Not so fantastic Mr Fox

And in the blink of an eye another fortnight has passed. We are still experiencing cold overnight temperatures (and indeed, as I write this, there is a promise of very cold daytime temperatures, arctic overnight temperatures, and even snow in the 10-day period to come), but there have been some definite spring-time scents in the air, there are all manner of different little bursts of colour dotted around the hillsides in the form of early spring flowers, and the days are lengthening, well, by the day. We can now stay outdoors with enough light to continue working until a little after 6pm.

Our hillside from a different perspective.

The last fortnight has seen a mish-mash of activities, ranging from the usual routine to the completely out of routine last week when I headed to the UK to visit family for 5 days while Stuart entertained our friend Dave from the UK here, along with his 5-year-old son Ollie.

The first week of the fortnight saw us "hosting" (I'm not sure that's really the right word - Emanuele, who runs the circolo in Pietrabuona, was the real host - perhaps we were more the "facilitators", although that sounds a little too much like corporate-speak for comfort!) the next in our series of fortnightly English evenings at the local village club. Although still only the third such event, the evenings seem to have evolved into a case of sitting and chatting with people whose English is maybe a little rusty but overall very good indeed - good enough for really quite wide ranging conversation. The conversations do inevitably switch to Italian a lot of the time, of course - which means that Stuart and I are getting plenty of Italian practice too(!). We have really enjoyed meeting some interesting people through these evenings - this time we spoke with the lovely Stefano from Medicina, who honed his English when he spent time in India (and who, this week, played us his didgeridoo and his Tibetan bells - and let us have a go at playing his Tibetan bells too), Luca, who is involved with the agricultural college in Pescia, and Roberto, from Borgo a Buggiano, who learned English as a waiter at the Savoy 50 years ago (and doesn't look anywhere near old enough to have been in his early 20s that long ago) and who revealed that, amongst others, he had waited on the Queen, Tom Jones and Petula Clark (although not all at the same time). Conversations ranged from Mr Bean (arghh) to immigration and national anthems, and by the end of the evening we were left feeling exhausted, but happy to be in the process of making new friends.

Perhaps the major event of the week was the one alluded to in the title of this blog post. Regrettably we had another visit from Mr (or Mrs) Fox, and once again we lost all of our chickens (yes, all nine of them) to the blood-thirsty creature.

We were quite flabbergasted by the fact that the fox visited not in the dead of night, nor in the shadows of twilight but in broad daylight - right in the middle of the afternoon. And we didn't hear a thing. At the time, we were in the middle of an Italian lesson with Samantha and Reggie was snoozing on the sofa. The lesson came to its end, Samantha left, and a couple of minutes later I was alerted to something unusual by the fact that Reggie was making a racket outside - not that Reggie making a noise is unusual in itself, but I could tell from the pitch and excitement of his barking and whining that there must be something on the terraces that he wanted to get to. On opening the door I realised he was looking towards the chicken enclosure, and on following his gaze I spotted the tell-tale sign of feathers everywhere. The deed had already been done, and it seems Reggie had spied the fox as it was leaving and running off across the terraces.

With heavy hearts we went to assess the situation. It turns out that the anti-dig defences that we put in around the perimeter fence (and that our friend Allison had put blood and sweat, if not tears, into helping us finish) had held brilliantly. In fact, they had held so well that the fox had been unable to dig its way out of the enclosure (it had tried about 4 times) and had exited the same way it had come in: through a small hole between the top of the fence and the netting that forms the roof of the enclosure. Having been unable to dig its way out, the fox had been forced to leave empty-handed, leaving us with nine chicken corpses (two of which were headless - the fox had clearly snacked while he went about his business).

Spot the hole.

A fox-sized gap.

The anti-dig defences held.

Unable to face doing anything with the chickens there and then (and knowing that the night was going to be cold), Stuart gathered them all up and shut them inside their house for one last time, and we tried to put them to the backs of our minds until the next day.

