My mother’s town, Santa Caterina dello Ionio, was perched on top of a mountain. Every day at 5 in the morning I begged my aunts to take me with them to my grandfather’s ortho (orchard) that he had called ‘Giangi’, which was a good half hour walk downhill towards the gorge …

We meet people who came to their farms long before we got out of bed. The aroma of baked bread made my stomach growl and I could see the tiny flames glowing within their brick and stone ovens as we continued down the path.

I knew we had reached nonno’s ortho when I saw the creek, more like a stream, winding gently across the bottom of his property. One of my aunts lifted large rocks to block the flow of the water and create a pool where she would wash our clothes, slamming them against the rocks before drying them on a branch of the nearby giant fig tree that appeared to be hundreds of years old.

We were undergoing a revitalization, and when I looked up I saw the most wonderful garden built on steps into the mountainside. My other aunt took me to the water tank that nonno had built after returning from Philadelphia, USA, around 1908. It was called ‘u concu’. All he had to do was lift a wooden panel and the water began to flow down all the specially designed paths to irrigate everything. I could feel the spirit of my nonno everywhere, and although I had never met my grandparents, I felt them in my heart, as if they were sending me their love. They were humble, hardworking souls who had endured a lot during WWII and accepted their lot in life. I filled my eyes with tears.

Our first bite was at 11 a.m. when the church, a couple hundred meters above us, rang its bells to help farmers keep time. Watches were a luxury that no one could afford.

After helping to collect some figs, also fica d’India (tunas) and more, we sat in the little hut, the unmade stone house, but I was told it was originally built centuries ago. The brunch consisted of aromatic slices of Calabrese salami, hard cheese (Pecorino I think), and delicious crispy Calabrese bread and a pitcher of fresh mountain dew water from nonno’s concu … I was in heaven and felt what Eden must have been like . This is my Calabria as I remember it … This is my experience in Calabria 1964 … Memories of a little boy in Giangi, my Garden of Eden …