Keeping pace with winter

This winter compared to last has been a stark contrast - last winter was a complete washout right up until mid-spring, meaning we got very little done at all.

So this year, if the weather is dry- which it has been, a lot - we're outside working. In fact, we find it impossible to do otherwise, as we know that if the weather does turn we'll be relegated indoors and all progress will grind to a halt - and the progress we make during winter is somewhat addictive.

We have been blessed with lots of blue skies and sunshine this winter.

Reflecting over a cappuccino down in town at the weekend about the progress that winter affords us, we realised that each winter (perhaps excluding last winter) our steps forward seem bigger - we go into each spring feeling and seeing the progress. Back in the early days we not only had to take some significant steps backwards but we ended up doing a lot of jobs more than once, either because things were living in temporary spots and needed moving and covering all over again or because other jobs cropped up that were more urgent and put everything else on hold. It's only really this winter that everything finally seems to have found its happy resting place, and that's really been largely as a result of putting shelving into the sheds in the Autumn and very recently sorting out the, well, I'm not sure quite what to call it these days - up until recently we've always referred to it as the 'tractor park', given that its primary purpose was to keep our precious mechanical donkey in the dry, but it's now one third storage, one third workshop and one third tractor shelter!

Reorganising the entire space of this shelter has afforded us with this three-part, three-purpose structure, the part of which I'm most excited about is the workshop in which soon I will be trying my hand at wood turning. This is thanks in no small part to Mike, Helen's Dad, who is donating his old lathe to us along with associated other wood-working tools, and to Paul and Kathy who have extremely kindly met up with Mike during their trip to England to take possession of the equipment and drive it all stuff back to Italy - without either part of this team I would be waiting quite some time yet before being able to turn my hand at wood turning!

So, going back to last weekend, Helen and I spent Saturday moving some small trees that I'd recently cut down in readiness for making way for the fence around the terraces. After lugging the trees down to the drive, small limbs were cut off and chipped and the large pieces were cut and split and stacked on the ever growing wood pile for next winter.

More firewood.

More wood chipping.

With the wood chippings we finally finished the flooring of the tractor's section of sheltering, meaning that during the following days I could occupy myself with sorting out the workshop area in readiness for the new tools and to make a start on my first attempt at carving what I optimistically hope will be a butter dish made from a lump of manna ash that fell down in the winds of 2015 and from which Paul cut a few logs from while he and Kathy were Reggie-sitting in the Autumn.

Sunday was a slightly less active affair because we were involved in a tasting event down at our local village circolo. Emanuele (manager of the circolo and organiser of the event) had asked if we would bring a little honey and oil down, fearing that some of the others he'd asked to do the same might not show up on the day. But as it was, everyone turned up and a nice little selection of local produce was on offer.

There was a new cooperative that farms down in Veneri a village just the other side of Pescia, producing wine, oil and various types of sheep's cheese.

Stefano the goat farmer from Medicina arrived with bags of his chestnut flour and a gas burner, and started turning out chestnut pancakes (necci) filled with his goats' ricotta. There were biscotti made by the Brasolin brothers who run the butchers in the village, Mara and Franco came with their honey and preserved olives, Danilo and Michela had a great display of fair trade produce, and then finally our own small offering of olive oil and honey, albeit honey given to us by way of land rent from Alain the bee man, rather than or own produce.

Our modest offering.

Despite all of this there was a very poor turn out by way of tasters - in fact it seemed that there was just one family from the village who came specifically for the produce and dutifully bought a bit of something from everyone there.

The disappointing turnout aside, it was a nice evening, it was great to chat to Mara, Franco, Danilo and Michi for the evening and feel in some small way part of the local community.

It was a fun evening and good to see our friends.

Monday it was back to work. Having decided to try and make something from wood (a material we have in abundance), I had been drowning myself in information since Christmas, and as such was feeling overwhelmed by it all.

What exactly do I decide to make? What I make determines what tools I need (of which there are many, and not cheap to acquire), the type of thing I make also dictates what wood I need to cut, when I need to do it, and how I need to store it and dry it to avoid it splitting. My head was spinning.

I finally decided that I just needed to start with something - anything - to see what it was I was missing or needed, and as such the butter dish came to mind, as it was something I could try carving by hand and had the tools for already. First, though, I was missing a chopping block to work on so project number one was exactly that.

Using one of the ash logs that Paul had cut in the autumn and three lengths of wood we had set aside for use as woodland steps I set about making a chopping block on which I could carve out the butter dish with my side axe.

Feeling very pleased with the new chopping block, I then went straight to work on the next project, first by cleaving the log in two, then cleaving it roughly to size before using the axe to get it to a shape and then using chisels to shave it to an almost finished form, at which point the sander came into play.

