The peasant leader

- Hi father! How was your day? - Giorgia said, she was a little girl but she had to work since her father was ill.

-It was fantastic, sweetie, you know you don’t have to worry about me! - Her father, Francesco Sirocchi, said.

- Did you take your meds?-

- Of course I did, do you want me to help you cooking dinner?-

- Oh, no, father, you should rest and you don’t have to get up, don’t worry for dinner, there’ll be my special soup.

So she went to the kitchen and while she was making her soup, she heard someone knocking at the door…

- I’m coming!-

- Good morning Miss Sirocchi, we wanted to inform you that you are fired.-

- Oh, but this is not possible! Please come in and let’s talk about it. - So the men came in and started to talk.

- So..You are telling me that the boss wants to fire me just because I’m a woman?-

- I’m sorry, Miss Sirocchi, but it’s exactly like that.-

- What’s happening, Giorgia? - Her father asked from the other room.

- Nothing, father, don’t worry! The soup is almost ready! Would you like to have dinner with us? - She kindly asked the men.

- Oh, not really, thank you so much, but we wouldn’t like to bother you in any way.-

- You don’t bother me, sirs!-

- So..Let’s see if what we’ve heard about your soup is the truth. - They replied.

Once dinner had finished, lights went down.

The day after, as the cock crowed, Giorgia had to get up, even if she had lost her work and in a few time she would lose her house, since it was part of a farm.

While she was doing her laundry, she had an idea. She went to the garden and sent the cow to a corner where the grass was tall, so that it would eat it and she would make less efforts to clean the soil.

When she went to the market everybody was looking at her and saying: -Poor Giorgia!- Or: - What a pity! And even her father is ill!- Someone else was saying: -How she will get away with it? She will lose even her house, poor Giorgia!-

But she didn’t care about those voices and went directly to the shop where every kind of seed was sold. She took seeds of really strange and rare plants, that no one had never seen before in the village.

When she went back home, the cow had eaten almost all the tall grass, with the help of rabbits. Giorgia sent there the pigs too. The pigs would have dig and made holes to plant the seeds she had bought. She went back home and carried on doing houseworks. At about 3 p.m. she looked out the window and had a look at the animal’s job. They had made it! So she started to plant the seeds. Every day she was watering the garden with the help of a donkey until the fruits grew up and she went to the market with her cart to sell them.

She was really worried because in a week she would have to pay the taxes and she didn’t have money… So she risked to lose her house! At the market, ladies were curious and were looking at these new products, but since they hadn’t seen anything like that before, they weren’t buying them.

The day after she tried again to sell her products and so she did for the rest of the week. When the new week came, she talked to the peasants’ leader and told him that she would pay the taxes and so keep the house.

One year later her business was huge, her plants were adored when… all the plants became sick.

She was desperate, but her father had become healthy.

With the few money left, she re-planted everything in a soil which was situated in the south, with more light and heat. Even the peasants who worked with her were not paid totally, but just enough to feed their families, since things were going bad…

The company was almost failing.

-Good morning, miss Sirocchi, do you know that a person came to visit you from London?-

-No, I didn’t know sir, how long has he been waiting here?-

-He’s here since yesterday night. -

-And do you know where is him now?-

- I think he’s in the saloon- , Mrs Trolli said.

So Giorgia went immediately to the saloon.

At night, Giorgia was back home with a new, big business from London. In this way she became, even if she was a ‘woman’, the leader of the peasants in her village.