of olive picking and other autumn jobs

Autumn is definitely here. Above is a photo of a threatening sky above our village. With the sweeping views and our vicinity to the sea, the sky constantly changes. It's much more interesting than the constant blue of summer.

I also love all the mushrooms out at this time of year, even if I don't recognise many of them. This was a particularly nice group below, I have no idea what they are:


This on the other hand I have identified as a Russet Tough Shank with reasonable certainty. According to most sources I've consulted it is edible, but not really worth eating. Shame because we found quite a quantity of them:



We have recently been entrusted to look after an olive grove of a Danish family, who have a holiday home some 20 km away from us in the village of Popetto. It consists of some 30 mature trees. In return for us looking after it we get to keep the olives, any fire wood and we get a small inumeration to cover costs of petrol, any pressing of the olives as well as giving us a bit of extra cash to help us through the winter.

The trees had been neglected for some years, and on first inspection back in early September, it didn't look like we'd get a great yield off the trees this year. So on Tuesday we had decided to take our bikes out there just for an inspection. It seemed easiest to combine pruning with the harvesting of any olives. As you lop off any of the higher branches, you just strip them of olives on the ground, rather than doing this while balancing on the top of a ladder. The olives had turned a beautiful, shiny black and were evidently ready. Now being black rather than green, they stood out much better against the overgrown trees and there were more than we had initially thought. So we decided to get going the next dry day, which was yesterday.

Here by the way a couple of pictures from our cycle up to Popetto at 400 m a.s.l. If you cut out the two photos and stick the top one to the left and the bottom one to the right, you'll have a complete panorama:

As you can see there's snow in the higher mountains of the Apuan Alps and also on the Appenines, I estimate to as low as 800 metres altitude .

Anyway, so Thursday we got started on the olives. We were far to busy getting some progress done and afterwards far to knackered to make any photographic record of this, but we're not finished yet, so pics of olive picking will follow soon no doubt. Well after some 7 solid hours we managed to prune 4 trees to shape and pick all the olives off them.

"How many did you get so far?" I hear you ask? Well, there are different weight measurement units all over the world. The Brits talk of stone, most Continental Europeans talk kilos, Americans pounds and the Italians measure olives in quintale. I have my own in-built measuring unit. Having worked many years in the wine trade I know exactly and instinctively the weight of a case of wine (on average 15 kilos), so everything gets measured around that. One case of wine is quite an easy weight. Remembering that we live on top of a small village, which is only accessible by several flights of stairs, if your shopping or picked produce weighs one case of wine, I have no problem getting it up.

Two cases of wine on the other hand get quite heavy, but if it saves you going twice, you'll carry it up too. Three cases of wine is getting quite tough and you really don't want to be carrying it any distance at all. Four cases of wine is a sure recipe for a hernia. Well on that basis, I lifted up our olives and said to Susan, that's about 1 case of wine worth of olives. Today, as we're having a rain break from olive picking (absolutely miserable today, compared to yesterday's warm sunshine), I cleaned any leaves and other debris from the olives and weighed them, and I was exactly right! Now we only need to pick another 5 1/2 cases worth of olives and we've got enough to take it to the frantoio, the olive mill, to have it pressed for our very own individual batch. Of course we'll leave a bottle or 2 of oil for the owners of the olive grove on their doorstep.

What else has been happening since my last post? Well we planted some red onions and garlic, which is the thing to plant now during the waning moon phase according to conventional wisdom around here. And, oh yes I almost forgot, Mrs Ayak has given me another award, the Dragon's Loyalty Award. As I understand it's been given to me for loyally following her blog and commenting on it. Well on that basis here are my nominees for this award in no particular order. I won't notify you specifically, since if you're not reading this anyway, you are obviously not reading my blog! It is also given to some people who may not actually want it, but if you do, simply copy and stick it on your blog:

