The Basso Family – A Dedicated Hard-working Family from Noale, Veneto

Towards the end of the 1920s, Angelo Basso, a door-to-door seller of brooms, obtained the farm tenancy and crop sharing of La Faula on behalf of five of his six sons. In 1930 Mario, Amedeo, Piero, Gelindo and Giovanni moved to La Faula.

The Basso Family

Their agricultural production consisted of fruit, wine, cereals and milk. The brothers planted peach trees as well as apple and cherry trees (some still survive) in orchards. On any mild slope on the hill, vineyards were planted. Due to the lack of tractors and front-end loaders, all vineyards – called “Roncs” in the Friulian idiom – were not terraced, or only partly terraced by hand using shovels and picks. Each brother wore out a shovel and a scythe each year. Each ronc had a different name according to its position or morphology, such as Alt (high), Bas (low), Scalon (stepped), de Bresane (at the mist-net trap). Wine production was around 1,500 litres. On the hilltop barley and wheat were sown, as well as in the field beside the house (today the swimming pool and car park) and what is now the neighbour’s field behind the car park. Surprisingly, the field in front of the house did not belong to the property. There was a vegetable garden where it is today and, in summer, water- and musk-melons were grown. Cows, kept in the stall comprising the back of the house, were milked and the milk taken to the local dairy (latteria turnaria) to be turned into cheese. At ploughing time, the cows were also used to pull the plough. Pigs were kept in the pig sty (“ciot” in Friulian), which is today’s Yellow Bungalow. Silk worms were bred in large numbers on piled-up grates in the granary of La Faula (today’s second floor, Rooms 6 and 6A); their eggs were initially kept in the warmth of the kitchen. Chickens and other fowl were also kept. Hay was stored above the cow stall on the first floor (today’s Rooms 1–5).

An Old Friulian Cow Stall

Typical Small Old Friulian Vineyard

Harvesting Maize Ears by Hand

Grape Harvesting

Even if milk, cereals and fruit were produced at La Faula, the rent paid to the Counts comprised 50% of the wine produced plus cash, which was obtained from selling the other produce. Family members were not allowed to eat any fruit unless it was partly rotten or wormy. On one occasion, a child pulling a downhill cart of apples lost control; the apples rolled down to the pergola in front of the house and one of the brothers, who witnessed the scene, removed his belt and flogged the child.

View of the Orchards during the Bassos' years

Of the five brothers, three were married and had children. Although Angelo, the broom-seller father, never came to La Faula, Maria, his wife, did and was in charge of the cooking. The wives of three brothers worked in the fields (not in the cow stall) and did all the washing. Clothes were first rinsed in the Malina River and subsequently washed with ash in wooden vats. All the boys slept together in today’s Room 7, the girls in another; each set of parents had their own bedroom. Drinking water came from a spring at the bottom of a vineyard, while water for the cows and washing came from the spring that today fills the lake on the golf course. The bridge over the Malina was only built in the late 1960s; before that there was a ford and a wooden swing bridge. Electricity arrived only after the Second World War. Schooling: 1st–3rd classes in Ravosa, 4th in Magredis, and the 5th (last compulsory) in Savorgnano; the children walked there in wooden clogs along dirt roads, bringing their own wood for heating in winter.

Women Washing in the Malina River at Attimis

The Old School in Ravosa

The Old Dance Hall in Ravosa

Before television, the family gathered in the cow stall at night. Stalls were the warmest places on farms in winter; people even bathed there in tubs. Mario, the eldest brother, would read novels aloud to visiting villagers, often pausing to translate Italian words into Friulian. He had a literary passion and kept diaries of life at La Faula, sadly discarded after his death. Singing was another form of entertainment; while working in the vineyards, family members sang to improve their skills. Renzo, Mario’s eldest son, still had a good tenor voice in his seventies. Some brothers played instruments—Piero the guitar—which animated Sunday dances under the pergola. Ravosa’s dance hall, part of the Mangilli Marquises’ villa complex, was renowned and drew people from other villages to dance to the harmonia. Simple jokes were appreciated too—like going to Mass in a suit and tie but wearing wooden clogs.

Miranda Basso, in 2006, recounting the history of the Basso Family

Miranda Basso, aged 18, with her little sister Graziella, aged 7, lived at La Faula in 1946.

Miranda Basso on her Wedding Day at La Faula (07.05.1949), with husband Rino Clochiatti, father Mario and mother-in-law Vigjie

During the Second World War, Giovanni was imprisoned by the Germans while his brother Piero was later imprisoned by the Americans. The others, except Mario, also went to war. La Faula was regularly visited by Cossack cavalry, who stole hay for their horses; on one occasion a Cossack picked up two-year-old Loredana, daughter of Gelindo, for a ride—under her mother’s tear-swollen eyes. Osovani partisans (Italian Republicans) came down from Porzùs to steal food and were chased away by the Bassos, who feared reprisals from the Germans and Garibaldini partisans (Communists) headquartered in nearby Bellazoia. As families grew, some moved out, notably Gelindo’s family to Ravosa, renting what later became the closed Trattoria ai Pavoni.

At the end of the war, the brothers left La Faula one by one seeking new opportunities: Amedeo first for another share-cropping tenancy, then Gelindo, then Pietro, then Giovanni; Mario, the eldest, stayed with his family until 1958. According to Miranda Basso—whom we warmly thank for recounting this history—Mario would have liked to purchase the property, then priced at 30,000 Italian Lire, but lacked the funds. Three of Mario’s children were born at La Faula; tragically, one small girl died after falling into a large pot of boiling water used for scalding the slaughtered pigs (in front of what is now the bungalows’ boiler room). In 1958 the Bassos left and the property was rented to three more tenants.

Of the subsequent tenants, the first—another sharecropper family—stayed briefly. The second was the family of an administrator of the psychiatric hospital in Udine (surname Colautti) who rented the property as a residence. While living at La Faula they developed the idea of subdividing the property into housing lots: commercially enticing in the early boom years of Italian industrialisation, but geologically ill-conceived for a clay hill that would have caused the houses to sink or slide towards the river.

Plan of La Faula Subdivided

Subdividing of La Faula