Women's Portraits

Caterina Cuscusa Carta

From a hard life to a creative one as an entrepreneur

Catherine is eighty years old. She is a widow, has good health and is still active. She overcomes life’s troubles, becoming an entrepreneur of a famous bakery that she still runs with six of her eight children, four grandchildren and an external worker.

Biographical elements

She was born in Soddì, a small village in Central Sardinia in a large family of seven children. Her childhood is poor and sacrificed. As a matter of fact, since she is the eldest daughter, she has to look after her younger brothers and sisters, when their parents go to the countryside to dig the soil, to sow and then harvest the wheat, to take care of the vineyard and look after farm animals which are source of livelihood for their family. When her mother is resting after the wearing work in the fields, Caterina takes her mother’s place in the same works. For this reason, she could not attend school beyond the 3 rd grade in the Primary School. When she is 20 years old, she gets married to a young man who takes care of buying and selling cows and calves, whom she met at a cattle fair. She moves to Sedilo, the native village of her husband. Life is very hard, because her husband has poor health and he may not always work. In the mean while, the family gets more and more big and new needs arise.

Baker and Cook

Caterina deals with the situation and looks for a permanent job. So she starts working in a small bakery in the village. She loves this job, but the wage is low and the working time is very tiring. She looks for another job and is hired as an assistant cook at the canteen on a worker yard. At night, Caterina weaves blankets, carpets and linen of various kinds to sell in order to supplement her meager wage at the canteen. However, the scent of bread like in a bakery remained in her heart: she would like to have one on her own! With the help of some workers of the yard, she builds an oven in the courtyard of her home. We are in the eighties and the oven, though small, allows her to bake good flour bread, much appreciated by clients who were not late in coming. Because she can not meet clients’ needs, Caterina thinks of a bigger oven. She retrieves a room for rent in the center of the town and begins producing the so called Spianate Sarde.

Hard times

Caterina has been through many difficult moments. The husband is not present in her life and in her children’s lives, rather, he is a brake and an impediment to her efforts that remain always limited. She must wrestle with her husband's family that, since from the beginning, did not accept her kindly, because she is poor and they accuse her of being able to do only children. In addition, for seventeen years, she must take care of an elderly uncle of her husband, widower and alone that she attends to the end. She often feels alone and it is a great suffering for her.

Bakery becomes a reality as dreamed.

When she becomes a widow, after a period of pain and bewilderment, she begins regaining her energies and starts defining better what has always been her dream: a large bakery. Thanks to a small inheritance and a bank loan, involving also her children in this project, she manages to set up a real family business for baking the Spianate Sarde.

Her present

Today, Caterina lives for her wonderful family and for her company. She lives with Costanzo and Anna Maria, two of her eight children, as the others are married, and is satisfied with her life. Four years ago she fully realizes her wish: the birth of the "Carta Brothers Bakery" where she works with her six children (who the company is now headed), four grandchildren and an external worker. The product is always Sardinian bread, but they produce not only Spianatine but also Zicchi Turrau, Pane Carasau and the delicious Kantos. All the bread is exported to the rest of Italy, Germany, America and even in faraway Australia.

Caterina gets up every morning at dawn and walks about two miles to get to the bakery where she works helping her children and encouraging them to do even better. She gives suggestions, offers advice and gives orders. She often goes to find her sick sister in Soddì. Other times she goes to visit an elder sister in law hospitalized in a nursing home of a neighboring village. She lives in hope that her children will be always in harmony and continue the business even when she dies.

Anna Rossini, Maria Agnese Molinas