November Update

Well, what's been happening I hear you ask, in fact some of you DID ask!  Nature has thrown another storm at us, this time a bit further north, hitting Genoa badly.  Both storms within a week of each other were described as the worst in over a century.  In our vicinity 80 cars in the town of Aulla were scrapped, numerous businesses have been destroyed as well as a school.  The pretty village of Vernazza as well as Monterosso in the world famous Cinque Terre have been devastated, but we only suffered minor damage, which we repaired yesterday in the glorious sunshine:

The barrier we had put up after last years landslides had broken apart, which was just as well as it was made from asbstos, which I didn't like to have lying around anyway.  I still don't know how to get rid of it though...  There's Eddie testing the new construction for strength.

The material used were a bunch of old tyres as the base and an old wardrobe we found on the skip complete with mirror door.

It was also time to turn the compost and start a new one:

...and the reason why you haven't heard so much from us...? Twofold really: one is that we're spending much of November and part of December up in the mountains where we are looking after the house and dogs of some friends.  It's beautiful up there and a true wild food paradise.  The chestnuts have not been affected by the chestnuts gall wasp yet as they have around us and are still abundant.  The woods are full of fungi including parasols, blewits and porcini.  There's a beautiful field full of wild herbs, crab apples and rosehips.  So as you can imagine, I'm in heaven up there taking 4 dogs for endless walks foraging.

The other reason is that these two weather events have got me thinking and doubting.  We are just scraping a meagre living from our impossibly steep piece of land and everytime it rains I have sleepless nights wondering if we have anything to come back to.  So we have started considering some other options including maybe leaving Italy in search of some like-minded people to join a community.  Nothing is certain yet and I'm determined to keep my feet on the ground and live in the present.  It is easy to get side-tracked and neglecting your current situation by dreaming of a future.  I have long thought that with Italy  we have finally 'arrived', but we haven't reached as far as I would have liked on the Path of Self Sufficiency.  So we are considering Portugal or Greece or maybe somewhere else.

If anyone out there is thinking along similar lines of setting up a community and wants to join us or knows of an interesting project we should consider, please let us know.  We may of course stay put, but this is something that is going around in our heads at the moment.