“Cascine” offer a glimpse of traditional rural life in northern Italy

I lived in a small town in Brianza for nearly 15 years, a beautiful area that stretches from northern Milan up to Lake Como. My neighbors were locals whose families had lived in the area all their lives, and they frequently made remarks about how different Brianza must be for me, coming from the US. Of course, the vast majority of Italians have no real concept of what Ohio is like, it’s not the version of America they typically see in films, but they were always surprised when I told them Brianza was just like home to me.

I grew up on a small family farm in north-central Ohio in the midst of rolling, green hills, the landscape marked by rectangular fields with rows and rows of crops, very similar to the photo below. We made hay in the summers, and lived far from anything that could really be called a town. All of our neighbors were farmers. My grandparents used to tell us stories about going to barn-raisings and how a “shivaree” party showed up on their wedding night, everyone banging pots and pans.

Brianza’s roots lie in a rural, agricultural-based economy that felt very familiar to me, but over the time I lived there, I learned more about the differences between farming communities in my two homes. While rural Ohio is dotted with red barns and white farmhouses, the hills of Brianza are filled with “cascine a corte“, or simply “cascine“, farmsteads that first appeared in the Middle Ages and were the hub of an agrarian lifestyle that lasted until the early 1900s. They were the most prevalent beginning from the 1750s, with the rise of capitalism, as they were perfect microcosms demonstrating the rationalization of production.

A “cascina” is a large quadrangular structure that functions as the center of living and production activities for the farm. There were substantial variations in size, smaller ones in more remote areas would have been home to just 4-6 families, while the largest might have had as many as 25. A typical “cascina” in the Milan area would have accommodated between 10-20 families (around 100 inhabitants) farming an area of around 100-120 acres.

The central courtyard, sometimes used as a barnyard, was enclosed by all of the buildings necessary for running the farm. The earliest farmsteads were usually closed on all four sides to protect the inhabitants from local bandits, particularly at night. But as time moved on and the countryside became safer, they were designed as L-shaped or U-shaped, making it easier to move equipment and animals. In addition to homes for the farmworkers, the two-story, shingled buildings typically included stables, a granary, a dairy for producing cheese, a well, ovens for bread baking, mills for grinding the grain into flour, and workshops for artisans. Larger farmsteads even had their own chapel, school, sometimes a small pub, providing the families with everything they would need.

The landowner, who usually lived in the city, far from the grueling labor of agrarian life, would lease the land to a tenant farmer, known as a “fittavolo”, for a period of 9-12 years. The larger the estate, the more likely that the tenant farmer also had a home outside the “cascina”. In these cases, the tenant farmer enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle and would, in turn, hire a “fattore”, or manager, who organized the daily activities, earning about twice the income of the other workers.

The workers and residents of the cascina were typically provided a salary and given a one-year contract that expired on Saint Martin’s Day (November 11th), considered the end of the fall harvest. These workers included “campari”, who were responsible for managing the irrigation ditches and canals, “bergamini“, who took care of the animals and the milking, while still others handled the crops, aided by temporary workers known as “braccianti”. (As a side note, the latter derives from the word “braccio” meaning “arm”, so while we refer to temporary help in English as extra “hands”, in Italian, they hire extra “arms”.) Larger farmsteads would also have several artisans, such as blacksmiths, saddle makers, carpenters, and bricklayers. While the manager would have slightly more comfortable lodgings, the farmworkers often had one room on the ground floor with a stove/ fireplace that opened onto the central courtyard, and an upstairs room for sleeping.

Beginning in the 1900s, people began moving to villages and cities, as they were more comfortable and offered better employment opportunities. Many “cascine” were abandoned, while others were simply absorbed into the growing urban areas. For example, the two airports of Milan, Linate and Malpensa, were constructed on former farmsteads, Malpensa even taking its name from the local “cascina” that was torn down to accommodate its runways.

However, in recent years, farmsteads are beginning to be reclaimed and repurposed. Some have been turned into housing units that offer a rustic charm, others into business ventures, often linked to initiatives like 0-km food production and “agri-tourism”. I recently attended a conference in the southern part of Milan at Cascina Cuccagna, at one time a farmstead on the outskirts of the city, it has been completely refurbished into a meeting venue that offers cultural activities as well as a restaurant, with its own garden outside.

Clearly, farming in Ohio had an entirely different structure from the specialization of labor that was seen in the “cascine” of northern Italy. However, there was much in common as well: the back-breaking labor, the uncertainty associated with early frost or too much rain, but also the bonds with the land and seasons, and the communities that formed around them.

If you are interested in reading more articles about Italian language and culture, check out my blog at marymanning.net/blog.

Photo credits: photo 2 Roy Luck/Flickr, photo 3 Ufficio Turistico Torre de Picenardi, and photo 4 Valle dei Monaci