Terracing above the Pond

Some of my loyal followers may remember me talking at length about how to design a pond the permaculture way some 2 years ago.  The most ardent followers may even remember us digging with a bunch of helpers.  You may be forgiven if you think that this pond surely by now is well up and running, flourishing and teeming with wildlife.  However...  In permaculture design we use the SADIMET model: Survey, Analysis, Design, Implementation, Evaluation, Tweaking.  Yes, and now we are at the tweaking stage.  First of all the trick to grow clover in the base of the pond to seal it didn't work.  Secondly, the area above the pond site was still too steep and subsequent landslides filled in much of what we had previously dug out.

So first of all we had to secure the area above by terracing it.  Luckily we've been having plenty of helpers around.  First and foremost may I present you with our long-term helper for the summer, non other than Jaap, the son of Conspiracy Cousin, Buddha Barti, who had been living with us until his untimely demise last year.

Regular readers might see the resemblance.

Anyway we also had some short term helpers and despite the heat we built some terraces above the pond using old palettes as support.  Zosia and Igor from Poland helped during the first stage.

And Marianna from... well actually she's a bit confused... French, American, Italian, English?  Anyway, I knew her from one of the permaculture courses I helped to teach.

Next step is to excavate the pond a bit more again and this time we'll try lining it with cat litter made from pure bentonite to keep the water in.  If that works, we'll start planting.  We're off to the European Permaculture Convergence in Bulgaria next week, from which I'll be reporting back.  Jaap in the meantime will hold the fort back at the ranch with a couple of friends of his.

Pizza!

We said good bye to our helpXers, Becky and Nick today and we celebrated their final day with... PIZZA!!!  Made in the clay pizza oven the two of them had built for us.  As we were working together Nick remarked on the clay soil we've got.  He said he could maybe make us a pizza oven.  Of course I said, I like helpers with their own initiative.  Taking our cue from permaculture and having things you want to use a lot near the centre of action, we shifted everything, hugely heavy marble table and BBQ, from terrace 5 where formerly our tool shed was, to terrace 2 directly beneath the caravan, where they also proceeded to build the oven on a little ledge.

First they started playing in the mud a bit:

Then they put their heads together to plan their next step:

They made a base of some paving stones and clay:

The cardboard box became the first inner support.  More cardboard and paper was stuffed in and a first layer of clay plastered on top:

A couple of days later another layer of clay was added and the next time we were there it was already being fired up:

Here's Nick stoking the fire:

Whilst Becky was preparing the pizzas:

Here's a pizza in the oven.  So far so good...

...and finally one on the plate:

Hurray to Nick and Becky and thank you so much.  You are welcome back any time!

Oh and I'll be off the radar for the next couple of weeks as I'll be on a permaculture design course in the Piemonte in northern Italy.

Bad Luck Strikes Again

After the landslides in winter and the hailstorm last week we again face ourselves with another disaster.  This time caused by humans though.

Until today I have always felt we were living in a relatively low crime area.  In our village we routinely leave the key in the front door, even when taking the dog out for a walk.  I have repeatedly forgotten to lock the car, even leaving the windows open for a few days on the village car park.  But today we found that you shouldn't let your guard down, because there's always some opportunist out there.  We were on this occasion not the victims ourselves though, but one of our helpXers, which makes us feel particularly bad.

We are currently having two young girls staying in our caravan on our land helping us with some work in exchange for some free lodging.  While we were all working a few terraces lower, not having locked the caravan, one of the girls, Diane from France, had all her belongings stolen in broad daylight yesterday morning.  Her rucksack with everything.  The Carabinieri aren't interested.  They're just saying come back Monday morning!  

This is Diane a few days ago lifting some potatoes:

Diane was at the beginning of a trip of a lifetime.  She had planned to stay 2 weeks with us followed by another 2 weeks in Italy and a few months in India.  She luckily had her passport and cards on her, but lost a considerable amount of cash as well as all her clothing and various other personal things.

Those of you who know us and/or have been following this blog for a while, know we don't have any money.  Neither are we or Diane insured.  However we feel responsible for this, as she was staying as our guest.  I'm asking any of you please (!!!), to give this young woman back her confidence in humanity.  If it is at all within your means donate something for her, so she can continue her travels.  Every little would help.  Please be in touch, send us an e-mail (heikover@libero.it) if you can help in any way.

Another Minor disaster...

