Anyway, the start of the week that seems so long ago was another of our community days, of sorts. Our friends Paul and Kathy had decided to pick the olives from their roughly 100 trees and had booked a slot for a pressing on Tuesday afternoon. They had started picking on the Friday and had been joined by different combinations of friends each day. Monday was our turn - along with David & Sarah, Donatella, our mutual friend Susan, and Paul & Kathy's friend from the UK, Simon, who had flown over to help with the harvest.
We arrived bright and early on Monday and raring to go - the plan was to pick Monday and then finish the picking on Tuesday morning before going to the press in the afternoon. However, it seemed the plans had underestimated the 'dream team' combination of labour over the course of Monday morning and in the preceding days, and by 1pm on Monday all trees had been picked!
Picking involved a combination of efforts: Paul & Kathy's Italian neighbours had loaned them a specialised olive-picking tool, which effectively consists of a pair of plastic rakes which gently vibrate on the end of a long pole, nudging the olives gently from the branches. This was used to dislodge the olives from the higher parts of the trees. As the tallest of the bunch, Stuart got the job of being operator of the 'olive tickler' (not its official name) for the day. The rest of us spent the morning picking from the lower branches by hand, collecting up olives from the nets to fill the olive cassettes (crates), and moving the nets around from tree to tree.
We took Reggie with us, knowing that he would be happy in the company of everyone present and that he is safely fenced in at Paul & Kathy's house. I'd be lying if I said he was helpful, but he had a wail of a time running around the terraces, chasing the nets when we tried to pick them up to move them (no, not very helpful) and rolling around on the grass. I think it must almost have made up for the horrible weekend he'd just had.
We were all rewarded for our work (I'd like to say 'hard work' but it was a beautiful day and a lovely way to spend the morning, so it wasn't really such a tough gig) with the most delicious lunch laid on by Kathy, including cheese, bread, dips, an amazing persimmon and squash soup, a delicious mushroom pie and coffee muffins.
After a long, leisurely lunch - lovely food with lovely people - we gathered our things, put a tired Reggie in the car and headed home to light the fire and start to put some heat into our house in preparation for the first night of the season forecast to be below zero.
Indeed, we woke up on Tuesday morning to the first hard frost of the season, with buckets of rainwater frozen solid outside. It perhaps wasn't the best of days for Stuart to make a hole to the outside world in the wall of the spare bedroom - or maybe it was, as the reason for making the hole in the wall was to finish re-routing the flue of the little wood burner in the office so that we could finally have it back in action and get some real warmth into that cold little back room.
 |
| Spot the hole at the top of the wall. |
 |
| Yes, that's the (freezing cold) outside world. |
Of course, by the time the hole had been made, the required parts bought form Frateschi, and the flue put in position, there wasn't actually enough time to light the fire, but the following day promised the first firing up of the wood burner since its last disastrous attempt over two years ago.
The reason there wasn't time to light the fire was that we needed to head for Castelvecchio as we had agreed to help transport Paul & Kathy's olives to the olive mill. We arrived at their house to find their car already loaded and Paul, Kathy and Simon ready to leave, so we quickly loaded the final cassettes of olives into the back of our car and headed off, with Paul in the lead so that we could follow him to the mill. We were glad we were following him as we'd have never managed to find it if left to our own devices! The mill was in Massa e Cozzile, on the outskirts of Montecatini. In fact, the mill was on a hillside in an amazing spot overlooking the Montecatini plains.
On arrival we quickly unloaded the cassettes of olives, pouring all the olives into the mill's large crates, which the mill operators were quick to tip into the olive washer to start the whole pressing process. We watched the olives bounce up the conveyor belt then shake their way through the wash before going to the masher, from where a very purple-looking mash was splurted out into the large churning chamber marked with Paul & Kathy's name (well, almost - Edwards is, after all, not a very common name in Italy, so 'Edwars' it was).
 |
| 'Edwars' |
From then, it was a long wait while the olive mixture churned for over an hour at between 28 and 30C. We were glad for the relative warmth of the machinery as darkness fell outside and the temperature dipped close to freezing once again - the large open doors of the mill making us all glad of our coats.
Finally, after a long two hours, came the part we'd all been waiting for and Paul & Kathy were given the nod to say that their oil was about to come out so got in position with their canister. After a nail-biting few minutes during which it seemed as if there had been a machinery failure and the mill operator couldn't seem to fathom why the oil wasn't flowing... the oil finally started to flow and we were all mesmerised by the liquid (green) gold.
The yield of the harvest (weight of oil vs weight of olives) was 10.5% - not spectacular, but given the warm (until Tuesday!) weather conditions and the ongoing olive fly problem in this area, more than respectable.
In celebration of their first ever olive harvest and pressing, Paul & Kathy treated us all to an aperitivo on the way home in Franco's bar in Pescia. Of course one spritz led to another, and we finally came home to a cold, cold house midway through the evening.
Wednesday morning - with another hard frost on the ground - saw Stuart heading up to Vellano to put in a morning's work with David. Before he left, however... he lit the wood burner for me in the office. What a treat!! I spent the entire morning feeling toasty at my desk - a novelty to put it mildly, especially when it was cold and frosty outside!
Stuart came home at lunchtime only to make something of a gruesome and sickening discovery. He went to check on the chickens and could only find 6. To backtrack a little: a few days after we got our three new chickens, we noticed that one was lame - she wasn't putting any weight on one leg, but she was eating healthily and seemed to be getting by. Fast forward to last weekend, and on Sunday, we opened up the temporary gate that had been segregating the new chickens from the old ones for the first time. As expected, we witnessed some squabbling (chickens don't take kindly to interlopers), but all seemed OK. However, it seems we hadn't actually paid enough attention, and the gruesome discovery Stuart made was the seventh chicken, the lame one, half hidden underneath the roots of the olive tree and in an extremely bad way, having been pecked by the other chickens. I'll save you the worst of the details, but it made us both feel sick that we'd 'allowed' such brutality to happen, and the kindest thing was for Stuart to dispatch the bird and put her out of her misery.
