Event report: Baratto/Sbaratto Inauguration Party - Part 2 - The Party

Upon awakening the next day we were greeted by an unbelievably clear sky and warm coastal breezes which instilled in us a sense of relaxed confidence and assurance that this day would turn out to be very joyous indeed. Although our prepared schedule had stated that the day would begin with a group tour of the property at 10AM, we soon realized that everything progresses at a much slower rate on Sunday mornings, especially in Sicily. The slow start to the day gave us ample time to enjoy breakfast.....

.....setup the cheerful donation box which Manuela had crafted for us.....

.....provide some paper and pens so that visitors could write down their suggestions for the Casa di l'Amuri project.....

.....and talk about Aureliano's bright yellow pant suspenders:

Our first guests began to show up around 11AM:

Soon enough, more guests began to arrive at a fairly steady rate, and so a Plan B was implemented where each of the crew members began to take turns guiding new groups of arrivals around the property. Manuela took the lead.....

.... and led our first group of the day. The tours which were given to our guests throughout the day included explanations of the main areas of interest on the property, the techniques used and philosophy behind our implemented developments as well as our planned future developments for selected areas:

Meanwhile, the items recovered from the oven room began to receive some attention from our friends:

Our friends Vanila and Giuseppe arrived to display some very interesting photo-artwork on the walls of our main room.

 Vanila works professionally with Slow Food cooking, however we could see from her photographs that she also has a very strong passion for her artwork. The displayed pieces seemed to take on a 3 dimensional existence and almost jumped from the paper to reach out to the viewer.

Soon thereafter, more and more guests began to arrive:

Family of Manuela

Giacinto, Peppe Minniti and Peppe Pavone.

Our friends Titziana and Alfio together with several volunteers who work
on their property.

The whole terrace began to get pretty packed.....

.....which was just as well, since Aureliano had just finished
cooking up a grand lunch.

Sometime around late afternoon, everyone began to make their way to our main room.....

.....to view a presentation by Aureliano, which covered the progress made in the house since the inception of the Casa di l'Amuri project, as well as some stories from Aureliano's travels abroad:

Logo courtesy of Riccardo Gangemi.

The captivating and in-depth presentation gave viewers the chance to see and experience for themselves how much transformation can take place in a short amount of time when a formidable team constantly dedicates their time and energy on a single project. A portion of the presentation covered Aureliano's travels abroad, specifically his first-hand experiences with discovering Permaculture in Australia. Topics such as raised garden bed construction and compost-making were also covered in the presentation, after which some time was given to our guests to mingle amongst themselves. Later in the day, a very special guest of honor appeared on our doorstep:

Giovanni Caloria!

We met the famous Italian pianist Giovanni Caloria at a San Martino house party a few days before our event, where upon hearing of our mission he was instantly captivated and cheerfully agreed on coming to Via Grande to perform on the day of our event. Giovanni came with a vast repertoire of pieces (and a monster of a keyboard) which were happily sung along to, and he delighted us with his joyous playing style all through the night:

In the meantime, Peppe Minniti and Pavone roasted some
chestnuts on a stove which we bought earlier from a
second-hand shop to help keep us warm in the coming winter.

Both Manuela with "Storia di un Grandi Amuri" and Aurelio with his original story took to the stage to recite some rather touching and unique pieces of writing to our audience.....

.....after which the music resumed and rejoined with our songs and dances, leading the festivities on well through to the late evening.

All in all, the event was celebrated as being even more successful than we had previously thought it could be, and although our schedule of the day was not really falling into place, events unraveled in an organic fashion leading everyone in having a fantastic time. We would like to personally extend our deepest thanks and gratitude to all those who attended and helped in co-creating an upbeat and vigorous event which will linger on in our memories as a day which brought with it unprecedented joy and truly honored the spirit of Casa di l'Amuri.

 Thank you all.