — watching this little kid, no older than nine, covered in thick dust, helping his father and his grandfather load armloads of freshly harvested wheat into an old smoky, sputtering red stationary combine parked in the middle of the aia, or courtyard. At that time, the wheat was cut by hand, with scythes, and gathered through the fields with tractors. The boy climbed quickly up and down the combine, feeding it, clearing the belts, and otherwise stuffing his hands in his pockets, watching. I was impressed. The boy was Stefano del Ticco, and a few awkward stares later we became lifelong friends. Now, forty or so years later, in the heat of summer, you can drive to Val d’Orcia and, if you slowly scan the expansive landscape of golden wheat before you, you will spot a cloud of dust. Below it is my dear friend Stefano coursing the hills in a huge barreling air-conditioned combine, carrying on what his family has done for centuries, in fields he knows like the veins on the backs of his hands.

It was not long after that first sighting of Stefano that I experienced my first grape harvest and stomping, my first olive picking, and then the first pig butchering, with all the imaginable squeals followed by sausage making. I grew up a lot like any other kid in a tiny Tuscan town with little going on: I went to Italian public schools; hung out in the piazza with my girlfriends (much more than my father would have liked); fell in love; and rode my motorino up and down the hills and mountains. I adored everything about where I lived: My friends, their families, and lunch at their houses; the slopes of the landscape I knew by heart; the lazy rhythms of the town; the boys and the heartbreak; the late-night gossip at the fountain; the smell of firewood in winter; the sound of the cicadas in summer; stealing figs from trees in August; afternoons eating gelato and panini with oil-packed tuna and capers; the jukebox at the Bar Sport with the dramatic Italian music– ah, yes, the bar.

Eventually, I graduated from the liceo (high school) in Montepulciano, and, prodded by my father, came to the States for college. I was so homesick and culture-shocked that I cried myself through much of it, but made it through that and grad school successfully – with many trips home — and then made Charleston, South Carolina my new home, mostly because its cobblestone streets reminded me a little of Italy.

I went on to do many things, most recently founding the Terra concept of thinking through food as a holistic way of connecting young adults to academic disciplines and contemporary issues using something fantastically fun and delicious. The concept taps into the education I got begrudgingly in the United States, but directly connects to the sentiments, colors, and sensibilities that were gifted me by my life in Italy, particularly those of people, land, and food. I am blessed that my soul and mind met so pointedly in the form of one idea.

I love Cetona viscerally to this day – in a way that, perhaps because I was not born there, is strangely enchanted and filled with gratitude. So it is a dream come true for me to able to unite two things I love so much and that are so naturally matched – the Terra program and model of learning, and the place where I grew up. (By the way, Stefano’s mom, Maria, makes some of the best pasta I know, and you will have the honor of meeting her!)

It is particularly poignant for me to be able to host Terra Summer Italia at the Abbazia di Spineto. I got married there in 1998 and had a fairytale wedding reception on the abbey’s emerald green lawn. Though my marriage has long been over, I am still filled with beautiful memories of that day, in no small part because of the exceptional beauty of the surroundings and the completeness I felt by being in my hometown, but also because of the uncommon warmth and kindness of the hosts, Marilisa Cuccia and Franco Tagliapietra, owners of Lo Spineto.

Marilisa and Franco believe in stewardship of the land and the responsibility that comes with good fortune. They have taken on their role with grace, diligence, and care. I hope you will read Marilisa’s moving account of their decision to buy and restore Lo Spineto. It is a testament to the spirit with which they have inhabited it and made use of it.

Lo Spineto and Terra Summer are synchronous in our willingness to take stock and charge of our place in the world. What we try to teach at Terra and what Marilisa and France do at Spineto are acts of love – love of place, of tradition, of learning, and love of the future and its potential for all people. We share a way of looking at the world generously, with good will.

Being able to offer the program at Lo Spineto is a personal privilege for me – and it is a privilege for any of us to be guests there. During our stay, Franco and Marilisa will grow to know you and will treat you like family. So will we.

Perhaps, yes, life does come full circle.

Warmly,

Sybil Fix
Founder & CEO
Terra Summer Italia