“The year nineteen twenty-one on the twenty-fifth day of September …” so says the “instrument” with which my great-grandfather Giovanni Spasari – pictured here with his wife and his grandchildren – bought “for the price paid of thirty-five thousand lire two rustic funds called Pantano and Castellace in the countryside of Badolato ”.
This man – building contractor, but with a passion for the countryside –

had thought of the farm as a quiet place to spend with his wife – Antonietta Ciciarelli, formerly a woman teacher in the elementary school of Badolato – their only daughter Franceschina – married to the elementary teacher Salvatore Cosenza – and the brood of grandchildren (no less than eight), the long and sunny days of the Calabrian summers away from the “bustle” and heat of the town.