On UNISG study trips, you learn what nobody teaches.

Teaching takes many forms. Sometimes, standing in the cold wind in the middle of a field can communicate more than an entire book.

The topic of study that day was rice. We were guests of the Cascina La Colombara in the Po river basin, close to Vercelli, the headquarters of Rondolino ScA, a producer of fine carnaroli rice. It was a gray, drizzly day. Under the wide featureless sky, fields stretched in every direction, bristling with straw stubble.

Our lecture room for the day was the old cowshed. Not much had been changed, but the long narrow room was empty now and neatly swept. We sat on foldable wooden chairs as the company director, Piero Rondolino, gave us an extensive introduction into the world of rice, its history, the principal varieties, technical and sensory properties, and production methods. We did a tour of the production facilities, and tasted rice in various manifestations: boiled, as risotto, in a salad, and even in ice cream. In the afternoon, we visited other parts of the old farmhouse complex. By chance as well as the efforts of its owner, the buildings of the Cascina La Colombara are intact and, for the most part, kept in their original state. Only one corner has been modernized to house the offices.

Cascina is the name for a traditional farmhouse complex, typical of the Po region, that includes not only stables and barns, but also workshops and the private quarters of the farm workers, most of whom would have lived on the premises. In past, the cascina was a world unto itself, a nearly self-sufficient economic entity. Often, there was also a church, a shop, and a school for the children.

The vast stables housed hundreds of cattle, fed with rice straw and cereals, which were needed to till, transport, and fertilize. A blacksmithery, carpenter’s workshop, and saddlery would work constantly to keep the great machine that was the cascina running smoothly. At a time when labor was cheap and machinery scarce, the engine that drove the cascina was made of human sweat and muscle. At its heyday, this farmhouse complex was the center of activity for up to 300 people.

Today, in addition to rice production facilities, the Cascina La Colombara also houses a small museum that captures some of  that history. An initiative led by Mario Donato, who spent his childhood at the cascina, it presents a cultural history of the cascina’s summer workers—the mundine—women who came every year, mostly from the South, to provide the extra hands necessary to weed and tend to the rice paddies. The women were housed in a separate building in the middle of the fields, two storeys of brick with regular windows and a central entrance. Upstairs were the dormitories they shared for weeks at a time, up to 30 to a room. For each, a cot with a straw mattress, a shelf overhead for the suitcase, and a few hooks on the wall. In the corner, a small stove, large enough to fix a cup of coffee in the morning.

Mr. Donato has worked with great care and attention to detail to re-create the room as he remembers it from his childhood. The shelves have suitcases on them. Clothes hang on hooks and hangers and lie on beds, nylon and rayon with industrial lace, headscarves, woollen wraps. A few stockings, a few magazines showing Hollywood stars from the 1950s.

It was breezy as we walked over to the house of the mundine. Hands were deeply stuffed in pockets, hoods pulled over heads, and scarves wrapped a little tighter. Outside the main entrance, Mr. Donato explained to us the women’s working day. How they rose at sunrise and stopped working at sunset, standing all day in water, pulling up the weeds that would choke the young rice plants. Rows of bent backs, working their way steadily across the flooded fields.

Today, the same land that once required the continuous labor of several families and additional help during the summer season is worked with heavy machines, driven by two men. Seeing the dormitory of the mundine, the re-created workshops, and the collection of farmhouse tools in the shed conveyed to us very quickly the history and socio-economic context of rice production.

As we walked back across the muddy road to the main buildings, Mr. Donato apologized: “I know you have come here to learn about rice, but I thought this might also be of interest.”