What does Podere Dadino mean?
|
|
It means “the Dadino farm plot” or “Dadino farm.” Until about the late 1950s and 1960s, this area (Arezzo and Siena) was farmed under the mezzadria – or sharecropping – system. For centuries, large landowners divided their property into family-sized plots, each of which was worked by a sharecropping family required to give the landowner half of all crops grown every year and to contribute half the capital. Podere means “plot” of land – as in small farm plot. The stone and brick houses, like ours, that you see throughout Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche, were the homes of sharecropping families – though without swimming pool, heat, plumbing, or running water. The mezzadria system slowly died out after WWII, as fewer and fewer wanted the back-breaking life of a sharecropper, and more and more young people moved away from rural areas and found other work.
|
|
|
