Tuscan Bean and Farro Soup

Almost a year after I returned from ten days in Tuscany with an overweight suitcase bursting with jars of honey and slabs of chocolate, I'm nearing the end of my stock of Italian-bought foodstuffs. Today I cooked the last of my borlotti beans with half a cup of my dwindling supply of farro wheat to make a final batch of bean and farro soup. I ate this soup in Lucca on a cold, windy day with quickly alternating rain and sun (there had been hail the day before in Siena). It was close to three in the afternoon, and the sun was shining when I began my late lunch in the plastic chairs set up in front of a cheap little eatery that seemed to sell mostly sandwiches and cake. The rain began to fall only minutes after my soup arrived, and I had to dash indoors with it while the waitress dashed out to pull all the place settings off the patio tables. The thick soup was the perfect fortification for such a day, and I've made it (or my own version of it) on several particularly cold weekends this winter, using genuine beans, wheat, and olive oil from Lucca.
It's really the oil that elevates this tasty but simple dish into the realms ordinarily reserved for nectar and ambrosia. I still have about half a bottle of my organic, d.o.p., cold-extract, extra virgin, made-with-olives-of-Lucca olive oil, and rather than cooking with it, I save it to pour over this soup and the occasional bean or vegetable dish, where its power is instantly apparent. Before tasting this oil, I was skeptical every time I heard or read about how you should buy oil you'd be happy to drink straight - I had sampled a lot of fancy oils at the Whole Foods tasting counter, and they all just seemed like olive oil to me. Well, I'm here today to testify that there truly is a difference. This oil from the olives of Lucca is sweet-smelling, peppery, and transformative. It makes whatever it's poured on taste amazing, but in a way that's not assertively olive-oily, so you wonder, "What is it that makes it so delicious?" until you realize it's the olive oil. I think this is why Americans come back from Italy raving about the food there, which is all liberally doused in what must be similarly good-quality oil.
Epicurious has a recipe for Tuscan Bean and Farro soup, which is where I got approximate proportions and cooking times, but the truth is I don't remember there being any vegetables at all (or any onion or herbal flavorings) in the soup I ate in Lucca. This is peasant food, and shouldn't get too fancy. It's an ideal recipe for winging it - I don't think it would be possible to mess up, unless you burned it. What I do is cook a pot of beans (soak overnight, then bring to a boil, then turn to the lowest possible heat and cook half an hour, then add salt and cook for another half an hour). I take the beans out, leaving their cooking liquid simmering, and add farro in the same proportion as I had dried beans (for example, if I cooked 1/2 cup of dried beans, I'd add 1/2 cup of farro - this, by the way, makes two hearty servings). Bring it to a boil, then turn down to low. Meanwhile, mash the beans roughly with a fork so that they're about half pulverized, but some are still whole, and add them back into the pot. Keep simmering the soup for at least 1/2 hour until the farro is cooked through - it should be chewy but shouldn't loose its shape - and the liquid has cooked down to your desired consistency. I like it thick and sludgy, like oatmeal, so I end up cooking it for about 45 minutes. Then dish it up, make a little well in the top with the back of a spoon, and pour on the olive oil. Serve with another good peasant food, like cavolo, and imagine yourself in a stone courtyard in Lucca, the sky half brilliant with sunshine and half shadowed by threatening clouds. Buon appetito!