So Saturday was mainly spent plucking and butchering chickens. With Reggie having recently begun a raw meat diet, we felt as if the lives of the chickens hadn't entirely been lost in vain and after a messy, sticky, smelly few hours practising our butchery skills, we had half a freezer full of chickens all portioned up ready for Reggie to tuck into in the future.

So long Arthur.

Sad face.

A carpet of feathers.

Sunday was an altogether cleaner day, and we spent the afternoon making a start on building a tractor and tool shelter - a job that has long been on the to-do list: for far too long the tractor has sat under the temporary shelter of a piece of tarpaulin anchored down against the wind (at times less successfully than others) with a few large pieces of stone, and our various tools (spades, forks, rakes, hoes, splitting axes, shovels, saws - you get the idea) have been piled up behind the house and exposed to the elements. As if in demonstration of exactly how long this job has been in coming, the first shovel that Stuart picked up and thrust into the ground disintegrated in his very hands, the wooden handle parting company with the business end at a weak spot where the wood had rotted through. Thankfully there were alternative digging implements though, and between us, we dug a set of holes 40cm deep into the ground and found some long and straight tree trunks (which handily had already been felled for some months) to cut into 2.5m lengths and strip of bark to be used as posts.

After having attempted to be clever about dismantling the guest pergola a few months back (thinking that we might simply be able to lift the whole structure out of the ground in one piece), and having found the legs firmly anchored in the ground purely by force of gravel, Stuart had the idea of using gravel to hold the new tractor park posts in place rather than going to the expense and trouble of mixing up and pouring concrete. So, once each hole had been dug, one of us held the freshly stripped post in place while the other poured in a bucket of gravel around the base (the gravel having been robbed from the guest pergola area, where handily we'd had an excess). We then tamped down the gravel, poured in a little more, tamped that down and, very satisfyingly, we had a post firmly held in the ground.

By the end of the day we had put in place the first four posts - it doesn't quite look like a tractor/tool park yet, but it's a good start!

The planned tractor park site.

Stripping off the bark.

Digging post holes.

Four posts in place.

So we spent the following week separately - while I headed to the UK for some long overdue family time, Stuart spent the week playing host to Dave and Ollie, finding a range of activities to keep them both suitably entertained, from tractor riding and bonfire burning to a trip to Lucca, a round of necci (chestnut pancakes) on pancake day, and plenty of tramping through the woods.

Tractor rides.

More tractor rides.

Burning the last of the fir tree clippings.

Rules at a restaurant in Lucca. "Things you must not ask the staff: 1. A discount; 2. To change table; 3. The recipes for the dishes on the menu; 4. Meals that are not on the menu; 5. Honey for the cheeses; 6. Fennel salumi and pizza; 7. New season's oil for free; 8. The phone number of the waitresses or the chef; 9. If he is Pisan, (NO!); 10. Limoncello (we serve Frulloncello with lemons from Villa Frullo); 11. WiFi (we have it, but won't give it to you); 12. There is no mobile signal (thank God!);13. Don't reply 'everything's fine' when it's not, tell us so and we'll fix it; 14. Separate bills." 

On my return from the UK, just as we pulled up and got out of the car back at the house, we looked up and what should we spot in the chicken enclosure above us but the fox, paying a return visit (exactly a week after the murderous deed, almost to the hour!). This time we were able to witness the difficulty it experienced in getting out of the enclosure and we watched it jump at the fence, scrabble its way up and fall back down again a couple of times before it finally succeeded in gaining enough purchase to haul itself over the top and through the gap. The video below isn't the best quality, but keep your eye on the fence about halfway along the right-hand side of the enclosure.

Having seemingly taken the rain over to Bristol with me, it seems I brought it right back here to Italy again and Saturday was a complete washout - any hopes we'd had of making progress on the tractor park, or indeed any other outdoor job, were dashed. Since Stuart was also suffering somewhat badly with a cold that he'd managed to catch from Dave during the week, we decided to surrender ourselves to the sofa and in a compromise between complete switch-off and feeling as if we were doing something useful and keeping our brains active, we chose to start watching the series of Harry Potter films in Italian - a nice, gentle way to ease back into things after a week of being surrounded by English.