Einav and Yotam our current helpXers are leaving tomorrow after doing a sterling job for us weeding, pruning a tree, dog-sitting, securing a terrace and building a movable compost toilet and a new little viewing terraces right above the toilet as seen on the picture below:

However the last night they spent in the caravan they thought the heaven was falling on their heads.  We heard the thunderstorm on our side of the valley, but didn't get hit by it's full force.  However as soon as we drove into Arcola we realised that it must have been much worse around our land.  On the way up the hill we saw trees stripped of their foliage.  Still not quite realising the full extend we arrived on the land.  These were the size of the hailstones several hours after the storm with the sun already high up in the sky!

 

They must have come down the size of golf balls originally during the night!  The damage was pretty extensive.  Some of our plants looked like they've been through a shredder.

This was the volunteer pumpkin plant:

The surface of the pumpkins themselves looked like the planet Mars with numerous craters caused by comets:

Another squash with craters:

Swiss chard shredded to pieces:

...and the Greek corn:

and courgettes:

Many unripe tomatoes have been blown off the plant, but at least most of the plants themselves seem to have survived.  Many apples and peaches were scattered prematurely.  Another little step back, the vagaries of nature... :(.  At least the caravan survived the onslaught, our guests were safe and all the terraces are where they were before.

In other news we took a trip into the mountains today to a village called Vinca on the a tip that we might find raspberries up there.  I love raspeberries, but can't grow them on our land.  They only thrive in our climate above a certain altitude, so I was very excited.

The surroundings up there were stunning:

and Eddie played with his new friend Yotam:

but alas no raspberries.  Either we went up the wrong path or someone else got there before us.  We found one and Yotam ate it.

We might try another path next week and I'll let you know if we find anything that time.

Finally everybody, it's time to sow your cats for next season:

She's done it again!

Do you remember last year?  I was lying in bed with a splitting headache when right in front of my nose Rooney, our semi-feral cat dropped two kittens.  She did it again!  Not right in front of my nose, she only brought them after a few days, when their eyes were already open.

So anyone wantong a sweet little kitten... or can help us get Rooney neutered once she's finished suckling these little terrors, pleeeease come forward!


In other news, Shaun and Molly from Texas have moved on after leaving our caravan enriched by this little piece of artwork:

... and they have been replaced by Einav and Yotam from Israel who are busy weeding and building a compost toilet:

First caravan party!

It was the Shaun our helpXers birthday today so we had a little party for him in the caravan.

I knew these party hats would come in useful for something!.

And there were even birthday cake candles there and a 'buon compleanno banner.  What else do you need for a party!

Olive Pruning

The weather suddenly turned spring-like, giving us a chance to finish off the pruning of the olives. We had started looking after the olive grove last year. Before that the trees hadn't been touched for some 10 years, so major restorative pruning was called for. We never managed to finish all the trees last year, so we needed to take care of the remaining 15 odd trees, which had grown to a majestic height.

Thursday just Susan and I made a start, then Thursday evening reinforcements arrived out of the blue: two more helpXers arrived, Stephen and Frances from England. Even better they came with their own accomodation, as they are travelling around Europe in their camper van. The kitchen is already full with my cousin Bart and our other helpXer Addie. We immediately found we got on extremely well and they agreed to help us finish the pruning.

I climbed up into the trees with the chainsaw cutting off the big branches, Susan, Frances and Stephen cut the branches into smaller bits and dragged them up to the fireplace while Addie picked a bunch of nettles, sorrel and mallow to make a wild food soup which we then cooked on the embers of the fire.

Bart was in charge of the fire.

Last night we celebrated a job well done by downing numerous litres of vino. Today my head feels a bit delicate and we're enjoying a well deserved break. So thank you sooooooo much to our helpers, we wouldn't have been able to finish the job so quickly without you.

If my ramblings sound a little disjointed, it is because I still feel a bit disjointed...

Of wild food and spring preparations

We've been having a little helper with us again, Addie from California, although we haven't quite agreed what we all call her so we don't confuse her with Eddie, the Beagle.  Here was one of those situations: "you talking to me or him?"

Addie has come here to learn more about wild foods, so we have been indulging in my favourite past time once again.  We've been eating wild asparagus 'til we were sick (literally in the case of Bart my cousin, who likes it so much here, we can't get rid of him any more...), we've made my Spring Tart, crystalised angelica stems, Everything we could find soup, gorse flower wine, wild salads, etc.  Everything really started growing now as the temperatures slowly creep up.  This week rain is threatening the bits we haven't secured yet, we'll still be busy with this for a while.

