of St. Happy and rainy days

The weather all over Italy had been getting quite unpleasant in the last couple of weeks except for with us. The North, the Alps and subalpine regions have been having their first snow already, as did higher regions of the Abruzzo, well south from us. Sicily, Calabria and Puglia in the very south have had severe flooding. The weather maps kept showing a large curved area of bad weather, just leaving us out.

We are protected to the North by 2 mountain ranges, the Alps and the Appenines from bad weather coming from there. To the East the massive Apuanan Alps shield us from anything coming that way. Only when the dreaded Scirocco wind blows from the South-West do we ever get rain. So whilst the rest of the country was sheltering indoors we spent a sunny afternoon on Sunday at the Fiera di San Felice, the 'St. Happy Fair'.



It's an annual event here in Santo Stefano and is basically just a huge sprawling market selling anything from the latest imported plastic toys from China, to all manner of kitchen ware, clothes, tractors and other agricultural eqipument, garlic, olive oil, cheese, useful and useless craft articles, umbrellas, hats, live and dead chickens, goldfish, pet and eating rabbits, donkeys (alive and stuffed), you name it.



We go there every year, partially as a social event, you meet everyone you know, partially to buy a couple of things we've been meaning to buy for a while, and partially to simply stuff our faces. I don't know what San Felice was famous for, but looking at the number of stands dedicated to this one particular thing, he's clearly the patron saint of porchetta, Tuscan roast pork.

Other food stuffs were available too, such as these delicious foccacette, small bread rolls baked for just a matter of seconds in this wood stove and stuffed with cold meat or cheese of your choice.

At the beginning of the week all weather forecasters seemed to be in agreement that we wouldn't be spared the bad weather for much longer. So Monday we went out to the land to plant the second terrace of broad beans, my absolute favourite vegetable. The first lot we planted 3 weeks ago together with some peas is already doing well. Now that we will have 2 terraces of this wonderful spring veg, the first cropper of the season, I think I shall hold a broad bean sagra next year. Note down the first weekend in June and you are all welcome!

The rain did arrive then yesterday and big time last night. We barely managed to sleep last night with a big electric and wind storm. As usual our house was struck by lightning about 3am, but I had luckily already unplugged the computer after having had a close shave with only my monitor and an old modem melting through earlier in the year. Also the new phone line didn't get cut off, like the old one did every time we had a storm. The electricity was only off for a few minutes.

So being confined inddors today we decided to give our store room a bit of a tidy up, firstly because we could hardly get in any more and secondly in case some stray bra would turn up(see last post). Here is a before picture:

Unfortunately we are severely restricted for space. I found this really interesting blog of a couple of smallholders in North Idaho, http://subsistencepatternfoodgarden.blogspot.com/, thank you Silke for the tip. They talk about their root cellar and pepper room. For a start I wish I could grow enough root crops to justify a root cellar. Everything goes in here, not only conserved and dried food, but also tools, our wardrobe, jackets, shoes and everything else that clutters up your day-to-day life.

I know I'm a messy pup, but we try and recycle as much as possible, and with recycling I don't mean carrying rubbish to the appropriate recycling container, but actually re-using things. I wear clothes until they fall off me and even then I am reluctant to throw them out, using them as cleaning cloths, cutting off the buttons for future use or cut out bits of textile as patches for the bits that still hold together.

However, with Susan having been given so many clothes recently and our space restrictions, we just had to throw a load out now. I must make it clearer to well meaning friends and family that, if they insist on buying us something, they should buy us something useful like a grain mill or gardening tools, rather than more clothes. They don't have charity shops here either to unload our superflous rags, not that they would take most of what we've been through.

Here is an after the tidy up photo. I know it's in the other direction, but it shows you that I at least managed get in far enough to take the reverse photo. Does anyone have use for an old but perfectly functioning Yamaha keyboard?

Here is part of our collection of jarred things from this year.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no lost bras were uncovered...and as I look out of the window, the sun is just peeping out again :-D

Of Saint Happy, Mushrooms and Frank meeting Franco

Just a little update on what’s been happening the last week and a bit or so. The weather has been a bit of a mixed bag and never as predicted by the weather forecasters, which makes planning the next day very difficult. One day you decide to get up early to get some work done, because the weather is supposed to be dry and you wake up to pouring rain. Next day you have a lie-in, because they promise you rain and the sun is out. Well at least last Sunday was a beautifully sunny and warm day as it was the ‘Fiera di San Felice’, the Saint Happy Fair at Santo Stefano. Saint Happy, or St Felix I suppose, is the patron saint of Santo Stefano (and not St Stephen as one would suspect…), and every 3rd Sunday in October this gives cause to celebration with a huge sprawling market through the streets of the town, selling everything from porchetta (Tuscan roast pork) to kitchen utensils to porchetta to live chickens and cattle to porchetta to tractors to porchetta to clothing etc. You get the drift. Porchetta is an essential part of any festa in these parts. On the photo you get a bit of a flavour of the event.

On the land, we finished the autumn clean-up in Arcola and started it in Villa. In Villa we also chopped down an old, diseased apple tree for fire wood. The wine had started fermenting with a bit of delay and therefore got slightly oxidized. So unfortunately it’s going to have rather too much volatile acidity (it’ll taste a bit vinegary in lay-speak), but should still just about be alright. The cider on the other hand smells divine, bubbling away in it’s demijohn.

One day we were both off sick after consuming some wild mushrooms, so for the time being I am banned by Susan to pick any more. They were of a variety that we had picked in previous years on our land and never had any problems with. In fact we had eaten the first ones on Saturday, but with a large armful of what I identified as Chanterelles from Villa (see photo above). The mushrooms in Arcola I had identified as Sheathed Woodtufts, which are described as good and edible. By Tuesday there were so many growing on our land, that I just couldn’t resist and fried some with the steak we were having that evening. I spent most that night on the toilet, whilst with Susan the effect arrived during the next day. Still, they tasted good… Either it was because of the much greater quantity consumed compared to the previous occasion, or that I did not cook them for as long as before. Saturday we stewed them in some milk and cream for a good while as a pasta sauce. Whichever way, it put us both off wild mushrooms for a wee while. We’re alive to tell the tale!

Frank our motozappa (plough) in the meantime had to go and meet Franco, the local ‘bicycle-and-small-machinery-repair-man’. The drive belt had apparently come off and needed to be tightened. For a good 45 minutes work Franco charged us all of €8. I know craftsmen in the UK don’t even get out of bed for that amount! So yesterday he (Frank that is) was put back into action to plough over a terrace in Arcola. Susan in the meantime gave the hornets in the hollow cherry tree their final eviction notice. Today we dug over the bed behind the former hornet’s nest and sowed some more peas. I know it’s not the right moon phase, but the soil is nicely wet now and I didn’t want to leave this job too long.