It became apparent from this process that without a 'shave/bowl horse' I couldn't use the draw knife, which would have been quicker and easier at a certain point. (At the reference of a bowl horse you've probably switched off, but I mention it to illustrate my point from earlier with regards struggling to decide what to make and what I might need to make it.)

As it stands I've yet to finish our butter dish and to get that far I had to make a chopping block and already I need to make a bowl horse before trying to do any more carving henceforth.

The beginnings of a butter dish.

Before the week was out I had come to realise that it wouldn't only be tools that might become an obstacle but the raw materials themselves. Here again I have to decide whether I want to use green wood or seasoned wood, each has its advantages and disadvantages. I'll refrain from boring you with the little I've learnt but some projects absolutely require seasoned wood, like chopping boards for example. 

Knowing that seasoning wood takes time, and not wanting to be stuck without some dry wood, led us onto a different project altogether: in the quarry at the end of the drive where we store our firewood there were a few lumps of seasoned acacia and chestnut. The problem, of course, was that they were right at the bottom of a very large pile of wood and there was only one way to get at them.

Now, for quite a while one of the items on our to-do list has been the job 'sort quarry storage' and it's been there for some time because I've puzzled over what exactly we need to do to 'sort' it.

While we had two large stacks of cut (but not split) wood, I came to realise we were essentially missing a third area to store wood that is cut and split, all ready for the wood burner except for a bit of drying.

Currently we had a stack of small diameter wood that would serve as kindling and a second stack of larger logs that will be used for the main wood burner in the house.

Up until now our process for firewood has been to start cutting and splitting as soon as we stop using the wood burner - sometime around mid-April, so we cut it and split it up in the quarry then move it down the drive in the tractor and stack it near the house into its shelter to finish drying out over summer until around mid October when we have need to burn again.

So far so good, and not a bad system at all, it's worked very well for the last two years (prior to which we were chasing our tails, having started without any wood stores whatsoever when we moved in - it's been a battle every winter to try and get ourselves that bit further ahead).

So the improvement we set to work on as the week progresses and during the weekend was to address this third storage area. That began by making a new second area on which to stack the big logs as we moved them to access the bits I wanted for carving - the idea then being once all that was moved we'd use this space to make a new are for the split wood. This means we not only have more space for storing more wood but that we no longer need to wait until April before working on firewood, not only will this give us firewood as dry as is possible but also space to in theory have three winter's worth of wood in storage.

Work begins on tidying the quarry.

Tree felled to use to create more storage.

A new pallet-based storage area.

Clouds gathering.

The last of the sunshine for a while.

The week that followed was forecast to be wet and getting more so as the week progressed, with a deluge promised by Friday.

So, what to do on a damp Monday? Rebuild the bed frame in the spare room I decided.

We had inherited said bed frame - it was made by the previous owners and in their typical manner, was less than optimal. It rarely bothered either Helen or myself but it annoyed me each time I made the bed for a guest. The frame being made as it was meant that there was a five-inch gap between the headboard and the mattress (more than enough space for the pillows to disappear into) and until now we had been plugging this gap with other pillows and a spare duvet. Today that was going to change!

It took most of the day, but reusing only wood from the original frame I managed to make a new one with a considerably smaller footprint by turning the frame timbers onto their side and finally threw away the old pillows we had used as 'stuffing' (although not before Reggie had got hold of one of them and removed the stuffing from the stuffing...).

Old bed frame, complete with pillow/duvet stuffing.

All-new bed frame with no need for surplus pillows.

Reggie removed the stuffing from the stuffing.

Our friend Dave ('Dave the chef') arrived the following day having found a small window in his schedule to pop across and see us - a bit of website redesign in exchange for him cooking dinner for us seemed like a great exchange and with the weather being as wet and chilly as it was, it was a good reason to be indoors for a couple of days.

A dusting of snow.

A cold toad pond.

The first snow to fall at the level of our house.

After a day's redesigning the website was looking rather nice (www.beyourfood.com), as was the food we ate that evening, which included clams, squid and large fillets of perch - a real treat for us.

No sooner had Dave arrived than he was off again. On Thursday morning while the snow started to fall we fiddled with a bit more technology before he and I headed out for lunch on the way to the airport. I decided to try a restaurant we have passed on numerous occasions on the way towards Lucca but only just outside Pescia town.

Yet again outside appearances proved to be deceptive and this off roadside building opened up into a spacious cosy restaurant, owned as it turns out by a Roman who had in his past spent ten years in Tanzania opening up a pastry shop, ice cream shop and pizza place within a commercial centre.

The food was excellent, the house wine very nice indeed, and with plenty of fish and seafood on the menu, it will be somewhere to head back to with Helen someday.