With the weather somewhat improved on Sunday we managed to get outside for a little fresh air, although we weren't quite up to doing anything as demanding as work on the tractor park - here's hoping for dry weather over the coming weekends to help move us on.

(This blog post covers the period 5-18 February 2018.)

On a roll, two in a row!

As Monday morning ticks away in the background I sit down to write my second blog post in as many weeks, aided largely by a new tablet PC bought this very morning.

I had bought my first tablet PC a few months before leaving England as a means of having some useful form of internet access while on the move between England and Italy - particularly as we had a very important funds transfer to arrange while en route, believing that we would be having a meeting with the notaiao to finalise the purchase of our house the day after our arrival - little did we know we'd be waiting a month for that, but I'm straying from the path somewhat...

That first tablet was a revelation and many of our first year's blog posts were typed on it, so it was a sad day when it died, earlier than expected and probably still within warranty (just), but such was our distance from the store from which we bought it and our workload that it got put into a dusty corner of the house and forgotten about.

It is only now that I have been able to find the funds to purchase a new one - not expensive when compared to a mobile phone, but there is always something more important to spend our limited funds on than gadgets, though we had agreed that having a new tablet would be useful, not in the least so that we might keep on top of the blogging a little easier.

That might all sound like a poor excuse, but five days a week Helen is in the office in front of her computer while I'm busy with other things, often outside, and at the soonest moment possible she likes to leave the office for a change of scenery (even if in the winter months that is just as far as the living room, it's still a change of scenery). This means we are somewhat reluctant to do any of our own admin during the weekend, so as to give Helen an all important break from her desk (a desk that of a winter's weekend is a cold place to be as we only light the wood burner in the living room). And so it has come to pass that we've acquired a new tablet. Let's hope that equals more regular blog posts from the comfort of the living room.

Last week was business as usual really, with very little to report.

Sunlight on the hill above us.

Monday evening saw us putting our Italian comprehension to the test when we attended an open meeting between residents and politicians (from the local council and from the provincial level) at the Circolo in Vellano about the state of some of the local roads (in particular Il Traspo - the road that Donatella lives on, which has been in a terrible state for quite some time) and the hydrogeological problems that urgently need addressing in our valley.

The period between Christmas and New Year saw a large landslide on the road that runs along the bottom of the valley and from there on up to the villages of Lanciole and Crespole, as well as a subsequent additional slide at the same site a couple of weeks later - the road was closed, re-opened after some clearing work, and then re-closed when the secondary slide occurred, and it now remains closed (or closed-ish - while officially closed, it seems that frustrated motorists are in the habit of removing the barriers and driving through regardless). The village of Vellano itself is classed as "R4" on the scale of hydrogeological risk - meaning it is an area of very high risk. A project is already in place for addressing various issues to help secure the village, but such is the scale of the project that it has been split into three parts - the first part was completed a while ago, but the rest still remains to be done. As we understand it, the landslide that happened over Christmas is all part of the overall issue affecting the area.

The evening saw first a detailed description of each of the topics of discussion - technical details as well as the current situation - followed by questions from the members of the public on each. The discussion was fairly technical, and quite heated at times, as worried and frustrated residents put their views to the politicians. As with so many of these things the overriding theme of the evening was "there's not enough money to do what needs to be done".

Come 11:50pm, emotions were starting to run high amongst residents and politicians alike and, having concentrated on the discussion for more than two hours already, and with voices starting to be raised to levels that were uncomfortable to listen to, we decided to call time on our participation and make our way home.

If you look carefully you can see our concentrating faces.

We had our group Italian lesson on Wednesday morning - David had returned from a visit to England the evening before so joined us here at our house for our lesson with Johnny on what was a horrid day: cold, wet and windy.

