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CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily (AP) — They come in the middle of the night and are gone by morning. But without fail, they leave their calling cards: Pronged footprints and gashes in the ground where they've dug with natural abandon. This nocturnal troublemaker in mountainous northern Sicily is the "cinghiale," the wild pig, a bane to those who tend a garden. When I came to live with my wife and two boys on a small abandoned farm that we bought here in the Madonie Mountains, the locals quickly instilled a fear of the cinghiale in me. According to m...
CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily (AP) — Spring is ending and summer approaches. The grass is now long, finished growing. For us, it's time to scythe. This is a beautiful, and slightly sad, time of year for my wife and me, when the fields of grass and flowers on our 3 acres of farmland in the mountains of northern Sicily must be cut. We would prefer to let them live on: There are deep pink French honeysuckles, purple thistles, yellow dandelions, pale pink and white acanthus, and wispy and lazy grasses. But that's not prudent in the dry Mediterranean s...