So the week passed by in a bit of a blur, and as the deluge slowly gathered momentum on Friday I spent most of the day between the bathroom and my outdoor workshop, taking the bathroom door with me as I went.

On Thursday evening Helen had highlighted the fact that having no way of locking the bathroom door is a little less than ideal when there are guests in the house and asked if I could fit a simple lock. This was a job I've had in mind for some time but it was quite a way down on my list of priorities. Today, however, with plenty of wet stuff forecast and the luxury of a covered work space outside in which to work on cutting the door down, I spent the day traipsing through the house with wet feet (work normally reserved for Reggie).

Now some of you may be thinking "hang in a minute, why does the door need cutting up to fit a simple lock on the door?"

Yet again, I refer the reader to the style in which the previous owners did things here.

The bathroom door as we had it was fixed to the outside architrave. This I didn't mind in itself, as it allowed the door to open outwards, BUT the door then shut onto the architrave rather than fitting inside it or the door frame, leaving pretty much nowhere to fit a lock on the inside other than one that would bolt into the architrave itself. Indeed, this was how we inherited the door and it worked ok for a while until the poorly fitted architrave started coming away from the wall.

So, the simple job of cutting a lock meant that I had to remove the door, fit a new piece of door frame (as currently there was none down one side), remove all the architrave and re-cut it to fit the door frame properly (including rebating two pieces to compensate for the plastering that had been done), and cut the door down to fit inside the door frame - which meant dismantling the cottage-style door completely then rehanging it and staining it, before finally fitting a simple bolt on the inside.

A whole day lost to job I hadn't planned to do anytime soon, but having done the work, I've gained a little extra piece of calm in my mind as it's one more job that I don't have to look at daily.

By the time I had tidied and put tools away the rain was in full flow and it stayed like that until mid morning the following day.

Our rain gauge read that we'd had almost six centimetres of rain but knowing as we do that it often under reports a little I wouldn't be surprised if we had more like 10 centimetres, the noise of the Pescia River below and even our own little stream was almost deafening when we left for coffee Saturday morning and the small falls in Pietrabuona were doing their best to impersonate Niagra, it may be the heaviest we've seen it and probably a combination of not only rainfall but snow melt from further up the valley.

In contrast to the many days of blue sky and sunshine we've been enjoying, we've had a run of grey days.

A bit more snow.

Low temperatures, high productivity

As I write this blog it's a damp scene outside the window, cloud hanging low over the hills opposite and the light decidedly dim. It's the first time we've seen rain in more than three weeks though, and what lovely winter weather we've had in that time: bright blue skies, blazing sun, crisp white frosts, coral pink sunsets - the sort of weather that makes everything seem quite magical and makes one wonder at the beauty of nature.

It has been the perfect weather for outdoor working - at times a touch on the chilly side, but with some extra layers and a bit of physical work we were soon comfortable enough to be in the great outdoors being productive. We never know when rain might be around the corner in the winter (and, more to the point, when it arrives how long it might stay around - last winter it felt as if it started raining on Boxing day and didn't stop until about April, such was the relentlessness of the wet weather), so we made a conscious effort to make the most of the dry, sunny weather, and to work outdoors every day.

Of course, for all its beauty, there are some downsides to the wintry weather and at least 5 times in the last few weeks we have woken up to frozen pipes and no water coming to the house. On two of those occasions the pipes have remained frozen almost day and we've been water-less until late evening. Thankfully we've been sufficiently prepared to have filled bottles of drinking water and a large 25 litre canister for using to flush the toilet. It makes it slightly more bearable when you're prepared for it, but it's still a bit miserable not being able to wash properly and the joy when you finally turn on the tap and water does finally come out is almost indescribable. It really makes you realise how important running water is, and what a luxury it is to be able to turn a tap and have water - hot or cold - come running out.

The pipes seem to be a lot quicker to freeze this year than last winter, when they really only froze when the temperature dipped to -5C or less. This year, it seems as if a night at -2C is enough to freeze it all up. Stuart spent a day lagging some of the pipes that are exposed near to the house, and burying another short section, but that doesn't seem to have done the trick, so there must be another part of the pipe that has become exposed somewhere along the line, or perhaps the freeze is being caused by offshoots that have been added for irrigation of the mushroom logs etc. For now it remains a mystery, but with more sub zero nights forecast in the coming week it will be something we have to investigate.

That'll mean the pipes are frozen then!

Pipes lagged, but still freezing.

It's very pretty though - Jack Frost is quite the artist.

We spent some time working in the woods trying to clear up the mess left after we'd logged a long-since fallen ash tree a few weeks' back. While I had a bonfire to try to clear some of the branches and brambles, Stuart turned his hand to building (or starting to build) a set of steps. The fallen ash tree previously lay right across the path of the route we take through the lower part of the woods when we take Reggie for a walk, meaning you had to clamber over it. Our friend Paul had cut a chunk out of it to clear the way while he and Kathy were dog sitting. With the rest of the tree now gone, there was room for a set of steps leading up the incline.