After an enjoyable lesson translating a story about the history of St Vitus's dance, I spent half an hour fitting a new automatic door closer to the front door, the idea being that, now, when Reggie opens the door to let himself out (as he does at frequent intervals), he will no longer leave the door gaping wide open and letting all the warmth out (especially on days like today).

It's a simple spring-loaded mechanism but seems to do the job perfectly, gently closing the door once he's gone outside. It should also stop the door slamming open against the wall when he decides to launch his full 30kg at the door at top speed. 

After lunch and a worsening in the weather I decided I couldn't face heading out to work in what is still practically the outdoors over at Mara and Franco's, so with a pitiful message sent on WhatsApp I retired to the seat on the sofa next to the fire to continue making notes from my book on olive pruning, in readiness for the pruning season late winter.

On Thursday Helen had her lesson with Samantha in the afternoon while I was back working across the valley at Mara & Franco's house, and again had her spinning class at the gym in Pescia in the evening. This week, however, instead of going alone I drove her into town and did the food shopping while she was exercising. That worked extremely well for me, as there must have been only half a dozen other shoppers in Esselunga at that time of night - I doubt I'll make a habit of it though!

On Friday evening Paul and Kathy came round with their friend Simon who was visiting from England. We have got to know Simon pretty well over the last year or so, and it's always nice to see him when he comes for a visit - especially when he comes bearing gifts/swag! On this occasion we'd asked if he would bring us a precious jar of Pataks lime pickle (something we plan to further educate our friends Mara and Franco with the next time we cook them a curry). After a pleasant couple of hours catching up with them all they left us to the remainder of the evening, heading home to pack overnight bags ahead of their weekend trip to Rome for the Italy v. England rugby game.

Saturday was yet another horrid day, but we braved the cold, wet weather for a coffee and cake in Pescia before trying to get lost again in the foothills between Pescia and Lucca, this time with the added goal of trying to climb up into the snow that had fallen overnight and that we could see tantalisingly dusting the tops of the hills.

On the first objective we excelled and found some yet more glorious countryside and yet more enormous villas before popping out on the road that heads up into the Garfagnana. It's clear that between us and Lucia we are already running out of places to indulge in our new-found hobby. On the second count we failed - it seemed the higher up we got, the further the snow retreated,  and we found no sign of it.

Stunning views from Matraia.

Lucca is down there somewhere.

We had to give up at that point as we needed (or should I say the chickens needed) more grain and we had only half an hour in which to buy it before Signore Perondi (Mr Chicken man) closed his doors for the weekend. With grain purchased and a chat with Signore Perondi Junior, whom I had not met before and had just returned from a business trip to Telford (of all places), we headed back up the valley and decided that we would give our snow chasing one more try, this time driving up our own valley towards Pontito... and bingo, we found the snow!

The snowy rooftops of Pontito.

As we turned around and wended our way gradually back down the valley, the snow slowed, turned to sleet as we passed through Vellano, and by the time we'd dropped down to our altitude it was mere rain. So with the fire lit we resigned ourselves to an afternoon indoors.

Over the course of the afternoon and evening we binge-watched six hours of Inspector Montalbano (all in the name of homework, you understand). Helen astutely surmised this week that while our language is improving, and more or less sufficient to get by here day to day, we still don't yet hear the words like in our native tongue - by that I mean, if we sat next a table of people conversing loudly in Italian, it would still largely just be noise to us unless we actively tried to tune in to listen and understand, whereas were they talking English, we would have to try to tune out so that we didn't hear what was being said. It's an odd stage to be at, and it may always be this way, but we have decided to watch as much Italian TV as we can cram in, in an effort to address this, and in an effort to try and improve our comprehension of Italian spoken at speed - which may well turn out to be our ultimate hurdle.

