by Anthony Faiola

If this is country life, then sign this city boy up!

After a breakfast that would make Nigella Lawson swoon — leftover tiramisu and a bubbling glass of prosecco — I'm out the door of my rented farmhouse on an expansive olive estate and heading down a dirt path in the foothills of the Apennines. Theoretically, I'm here to work the fields at Umbria's annual olive harvest. But as I find myself reporting for duty in the genteel gardens of a Renaissance palace, I'm the first to concede that "working the fields" in this case is meant in the loosest possible sense.

Still, this is no ordinary olive farm, and Umbria — a region in Italy's heartland — is no ordinary place. My little band of agriculturally challenged cohorts and I have come to this estate for a literal taste of "agriturismo," or farm tourism, in a part of Italy that some derisively dub the poor man's Tuscany.

Read more

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/