Mainly about the beans

Many of you will have read about, seen pictures and watched news footage this week of the part of central Italy devastated by a strong earth quake that happened in the early hours of Wednesday morning, measuring more than 6.0 on the moment magnitude scale. We were touched by the number of messages we received from friends and family from all over the world on Wednesday morning, checking up on us after the terrible news. Fortunately for us, the affected area is around 3-4 hours away, and we didn't feel a thing (although there are reports of people having felt the quake and its after shocks as close to us as Florence). However, we are deeply saddened by the tragic events and, living here, it is only too easy to imagine the chaos, terror and devastation in the places affected. The villages most badly affected by the terramoto were little medieval mountain villages very similar to those in our valley, the usual populations of which had been swelled by summer visitors - grandchildren spending some of their summer holidays with grandparents, families from nearby cities spending time in their holiday homes, and foreign visitors exploring a lesser-known part of Italy for their summer vacations. One of the worst hit towns, Amatrice, was due to hold its annual festa this weekend celebrating the town's famous pasta dish, pasta amatriciana - all things that have become so familiar to us, making the news all so much more vivid and tragic.

Italy is one of the most tectonically active countries in Europe, with two major fault lines running through the country. Thankfully, our area is one of the more stable and while quakes can occasionally be felt in our locality, the area is generally considered to be lower risk than many.

Of course, donation centres were soon set up to send aid to the affected towns, and on Friday afternoon we took 8 packs of bottled water to the Circolo (the village club) in Pietrabuona where the guy who runs it, Emanuele, had set up a water collection point on behalf of the local AVIS group (the volunteer-run association that coordinates blood donation and collection) in advance of the Protezione Civile di Pescia taking a trip to the affected area with emergency supplies. We learned that Emanuele himself had been just 30km away from the epicentre of the quake, having been visiting his wife's family, and had woken to see the room shaking for more than two minutes. It's not hard to understand why he was so keen to do something to help.

We now know that close to 300 people were killed by the quake, well over 300 were injured, and 2,500 have been left homeless. An article here contains links and information on various ways in which anyone wishing to help - either in Italy or in the rest of the world - can do so.


Our week was fairly quiet, although we finished the weekend with a visit to one of our own local festas, the Sorana bean festa.

Sorana beans are small, white, thin-skinned cannellini-type beans. They have been famous for centuries and sought after for their delicate flavour, for the fact that they are easy to digest, rich in proteins and that they don't lose their nutritional properties during cooking. The Sorana bean is considered so special that it is designated as an IGP (Protected Geographic Indication) food - in the same way as champagne can only come from the Champagne region of France, stilton cheese can only be labelled as such if it comes from one of three counties of England; roquefort cheese can only come from Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, and so on. Sorana beans can only be grown in a small area along the river in the vicinity of the village of Sorana - apparently the same beans grown elsewhere are just not as good, it being both the very special Sorana soil and the particular microclimate that make all the difference.

For the festa we'd arranged to meet up with our friends Paul & Kathy, so after picking them up we headed to Sandrino's bar just outside the village for a quick spritz to get into the party spirit before heading up the hill into the village where the main event was happening. Once in the village we ran into our mutual friend Carolyn and had a short catch up with her, as well as meeting and having a good chat with Paul & Kathy's friend and neighbour Kelly for the first time. We even won a pot plant on a game of 'corks' - pick 10 different corks, each of which has a number hidden on the bottom, and depending on the total scored when the numbers are all added together, you win a prize... We won the 'top' prize:

Ironically, by the time we all decided we were hungry enough to tuck into the local speciality, they had actually run out of the main white bean dish! After standing in the queue for a while wondering if any more plates of beans were going to arrive, we decided we would make do with a different, tomato-based bean dish, and we hungrily tucked into sausage and beans, and very tasty grilled salt cod.

We had a great time at the lively little event, and agreed that this was definitely one of the festas that we would make a point to come back to again next year.

Table football tournament outside the Circolo.

A stunning spot. The village festas are usually fund-raisers, often for the parochial society or else for the local misericordia - the volunteer-run ambulance service.

The party atmosphere continued long into the night.

I'll leave you with a small pictorial round-up of the rest of the week:

One day's worth of tomato crop sorted.

Black figs - tiny but oh so sweet and delicious. Picked from the small tree that we only planted 17 months ago.

We started work on clearing a section of terracing beneath the car park. This is going to be designated as a composting area, with several more composting stations yet to be constructed. Despite already having a three-bin composting station above the house, and the chickens making compost and the worms making compost, we still need more. This is the start of project compost-in-earnest.

Last week's guests had only booked to stay for three nights but ended up staying for a whole week because they liked it so much! They even left us a gift.

Reggie enjoyed splashing about in the river on Saturday morning - we found a lovely quiet, cool, shady spot where he splashed around while we sat on the rocks being entertained by his antics.

The boys.