Of course we have been sowing the usual things inddors and outdoors, but I won't go into details.  Today we planted 2 new trees though, Franz, the Kaiser pear tree is to replace the pear tree which got washed down the hill by the landslides.  Unlike my other pear trees, this one is a late ripener.  We also planted a new olive tree, a 'Pendolino'.  I was going to christen it Edgar, after EdgarAllen Poe, because of the story The Pit and the Pendulum, but was outvoted by Addie, who wanted to name it after her best friend Bela.  So from now on it shall be introduced as "Bela, you can call him Edgar".

Addie refused to pose with him...

So far our latest update.  Adiie is out as we speak, hunting for some borage to make Ravioli al Boragine... Mmmh!

Wild Food of the Month November: Autumn Olive & of Little Helpers

To those of you who have been following my recent posts it will come as no surprise what the wild food of the month for November is going to be.  NO! NOT the coypu, i still haven't managed to catch one, it's the autumn olive berry.

Now I have identified it with the help of my dear friend Mr'H. in Idaho I can't stop singing it's praises!  The name comes from the silvery olive colour of its foliage.  It's a shrub or low tree, not at all related to the actual olive, native in Eastern Asia and producing oodles of bright red, juicy berries.  Eaten raw they taste somewhere between a redcurrant and a cranberry, both fruits that I can't grow to save my life in our climate.

Further research revealed that the berry is not only edible and tasty, but extremely good for you with up to 16 times as much Lycopenes as raw tomatoes, making it a potentially powerful cancer preventative.  The plant is regarded in many places as an invasive non-native species, which has been planted along river banks to prevent erosion, but because of its high germination success has been known to displace native flora in some places.  The site where we found it there are only about half a dozen or so trees, absolutely laden with fruit.

Due to it's ability to absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere in can thrive on extremely poor soils and fix nitrogen in the soil and make it available for other plants.  The wood makes good fire wood, carving wood or can be used to build solid wooden posts.  The fruit, apart from simply enjoying it raw, can be juiced, made into jam, fruit leather, dried, added to cakes etc. etc. etc...

Now I want to save some seed to plant on my land.  Non-native it maybe, but something that prevents erosion, a recent problem as you'll have noticed, and has so many other uses, sounds just like the thing I like to grow.

On a slightly different note, this week we are having a little helper staying with us, Cat from Oregon.  We have recently signed up with a website called helpX, that brings together people who travel on a budget and would like to experience their destination more intimitely and are willing to work for a bed and meals, with people who can do with a hand with something.  So Cat became the first in hopefully a long line of people who decide to share our lives with us.  So today and yesterday we gave her an introduction into our lifestyle by taking her wild food foraging and then turning our spoils into lovely preserves.

It's the season for 3 different fruits at the moment.  One is the fruit of the strawberry tree, which Cat is picking up there and of which I have spoken extensively last year in a post which is proving to be the most googled post on my blog.  The recipe of a strawberry tree fruit jam I posted at the time was only a limited success.  We ate it, but I wondered if it was worth our while again as it turned out to be a bit bland.  So this year I decided to add some different ingredients to make a Christmas Jam.

This is what we did.  We picked about 500g strawberry tree fruit.  Then we added 500g of autumn olive berries.

and maybe 150g myrtle berries

Here's Susan in action picking some of them:

To those 3 fruits we added a chopped apple, zest and juice of one orange, a spice mixture consisting of cinnamon, vannilla flavoured sugar, nutmeg, ginger and cloves.  We cooked that until soft, than added 500g sugar and boiled fast until setting point.  After that we pressed this through my tomato mill to get rid of the rough seeds and achieve a smooth consistency..

 Reheated it and bottled it in hot jars.  Boy was this delicious!  I shall make biscuits filled with this stuff for Christmas if I can keep my greedy mits off it for long enough.

The other experiment with autumn olive berries was along the lines of my (in)famous "I can't believe it's not mango chutney" chutney, in the sense that we made a "I can't believe it's not cranberry chutney" chutney consisting of unweighed and unmeasured quantities of autumn olive berries, apples, onions, ginger orange zest and juice and white wine vinegar.

Mix up and boil for a couple of hours until a good consistency is achieved and bottle into hot jars.  Again, absolutely delicious and will make a great accompaniment for turkey or chicken.