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The farming partnership employed a number of workers, this practice only
being tolerated, one presumes, because there was insufficient family labour to staff the
enterprise. In 1868, Luigi began an account book which recorded provisions sold to
employees from the family store:^^ maintained throughout his working life, until 1905,
it provides a vivid account of the life of the farm and hs workers. A number of men
were employed on a temporary basis for two to three seasons, helping with the grape
harvest, the fencing or general maintenance work. They were paid a relatively lowly
wage of about five shillings per week, much of this being paid in kind as provisions
from the Gervasoni store. Like similar arrangements operating within the Perini and
Righetti families, this peasant practice reflected their lack of currency and desire to be
independent of state regulations and taxes.
Unlike Vincenzo Perini, Luigi maintained all his business records in Italian:
words, such as buro (butter), formagio (cheese), zuchero (sugar) and tabaco
(tobacco), which dropped one or more of their consonants, indicating the influence of
his Lombard dialect. The word tabacho also appeared, a fiirther variation on standard
Italian. Months of the year, such as magio (March) and setembre (September) were
commonly written wdth a dialect influence and references made to luganege sausage, a
variety particular to Lombardy and Veneto (also known as luganighe^). Occasionally
the workers received items of clothing in place of wages, this listing again providing
variations from standard Italian, such as un capello (hat), spelt wdth only one 'p'. The
words una giumper (jumper), balenso (balance), maces (matches) and ciaffe (chaff)
are e\ddence of an English influence upon the language, resulting from continued
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