He came back to the house feeling a bit wobbly after having done the deed, but happy in his mind that he had done the right thing. Once he'd got over the hardest bit, he dedicated the next couple of hours to making sure the bird wouldn't go to waste, plucking and butchering it, and putting it in the fridge for later.
Thankfully we had a much cheerier evening to take our minds of the events of the day: we'd been invited for dinner at David and Sarah's, along with Donatella. David and Sarah had cooked up an amazing spread of curry dishes using one of their spice boxes from their spicery subscription. We had a lovely evening, the food was delicious and the company great - it's always such a pleasure to spend time with these people.
Thursday was another busy day - Stuart started by repositioning all the posts (along with adding some new ones) for the electric fence around the veg garden, this time marking out the all-new, enlarged area which will eventually all be filled with veg beds. Before long, Mara and Franco turned up for Franco to administer to our bee hive the third and final weekly treatment against the varroa mite. They didn't hang around for long this time though, as they were on their way up to see Franco's parents in Vellano and had their dog, Snoopy, in the car with them.
Next, Stuart turned his attention to blocking up the hole in the wall of the spare room. Yes, we had spent two of the coldest days of the year so far with a gaping hole in the wall of the spare room! Reaching the hole to fill it proved to be something of a problem - we didn't have a pair of ladders long enough to reach - so Stuart improvised and tied the ladders to a scaffold platform. I'm glad I was busily working at my computer and couldn't see him in such a precarious position!
Thursday afternoon was our weekly Italian lesson with Samantha, during which I managed to quiz her in Italian about Sunday's impending Italian referendum. I find it frustrating that I can have relatively meaningful conversations in Italian when I feel at ease, yet put me in the supermarket and I freeze if someone asks me where the carrots are!
Thursday evening was another long Italian lesson for Stuart - for me, it was time to relax by the fire and catch up on some easy-watching TV, but Stuart had been invited to his second poker night with Franco, Fabio and friends. I found it mildly amusing and rather touching that each of the participants was tasked with bringing something to eat - Franco was to make a pudding, Massimo would make a salad, Stuart offered to make a pasta sauce, Fabio would bring the steaks, Damiano would prepare some vegetables... can you imagine a boys' night in the UK where each of the boys made a dish?! Under my guidance, Stuart made our spicy lentil ragu to take as his offering, and headed off at around 7pm to catch his lift with Franco.
It turns out that Damiano (who was hosting the night this time) lives somewhere near to Fucecchio - a 30-minute or so's drive away. Anyway, I can't tell you much about the night other than the fact that Stuart enjoyed it, the boys all liked his lentil ragu, nobody drank very much, and he finally got home at about 12.45am.
After a late night for both of us on Thursday (Reggie and I had stayed up waiting for Stuart to come home), Friday morning was a bit of a slow start, but while I plugged away at my office work, Stuart headed out to the veg garden to do some more organising. After lunch we made the weekly trip to the supermarket as well as calling in at the post office to send a letter to ENEL, the electricity company, by registered post. We previously faxed the same letter - asking them to come and cut down the three trees that remain standing on the lower terraces between two electricity cables - but it seems it was received by the wrong department, so this time we decided to send it by recorded delivery. We paid €6.50 for the privilege!
After the shopping was done and unpacked, I went back to my desk for an hour or so, before going out to find Stuart getting all chainsaw-happy again on the lower terraces. He claimed he was 'tidying' - and indeed, I can see that the hazel trees he has cut were in the way, but the result was a lot of branches cascaded all over the recently cleared terraces in a haphazard manner!
Saturday was a deliberately slow day. We started the day with our group Italian lesson with David, Sarah and our teacher Johnny. It was the first time in a while that we'd all had the lesson together, and it was nice to have the group together again.
After our lesson and a quick run through the woods with Reggie, we called in at Amanda's shop to collect our weekly bread and homework, before having lunch and a leisurely afternoon: making chicken soup from our casualty, putting up Christmas lights, doing our homework, starting some Christmas shopping, finishing making our mirto liqueur from dried berries and recipes given to us by Donatella, and sampling our mirto liqueur (and finding it makes a very nice cocktail when added to prosecco).
After Saturday's slow, leisurely pace, Sunday was always planned to be a more active day. Nevertheless, we had a slow start with a very welcome lie-in, made porridge for breakfast, and pondered what to devote our attentions to. After taking Reggie for a run around the woods and having an early lunch (of chicken soup, eaten under the pergola in the lovely warmth of the winter sunshine), we headed up the terraces to do some more clearing work up there.
We've said before that we are making inroads on previously undiscovered (by us, and indeed by anyone for many tens of years) territory and that the temptation to keep pushing on further is enormous. Today, the temptation got the better of us - we are hoping that we might host a community day at some point over the next month or so where we can get some extra hands to help us rake, burn and clear up the detritus left from clearing, so with that in the backs of our minds we decided to push on. So, while I took the hedge trimmers and cleared another two half-terraces upwards, Stuart got happy with the chainsaw again and cut more ash, hazel and other trees as well as taking the secateurs to painstakingly free some olive trees from a web of bramble.
We worked for a good couple of hours before coming in covered in cuts and scratches but feeling satisfied after a long, packed, but amazingly fast-moving week!
No comments:
Post a Comment