Sunday was an altogether different start to Saturday: it was still cold, but patches of blue sky greeted us and we were feeling more motivated to get out into the fresh air, but not before cappuccini and pastries in Pescia. Sadly, by the time we got back home the weather had worsened and it tried to rain, which dented our enthusiasm for anything but retreating indoors again.

That said, we had committed to giving the chickens some much needed TLC so, having lured them into the top of their enclosure, given them a large pile of fresh vegetable peelings to keep them busy and closed the makeshift gate on them (all in a bid to give us the freedom and safety to do what we needed without having to worry about unexpected attacks from the ever aggressive Arthur), we were able to give the coop a full clean out, repair one of the large doors which had become jammed, refill food and water receptacles, and replace the exit ramp which was about to collapse. That and collect a basket of eggs, of course.  

We then rather unenthusiastically wandered around trying to get motivated before finally settling on a couple of hours more tidying work below the car park, cutting up a couple of fallen trees that were lying across the bank and clearing more bramble from around them.

Such was the state of our enthusiasm that we were thankful when the clock struck 5pm and we felt justified in calling it a (somewhat unproductive) day and returning to the comfort of the sofa and the log burner to re-charge for the week ahead.

(This blog post covers the week 29th January - 4th February 2018) 

First for a while

(This blog post covers the week 22-28 January 2018.)

So as another week started, and with the promise of a few dry days, it was back to the coal face for us both.

While Helen toiled away in front of her computer I crossed the valley to our friends Mara and Franco's house to resume the work on the conversion of an old lean-to into an apartment. The work has been progressing slowly: all the necessary the prep work amounts to little, visually, to show for a hard day's work, and things barely look different now from how they looked at the start - therefore patience is required of all parties at this stage of the process, safe in the knowledge that soon there will be plenty of more dramatic changes in the form of windows, electrics and plumbing.

Nice tidy window reveal awaiting steel framed glazing.

Numerous layers of lime plaster to build up to required thickness.

Socket back boxes fixed into the wall.

An unintended hole when making a small hole for an electrical socket back box.

Electrical wiring chases in the existing plaster.

Flexi-tubing for cables.

Snoopy modelling an American president styled haircut.

Monday evening marked two weeks since the good ship 'Aperitivi Inglesi' set sail (no, I've no idea why I chose a nautical analogy) at our local circolo (village club) so, having agreed to make it a bi-weekly affair, we set off towards the bar with a handful of materials in the form of flash cards and some additional exercises in the hope that we would have some interest once again.

We had adjusted the start time for the evening on this occasion, and rather than starting at 18:00 as we had done last time, we advertised a start time of 20:00 (somewhat reluctantly, as at this time of year by 20:00 it's already been dark for three hours and we're usually settled in for the evening keeping the wood burner going and the house warm). The reason for the change was that it has become abundantly clear that, virtually without exception, all evening gatherings start at 21:00 here (to allow a decent Italian dinner beforehand), so you can see that with our 20:00 start we were only making a compromise.

Sadly, young Ilaria who came last time, couldn't make it this time, but instead we had first Stefano from Medicina to talk to, who was joined shortly by Fabio, a software engineer from Pescia, and then towards the end of the evening a plant grower called Luca. All three of them had a very good grasp of English, making for a varied evening during which we covered topics ranging from meditation to classic motorbikes, and the origin of the Italian language to politics! Once again our good friends Paul, Kathy and David came along and got stuck in with the conversation as well, so the evening flowed nicely and by 22:30 we were happy to head home feeling as if the evening had been another small step in the right direction - let's see how things progress into spring.

On Wednesday afternoon we both headed into Pescia with Reggie in the back of the car - it was time for his annual jab at the vets with the lovely Alessandra.

This time we went armed with some of his home made dehydrated beef heart treats in the hope that we might be able to reward him for venturing into the surgery. For whatever reason this time Reggie decided he would walk/run/pull us into the surgery rather than having to be carried, as is usually the way. You certainly wouldn't say he was happy to go in, but it was a giant step forward for him after only a few visits - Alessendra clearly has a good way about her and we were soon in the consulting room where, as usual, Reggie refused all treats offered to him, too stressed even to consider eating anything.