Stuart spent a fair bit of time chasing around after spare tractor parts and, in the end, buying a soldering kit to mend the poor broken tractor which, all of a sudden, had started billowing out smoke from the engine. He'd managed to get the young mechanic from the local garage to come out and have a look at it, who was able to diagnose the problem and tell Stuart what replacement part he would need to get hold of, also giving him the names of two places he thought might stock the part. After much chasing around, Stuart finally got the replacement part, only to find (when the mechanic came back to look at it) that it was a new version of the old part, and the mechanic thought it would be too complicated for him to fit. To cut a long story short, after receiving advice and instruction remotely from our friend Paul (aka Granville), Stuart was able to fit the new part himself. Tractor problem solved!

Last week we held a community day here with all our friends - Donatella, Paul & Kathy, David & Sarah - coming to put in a day's work in return for a meal. It had been a while since we'd done any work on our fencing project and, wanting to give it a kick start, we decided to concentrate efforts on that. With the weather still cold, we decided to break from community day tradition and instead of starting work early in the morning and working until lunchtime, we decided to delay the start until the sun had reached the terraces, starting at lunchtime and working until the light faded.

Paul, Kathy and David helped Stuart with putting in the fencing and the posts, while Sarah, Donatella and I dug the channel (which required some re-digging and deepening in places, thanks to the rain having washed the soil back into the previously dug parts), extending it now all the way across the top of the terraces.

By the end of the day we'd made great progress thanks to everyone's hard work, and we sat down to enjoy a well-earned feed up at the end of the day.

Following the efforts of community day, a slightly less physical day was required, so for me it was a day of burning some of the cuttings that had been left on the terraces since October when our friend Allison had helped Stuart with clearing the edges of the terraces, while Stuart made a start at clearing the gully that runs along the opposite edge of the terraces in readiness for (eventually) running the fencing along it.

We had, let's say, a challenging evening last Saturday - we went to a surprise 60th birthday party for a really nice guy, Loris, who we know from the circolo (a friend of our friend Luca). After meeting up with about 3 other couples in a car park in the nearby town of Chiesina, we followed Luca in convoy to the house where the party was to be held. Here, there was some form of annex which consisted of an enormous kitchen (with the largest oven and the most enormous cooking pots I've seen outside of a professional kitchen), a large room which was laid out with a huge dining table and benches all around it, and a bathroom. When we arrived the cooking was in full swing - there was an enormous tray of potatoes roasting in the oven, trays of meat resting, trays of lasagne coming out of the oven, and packets of spaghetti being readied for when there came the nod that the birthday boy was on his way. More people soon arrived, and in the end there were 19 people there, most of whom seemed to know Loris from their school days. We were all ushered into the dining room and the lights turned off for the arrival of Loris, who seemed duly surprised and touched and when the surprise was unveiled. There was no messing around and as soon as the main guest had arrived we were served a large bowl of spaghetti with tomatoes, followed by a generous portion of lasagne, followed by a huge piece of pork shin with spinach, followed by slices of roast pork with roast potatoes, followed by a slice of cream cake. I struggled to eat anything beyond the lasagne and since I mainly stick to a vegetarian diet it was quite a challenge! Stuart was similarly challenged, but managed somehow to fit in second portions of almost everything! With 17 Italians sat around one table in a rather echoey room, all talking over each other at the tops of their voices, the evening was socially a little hard going - it was so loud that it was difficult to hear enough of what anyone said to be able to understand it, and even more difficult to speak loudly enough to respond. Nevertheless, it was lovely to see Loris surrounded by his friends and family and to have been part of his birthday celebration.

The following morning was a slow start and we decided to start the day with a drive around the hills, taking in some really stunning views on the road around Massa & Cozzile.

We've put a lot of work over the last couple of weeks into cutting, splitting and moving wood for next winter's woodpile. It's quite slow-going bringing the wood all the way up from the small quarry in the woods beneath the house, but it's satisfying work and it's something that is easy to do just a bit of each day.

Stuart has also been hard at work creating a workshop for himself in one section of the tractor park. All being well, he will soon take ownership of some of my Dad's wood turning tools, and he is preparing a decent work space in which to hone his wood-working skills.

Reggie rather likes the workshop as a sunbathing/sleeping space.

There is plenty of workspace and hopefully it should stay dry.

So, in the week ahead we are expecting some more unsettled weather, and a return to low temperatures as well - while I've been singing the virtues of the cold and dry weather, I'm a little less certain how I feel about the cold and wet weather that's in store next week!

From this...

...to this...

...to this.