Angela at http://lettersfromusedom.blogspot.com/

Ruralrose at http://lifethroughthecracks.blogspot.com/

Anna at http://beautiful-liguria.blogspot.com/

Stefanie at http://siciliansistersgrow.blogspot.com/

Mike at http://subsistencepatternfoodgarden.blogspot.com/

Jenn at http://murphyjenn78.blogspot.com/

For future reference, I do appreciate being given awards, but I think my trophy cupboard is full now and I rather not clatter my sidebar up with numerous awards. Thank you anyway Mrs Ayak

As a final note for today here part 6 (or part 7? Sorry lost count) of our cut out and collect series of amusingly shaped vegetables: the knickerbocker carrot:

MAGISTRI STOPINI POETAE PONZANENSIS CAPRICCIA

Well here we are again. Sunday seems to be the day for blog updates. As announced last weekend, autumn has definitely arrived. Cooler sunny days are interrupted by rainy ones and showers. Today we got drenched on our bikes on our way home from Arcola. Friday we hardly left the house although it did dry up in the afternoon. Many of our neighbours have begun their grape harvests. Our vines in Villa have yet again succumbed to disease and not produced anything of note. The vines we planted last year are of course not producing yet, but they mostly seem to have survived the dry summer. I shall help our friend and neighbour Carlo with his grape harvest at the beginning of October. Modern wine producers measure the best time to pick their grapes by monitoring sugar and acid contents on a daily basis, but Carlo uses the scientific method of “my son, who likes helping with the vendemmia, comes back from holiday on the 3rd October; that’s when we’ll harvest.” Harvesting that late for exclusively white wines made from Vermentino means he produces quite alcoholic wines with low acidity. I’m having a glass of his wine from last year as I write this.

We still carry large crops back from our land, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, apples and beans today. Something I don’t think I have mentioned is that we have had our daily handful of strawberries since May until now. Never enough at any one time to make jam out of or even bother carrying home, but just enough to pop them into your mouth whenever we are in Arcola.

The festa season is coming towards the end. Tonight there is the annual event in honour of Ponzano Superiore’s most famous son, Cesare Orsini. I’ve been trying to find out a bit more about the man on the internet, but clearly his fame has not spread widely beyond his home town. All I could find out was that the man lived in Ponzano between 1571 to possibly 1636 and wrote amongst other things something called the ‘Cappriccia Macaronica’. He himself felt important enough to give himself an artist’s name: Magister Stopinus. In a very brief mention on Wikipedia for Santo Stefano he is described as a bad Latin poet. Well I was hoping I could find a nice little quote to introduce this entry, but I could only find this picture of him and his bad hair do.

Anyway, the poetry readings are to be followed by a concert. Hope the rain stays away.

There's autumn in the air

Yesterday autumn arrived. This is not to say it has turned chilly and cold, but the last two nights we’ve had heavy rain, the first serious rain in 3 months really. There were odd showers before, it’s been threatening occasionally, but nothing that left proper puddles behind until yesterday. During the day yesterday there were a few showers too and drizzle on and off and there is now even a slight chill in the air, which is actually quite refreshing after weeks of constant heat.
Nevertheless we walked over to Arcola yesterday to pick as many ripe tomatoes as possible, before they would be attacked by rot. Made a few more jars of tomato sauce today with it. Above you can see the dark clouds threatening above our village on our way back home.

Today was a beautifully bright and fresh day again and after the rains I thought this should be the ideal mushroom hunting weather, but no luck. We went into the woods and came back with virtually nothing, just one tiny mushroom of unknown provenance. We found some blackberries though as you can see. Soon it’ll be time to collect chestnuts.

I have, lacking any further advice, started making beer from maize and hops. I tried malting it (soaked the maize in water for 3 days, then spreading it out for another 3 days, until it started to sprout) and it worked to an extent, but there was not sufficiently enough sugar produced to turn into beer. So I added a bit of sugar to come to a potential strength of 5% AbV. It’s bubbling away merrily now. The colour of the brew is an odd yellow and it does not smell as good as the real thing in a brewery, but it’s only a small experimental batch, so we’ll just see.