After a fantastic evening last night, today was the last full day of Allison and Q's holiday with us - they told us they would like to spend it cycling (Q's request) and battling with the terraces (Allison's request, having had so much fun yesterday), so who were we to deny them their wishes on their last day?!
Helen made her exercise relatively short today as she knew what was in store for the rest of the day (and was already aching from yesterday's efforts on the terraces!), and I went down to where we've started accumulating firewood to make a start on rigging up a tarpaulin to keep the wood dry and to allow it to air-dry nice and quickly. We made some temporary arrangements last week with Helen's Mum and Dad's help - which has already gone a long way to drying what had been very wet wood when we we collected it last week - but as of next week, we should be making a proper start on cutting and splitting the wood to make it fire-ready, so we needed a more suitable space to store all of the wood in its various forms - seasoned, unseasoned, and split, ready for burning.
After rigging a line between the firs to take the rear of the tarpaulin, I hammered in the first of the steel fence posts to support the front. It was soon clear that two (one on each corner) would not be sufficient to hold the tarpaulin in a strong wind, so a shopping trip was in order.
Allison appeared from the apartment bright and early, and after a brief chat she went up to see Helen and make a start on the terraces while I made sure Q was happy with his itinerary for the day. After talking a look at a map of the valley, he decided he would cycle up to the top of the valley and then back around in a loop. I left him to make navigation notes, and set off in the car to do my shopping,
It was not a very exciting trip really: I filled the car with methane ready for the airport run tomorrow, went into Obi yet again to buy a couple more steel fence posts and a mouse-proof bin in which to store the goose feed, then went to the wood yard in Pescia to attempt to buy some wood shavings or sawdust that we could use as litter in the goose house. The geese have very cleverly learned not to use their hay bedding as a toilet, and instead use the other half of the house (which currently is bare wooden flooring). However, it was becoming all too evident that if we didn't use some form of protection, the floor would start to rot and need replacing - I had been advised via my chicken/geese forum that sawdust makes a good, absorbent litter.
I had stored the word for sawdust 'segatura' on my phone, and successfully asked for a bag. I was taken over to the large pile of bagged sawdust and talked at in Italian. I had no idea what possible questions I could be asked when buying a bag of sawdust - surely sawdust is sawdust, is sawdust. Apparently not! I gathered the guy was asking me what I wanted it for, so I told him it was for animals. He nodded, and then again wanted to know something. I apologised for my poor Italian, he smiled and said not to worry, he repeated it, and all I could make out was that he was saying something about chestnut sawdust being good outside and in the rain. I told him it was for indoor use, for our geese, but I didn't know the word for litter so I had to resort to saying that it was for inside the goose house on the bathroom floor and mimed something that caused much hilarity when I later repeated the mime and recounted the story to Helen and Allison over lunch. Regardless, I got my point across, and got my two large sacks of wood dust for €3 each.
On the way home, I filled up the jerry cans as Helen had gone through a fair bit of fuel while fighting with the brambles and I had nothing left for the strimmer. That done, and after a quick stop in Amanda's alimentari for a couple of basics (I say 'basics': bread, milk and limoncello), I headed for home.
When I got home it was getting on for lunch time - a whole morning had gone just like that. The girls had been very industrious while I had been away though, and created another enormous pile of bramble and acacia while uncovering yet more terracing. It's very exciting to see the shape of the old olive grove slowly revealing itself to us, and it can actually be quite addictive work - especially in weather like today's, clear blue skies, 21-22 degrees and a gentle breeze.
I went indoors to make a quinoa salad for lunch - a nice change to salami and cheese. It was a slight variation on a staple meal of ours and enjoyed so much by our guests that they said we should put the recipe on the blog, so here it is:
For 4 people
400-500g of Quinoa
6-8 tomatoes
bunch of parsley
two small tins or one large of beans (red, borlotti or canellini)
Pumpkin seeds
Ricotta salad cheese or feta 300-400g
Extra virgin olive oil (of course) and salt and pepper, all to taste
- Rinse the quinoa then add it to a pan with twice the volume of cold water (800-1000ml) and bring to the boil.
- Simmer gently until all the water has been absorbed and put into a large bowl to cool and mix in the olive oil.
- Wash and dice the tomatoes and add to the quinoa.
- Dry fry/toast the pumpkin seeds in a frying pan until popping and golden and add these too.
- Wash, chop and add the parsley.
- Rinse and add the canned beans.
- Dice and add the cheese.
- Then season to taste and add more oil if needed.
We ate it accompanied with slices of fresh Tuscan bread (cooked in a wood fired oven), drizzled with oil and sprinkled with sea salt as well as some gorgonzola and mortadella from Allison's fridge downstairs.
Q returned from his bike ride just as we were starting lunch, having cycled 18.6 miles and climbed a total of 2,246 feet in the process. He seemed to enjoy it more than yesterday's ride and plans to do the same loop twice tomorrow morning! It will be a while before I'm capable of that kind of riding, but I won't be happy until I can.
After a leisurely lunch, it was back to work. Helen suggested that maybe Allison and Q would like to do something 'fun' or 'relaxing' instead this afternoon, but Allison was having none of it, so while Helen and Allison climbed up to terrace numbers 7 and 8 (yes, 8) to continue lopping down the acacia (and accumulating more scratches for their collections in the process), Q and I put our energies into cleaning out the goose house and putting the sawdust down, then finished erecting the tarpaulin covering over the wood pile before moving the logs around underneath it. I hope it will stand up to the winds we get around here, but until the firs have been cut down I don't want to erect anything more permanent, so it only needs to get us through a winter.
By this time it was four o'clock - the time we had all agreed to call it a day, but when I looked up the terraces I could still see acacia trees being felled and thrown around into piles. I went up to admire the views from our newly exposed terraces and take some snaps for posterity, then we all headed down to call it a day, shower, clean up, write a blog post, and Helen had to do a little work.
We had arranged to meet a little later for a pre-dinner drink as we are to be taken out for dinner tonight by our guests to Da Sandrino near Sorana - or at least that is the plan. I called the restaurant earlier to book a table and spoke to a very old lady who seemed slightly hard of hearing, and what with that, combined with my head being bunged up with cold and my sketchy Italian, who knows where we'll end up - we'll find out later!
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