Italian farmer on tiny volcanic island inundated with offers after appealing for volunteer helpers

Luigi Mazza has a smallholding on the island of Lipari off the coast of Sicily

An Italian farmer who offered free board and lodging for volunteers willing to work on his homestead on an idyllic volcanic island in the Mediterranean has been inundated with more than 3,000 requests.

Luigi Mazza, 35, said the extraordinary level of interest in his offer was motivated by people’s experience of the coronavirus pandemic and their fear that more lockdowns are looming.

He put out an appeal on Facebook for people to help him out on the small farm he owns on the island of Lipari, part of the Aeolian Islands archipelago off the coast of Sicily, from November to February.

He grows fruit and vegetables for the local market, keeps chickens and donkeys, and makes natural soap out of olive oil and donkey milk.

Volunteers will be given their own room with a wood-burning stove, a terrace, a hammock and views of the sea, including the distant island of Stromboli, an active volcano which frequently spews lava, creating spectacular nighttime pyrotechnics.

A room with a view — it even has a hammock

He will provide food, wine and wi-fi but there is no salary. The island is so far south that the weather is usually good late into the year. “You can go for a swim until early December,” he said.

Interest in the job has come from as far afield as the US and Japan, as well as France, Spain and the UK.

“It’s amazing the interest there has been – I’ve had messages on Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram and by email. It’s been a bit chaotic,” he told The Telegraph.

Many of the applicants had poignant stories relating to the pandemic, including a young man from Bergamo, one of Italy’s worst-hit cities, who became so anxious about the return of the virus that he decided to tour Europe on a bicycle by himself.

“He lost everything, he told me, and now suffers from angst and claustrophobia. He doesn’t want to go back to Bergamo.”

Luigi Mazza raises donkeys and produces fruit, vegetables and olive oil on the island of Lipari

There was a Japanese couple who got stuck in Europe in March because of flight restrictions and then decided to stay on, traveling the continent and earning their keep with casual farm work.

“A lot of the applications are linked to people’s anxiety about the pandemic. People who feel they cannot bear to be cooped up in their apartment again if there is a new lockdown,” Mr Mazza told The Telegraph.

“And I think people are also reflecting on their relationship with city living, with the environment, their relationship towards animals and food. All those things have come together.”

The bad news for anyone considering relocating to a life on the land on Lipari is that Mr Mazza has just chosen candidates for the job – an Italian couple, who will work for the first few weeks, and then a French couple from Marseilles.

Italy is now recording around 5,000 new cases each day, sharply up from the 100 to 200 that were registered when the virus appeared to be under control for a few weeks in the summer.

There is growing alarm that the country is already experiencing a second wave of the pandemic, which has so far killed 36,000 people.