Another week upon us and another change in guests

After the wine last night, it was a slower start for everyone this morning except for Helen, who got up at 6.20am to exercise only to find that her back was in too much pain to do so - she thinks the moving of piles of acacia yesterday afternoon with the pitchfork must have worsened an already slightly sore back, so she had no other choice but to let the geese out then make an early start to work today.

I went down to the apartment at 9am to find the boys still in bed. Rob was awake reading the news while Lee was only semi-conscious. My brief visit was enough to rouse them both though, and after showers they joined me on the patio for breakfast in the gradually warming morning sun.

Al fresco breakfast at THIS time of year!?

After breakfast, the boys decided to get off and get the last 350km of their journey to Rome done, ready to start rigging for the event later this afternoon, so after a quick five-point turn in the van, they set off south for what should have been a four-hour drive. It had been a very brief visit indeed, but there is talk of them returning in the spring on a working visit in exchange for board and lodgings - which would be great, so we'll make sure we remind them of that closer to the time and look forward to seeing them both for a longer visit.

Plenty of room for a five-point turn.

Pointing Rome-wards now.

After the boys had departed I made a start on a very late blog post from the previous day, only to be interrupted about 15 minutes later by a knock at the door. Helen and I looked at each other and assumed Rob and Lee must have forgotten something - but when I got up and looked through the glass in the door it wasn't their faces I saw but Andrea the geometra with his assistant! This took me aback,  as we hadn't been expecting them, but it wasn't a problem - they had come to measure the house in order to make a precise calculation of 20% of its footprint so that he can draw and submit plans for the small extension we're hoping to build next year.

While they toured around the house measuring, I did the turnaround in the apartment - today we were expecting the arrival of Noah, our first 'HelpXer', who will be spending the next 12 days in the apartment. Fortunately, it was really only a linen swap that was needed, as very little mess had been made by Lee and Rob's brief visit.

As I finished in the apartment and shut the door, Andrea was finishing his measurements and wanted to talk to me. He said that he would draw up the plans soon and email them to us, and then once we were happy, he would submit them immediately to the authorities in Florence. After that, we could go to see Andrea to talk over the smaller details like door and window positions.

He then said that at some point a man from Florence would need to visit to see the house with the plans, but that before that there were three important things that needed addressing beforehand so that Mr Florence wouldn't see them. First was the new canopy that I have put up over the door to the apartment to protect both the door and the apartment floor from excessive rainwater - which would need to be taken down. Andrea said that after Mr Florence had been, I could put it back up again but it mustn't be here for his visit (Andrea will call to let me know exactly when the visit will be so that I can remove it). It seems a little silly for small plastic canopy, but this is Italy and another taste of the country's famous bureaucracy - besides, it's only four bolts and will take no time at all.

The second thing that needs addressing is a little less straightforward: the man cave and attached wood shed 'aren't regulation'. I wasn't quite clear what that meant initially, but I definitely understood that they MUST be dismantled for the visit - but that they too could be re-constructed after the visit. Andrea apologized, but I knew it wasn't his fault. It seems that what we had been told by the previous owners was not true - we had been told that the man cave/wood shed were allowed to be here, but that they were just a little bigger than they were meant to be - seems that that was a bit more than sugar coating it! This came as quite a blow, but it didn't faze me too much - the re-building of these structures was already on our to-do list anyway (to make the storage more secure), so I just saw it as a bringing the job forward and changing priorities. The job won't be pleasant to live through, as most of the contents of the two storage sheds will have to live inside the house until they can be reconstructed (which might be some time after they've been taken down). If there is a silver lining to cloud number two, it's that we found this out now and not after building a new man cave and wood shed - that would have been VERY hard to swallow.

Cloud number 3, the hardest to swallow by some way, was that the goose house needed planning permission too!! So it also CANNOT be there for the visit from Mr Florence. It seems ridiculous that on a farm you cannot have a structure that is effectively a small shed without planning permission. Anyway, there was no point arguing - Andrea is most definitely on our side, and we feel that if there was a fight to win he'd do it on our behalf, so it seems that we have no choice but to move the goose house. This has several ramifications: the only suitable place to 'hide' it is further around the terraces amongst the olive trees where it can't be seen from the house. This will mean a lot more terrace clearing, the dismantling and re-building of the house, erecting of yet more fencing and the moving of the geese (and once they are around at that side of the house they will no longer have visibility of comings and goings, so their guard-geese potential will be wasted - if they ever learn to honk, that is). At least we have the option I suppose, as I'm not sure what the alternative would be - not build the extension?

After dropping his ever increasing bombshells, Andrea and his assistant left us to our day. Helen and I had our lunch outside and talked things over. After lunch, we walked up the terraces to try to come up with a plan. The visit of Mr Florence could be as soon as December, so it looks like our ever-changing list of priorities has changed once again. We need to put some more thought into this little problem: do we leave the geese there permanently once moved, or move them (and their house) back again? If we leave them, do we get a dog to act as a guard dog instead? How big an area do we fence off? Big enough for chickens too, or do we put the chickens where the geese currently are? We might be due a delivery of our first chickens in the next few weeks! If we have chickens amongst the olive trees it will be impossible to cover the 'roof' of the area because of the olive trees, meaning an easier dinner for Mr Fox. Do we attempt free range poultry during the day and do away with the fencing? (Probably not based on how hard it is to get the geese in the house as it stands, never mind chickens!)

Time to ponder quickly ran out, as I needed to go and collect Noah from the station at 2.30pm so I hopped in the car, leaving Helen to do a little more office work. When I arrived at the station, I saw a tall young lad standing looking at his watch but no one else around. I thought I vaguely recognised him from his HelpX profile photo, but if it was him, he was early - I wound the window down and called him and the reply came with an American accent, it was indeed young Noah!

We put his bags into the car and drove home, where Helen introduced herself and the three of us sat and had coffee and some of Helen's home-made ginger biscuits. We chatted for an hour or so, telling Noah a bit more about us and our set-up here, and finding out a bit more about him, then had a walk up the terraces, discussed working arrangements and left him to relax in the apartment for a few hours before dinner. He seems very happy with the apartment - it must certainly be a step up from the hostel dorm he's been sharing with 9 other travellers in Rome for the last five days.

Noah seems a genuinely nice and polite guy and, having come from Colorado, spent a lot of time in the Seattle area and Alaska, has a love of mountains and the outdoors, so we think he'll settle straight in. I must say we're relieved as we've never invited a complete stranger into our home to stay before and with an agreed 12-day stay it's important to get along! He seems genuinely thrilled to be in Italy, it's his first time outside of the US and is keen to learn and experience new things before going back to college and his engineering degree.

We hope he'll enjoy his time here on our hillside, and that it'll be a productive couple of weeks for us all!