We soon administered the jab in the usual manner, all three humans sat on the floor and Reggie trying to hide behind me. By the time we'd had a short chat with Alessandra about his general health and his new raw diet, Reggie had calmed down by the tiniest of notches and was ready to take a dehydrated treat from Alessandra, and then another and another - indeed, he was so keen that I'm surprised she didn't lose a finger in the process. It wasn't long before we were on the way home with a request to return in spring for what will be Reggie's first blood test (to test for filaria, a disease transmitted by biting insects), not wanting to do too much in one visit and ruin the small amount of trust that seemed to have been built between Reggie and vet this week.

Thursday saw another reluctant exit from the house after dark, but only for Helen as it was her second spinning class down at the gym in Pescia. Not having slept well the previous night (and having a much better idea of how hard the class was going to be than the first time she went in relative blissful ignorance), she was less than keen on the idea but went regardless, such is her commitment to cardio exercise.

We finished the week on Friday evening with what felt like a well earned bottle of wine after having forced ourselves to face the supermarket at peak time (early evening) so that we wouldn't have to sully our weekend with such a mundane task. After dinner, we watched the final of Junior Bake Off Italia - something we wish we'd found at the start of the series but will be looking out for next time around as it was hugely entertaining watching these 'mini pasticceri' of 8-10 years of age bake cakes that far exceeded anything I would be capable of, and realising that our level of Italian is about that of an 8 year old!!

Reggie's new diet, the stuff of vegan nightmares!

The weekend started with a trip into town for a coffee and pastry, after which we once again decided to try and get lost in the foothills between Pescia and Lucca. It's becoming our favourite pastime of a weekend, albeit only for an hour or so, but it instantly brings a feeling of being on holiday, there is so much undiscovered beauty in these hills of grape vines and olive groves, and such history in the small and largely uninhabited villages that it's like discovering Tuscany all over again. The area we covered this time seemed to be existing in its own little microclimate as well, and the fields and hillsides were dotted with the colours of mimosa, daffodils, crocuses, borage and helibores, making it feel as if spring had already arrived.

After lunch and much deliberation over our to-do list, we decided to do something not on the to-do list (oops), yep... clearing terraces - our second favourite pastime!

Although the task was not on the to-do list itself, we didn't embark on it without reason: I have just ordered 600 wooden dowels of Shiitake mushroom spawn so that we can try our hand at cultivating these tasty morsels this year (and, should we be reasonably successful, with a view to expanding the operation and making ourselves something of a niche in the valley).

Having identified some hornbeam trees in the woods to use as the host logs, we needed somewhere to site them. The answer? On the two uncleared and somewhat shady terraces below the car park.

It was something of a shock to the system to embark on some serious clearing, not having done any of this kind of labour for some months now, but it was enjoyable to get back into the swing of things and to have some fine, sunny weather to do it in.

We toiled away both Saturday and Sunday, allowing ourselves a couple of hours on Sunday morning to plant garlic and bury a water pipe outside the front of the house that was starting to become a serious trip hazard, but otherwise concentrating on the terrace clearing.

It was quite slow work at times, as we kept coming across pieces of fencing and barbed wire from an old fence that had fallen and become buried in the ground and that had now all sorts of plant roots clamping the steel mesh firmly to the earth, meaning that bolt cutters and a lot of brute force were required to free it from the undergrowth.

By the time we called an end to the fun on Sunday evening and as the bonfire burned down we had finished phase one of the clearance and were feeling very pleased with ourselves and at the difference it makes to the nearby area. Weather permitting, next weekend will see phase two underway, which should see the hedge cutters swapped for strimmers with metal blades, but with changeable weather forecast for the week ahead, the ball is in Mother Nature's court.

More "gifts" from the land.

Before clearing.

New terraces!

Keeping a careful eye on yet another bonfire.