The Honest Truth

Find out why we can’t stop talking about a certain woman…

“Allora, hai sognato di Frieda? (So, did you dream of Frieda?)” Elvira asks Stefano when he walks onto the field of olive trees.

I fondled 'em

“Non,” Stefano says, embarrassed.

Elvira, 50-something, owns an agritourism in Tuscany, and every fall harvests her 350 trees to make olive oil. Stefano, a 40-year old Italian from a nearby city and I are helping her and her husband, Sergio, with the job.

Stefano—a manboy with a mop of curly grey hair who perpetually wears sweatpants— is practically a professional WWOOFER (willing worker on organic farms). During the summers he works on a beach in Rimini, his northern Italy hometown. In the fall and winter,  he travels to farms around the country, living off unemployment insurance.

That’s how he met Frieda. He worked on her farm for a couple of days last fall.

Map of Tuscany

When we take the day off to visit Bibbona, an oceanside town just less than an hour from Donoratico, where Elvira lives, Stefano says he knows someone in the area.

*****

When we pull up to Frieda’s, no one’s in sight. All we see are rows of her crop: Indian cannabis. Her spot is beautiful. She’s surrounded by bright grassy hills that overlook the ocean and a nearby island, Isola D’Elba.

“Stefanooooooo,” she almost sings, coming toward him with open arms. She looks over

Frieda's crops

50,with the scrunched up face of a bulldog, and her blonde hair peeks out from a red bandana.

She tells Stefano to show us around while she says bye to her guest and grabs something for us to drink.

Frieda lives “en plein air”,  in a series of rooms shielded by bamboo walls. Her dining room is a table and chairs surrounded by bamboo shoots. Five metres away is her workspace, a big desk and small cot also surrounded by bamboo, with a tarp laid over the sticks on the ceiling to keep out rain.

Her desk is littered with empty bottles and papers. A shelf behind displays glass bottles with bright coloured green and red liquors.  A cellphone’s charging on the solar panel outside.

Elvira and Sergio are impressed.

This is Frieda’s business: she sells liquors and teas made from her cannabis and leads workshops in the Etruscan lifestyle, (a culture in the Tuscan region that spanned 8^th to 3^rd century B.C., when the Romans took over).

We walk past the kitchen, where pots and pans hang on a rack above a little counter and sink, to her bedroom, which has the same bamboo walls as her office, a cot in the middle and a little desk to the side. A few feet away is a pit with a showerhead coming out of the ground, also protected by bamboo shoots. Frieda built it all herself.

We move to the spot with the best view, where Frieda’s set up a plastic table and a medley of mismatched chairs. “Qui e il fino del mondo (This is the edge of the world),” says Elvira, soaking up the view.

Frieda brings us some cake and white wine, and she, Elvira and Sergio start talking about life on farms. For once, Sergio—a friendly looking man with a big smile a snoopy-esque nose—is asking more questions than talking about himself.

Frieda is Dutch, and moved to this spot 16 years ago after it “choose her” on a trip she took to Italy. During the winters she moves to Amsterdam where she gives powerpoint presentations on the Etruscan lifestyle and “reconnects” with the world.

When we leave, Sergio and Frieda exchange numbers while Stefano and I shove our pockets full of weed.

For the next two days, Frieda is everywhere.

Elivra–a feisty pipsqueak of a woman who’s been fending for herself since her parents died when she was a teen–greets Stefano every morning by asking if he dreamt of Frieda.

Sergio’s developed a repetitive monologue about her in which he begins by saying her name

Can you see the Snoppy in Sergio?

and smiling, continues with a criticism that though her place is beautiful, the average person wouldn’t want to spend more than a few days, and ends with though she doesn’t look like much, she’s very intelligent.

Sergio- who has the ability to  easily switch from laughing to speaking intensely to yelling, oblivious to his change in tone-decides when we’re done the olive harvest, he’s inviting Frieda over for dinner.

The next day an Italian couple in their 20’s named Francesca and Fabio arrive to help us finish. The combination of having four more hands, and it being a weak year for the olive trees, means we finish in two more days.

We sit around the lunch table trying to decide what to do with the afternoon.

Sergio suggests we show Francesca and Fabio Frieda’s. I look at Stefano, and we nod nonchalantly. They’ve been hearing about her for two days nonstop, and may as well see the place for themselves.

When we pull up to Frieda’s, she’s showing someone the start of a house she’s building in classic Etruscan style. She wears the same loose shirt with no bra tucked into high pants, but her hair is styled under a straw hat, and she’s wearing makeup. Stefano says she must be expecting male company.

“Stefano, sei ritornato!! (Stefano, you’ve come back!!!)” she says. “Vai a montrare l’ambiente un po’ agli altri (Go show the ambiance to the others).”

Stefano gives the tour, made different only by the two rows of cannabis leaves drying on crates outside of Frieda’s bedroom.

When Frieda joins us, she’s not all wine and cake. She asks if we’d mind giving her a hand, picking up acorns outside her room that attract wild boars, and harvesting the cannabis. Stefano tries to tell her it’s our day off and we have plans, but Frieda insists we can spare half an hour.

Stefano and I follow Frieda to the field with baskets under our arms, leaving Fabio and Francesca to pick the acorns.

As we trudge through the tall, dry plants, Frieda encourages us to pick whichever leaves “feel right.” The leaves range from a dark purple to dark green and look like exotic flowers. When our baskets are filled, we dump the cannabis on the crates, and head towards the view.

Frieda rewards us with sparkling water infused with cannabis, and some of her homemade

Sergio, Frieda, Francesca and Fabio soak it in

liquor, a bright green substance made with alcohol, cannabis and honey. She lines up plastic shot glasses, and we say “Salute (Cheers).”

It’s smooth, and I buy a bottle without thinking of how I’m going to get it across the border.

That night at dinner, the conversation turns to Frieda. Sergio contributes his usual opinion, followed up by “E vero, Stefano? (Am I right Stefano?)”

But Francesca and Fabio are still under the spell, and gush about their time at her farm.

“Penso che sognero anch’Io della Frieda stasera (I think I’ll also dream of Frieda tonight” says Francesca before going to bed.

Sergio never does invite Frieda for dinner, but it doesn’t really matter. It feels like she’s been here for days: morning, noon and especially night.