What does Podere Dadino mean?
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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. ("Mezzo" means "half" - hence "mezzadria.) 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, and with animals and hay on the ground floor. 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.
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