Hay cart, Po Valley countryside

At the start of the 20th century more than half the Italian population still worked the land; in the Lomellina and the Pavia area the share was higher than the national average, and the day-labourer — with no land of his own — was the dominant social figure.

Haymaking was one of the few 'long-season' jobs of Po Valley farm labourers: three cuts a year (May, July, September), paid by the day and often by piece-rate, with a working day stretching from before dawn to dark.

In 1936 over 1.2 million working horses were active in Italy, most of them on farms: mass mechanisation of the Po Valley countryside would only arrive after 1955, with the Vanoni Plan and the first low-cost tractors.

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means not being alone, knowing that in the people, the plants, the soil there is something of you, that even when you are not there it stays and waits for you.