Rain at last… & Part VII of “Our Terraces”

However, it would have been nice if it had arrived quarter of an hour later, so I would have got soaked to the skin!

Yesterday we were making an early start to attack the weeds and trying to escape the worst of the heat. We also picked a couple of kilos of cherries. Around half-3ish, were in just watering, Susan pointed at some dark clouds over the mountains. I just dismissed them, thinking they’ll just stay there. As we made our way home on our bikes they did come threateningly close though. I tried out-sprinting the storm – we had left our windows open – whilst Susan managed to find shelter. The trouble about out-sprinting a storm is you should try and ride in the opposite direction rather than towards it. So half way up the hill I got absolutely drenched, battered by hail and nearly blown off my bike.

It only turned out a shower though and Susan was soon able to follow. Today’s temperatures as a result a markedly fresher and cooler, rather pleasant really. At home I turned the cherries into jam and used the stones to start off a cherrystone liqueur. It’s great the way nothing gets wasted. It won’t be ready to drink until roundabout Christmas though.

Here comes Part VII of the 9-parter “Our Terraces”:

Terrace 13 features a young walnut tree in front and an olive in the back. Between those we have planted our tomatoes this year, hence all those bamboo sticks. In the meantime they are much more visible of course and should produce the first fruit in a couple of weeks or so. Behind the olive tree is a bed of dwarf beans.

Terrace 14 is the only one with no trees on it at all. It used to have a fig, which I had to cut down. It’s since been dug over to accommodate mostly peppers and a few spare tomatoes. Hidden amongst the weeds is still some garlic, fennel and some Swiss hard. I bet you all can’t wait for the concluding episodes of the story!

On Pests & part IV of “Our Terraces”

This heat wave is showing absolutely no signs of abating, in fact is getting worse, so we’ve been having a bit of a rest day today. The long term weather forecast is predicting a scorcher of a summer too with temperatures well into the 40s, so this won’t be my last mention of the heat this year I don’t think.

As threatened, here comes a word on pests. We don’t seem to be too bad on our plot. We don’t have any trouble with snails and slugs for example. One pest troubling us is ants. We have 2 species: large black ones a small red ones. The latter have a nasty bite and are very aggressive. The main damage they do though is to our trees. As our land had been abandoned for a few years, the trees were not well looked after, suffering disease and being overgrown by ivy and brambles. This weakened them sufficiently for ants to get into them and really wreak havoc. A few trees I have already had to fell as a result. Ones established in a tree, they are almost impossible to get rid of. Fire and/or boiling water kill large numbers, but there’s always an astonishing number of survivors saving the at least some of the eggs of the colony.

Another pest is the black fly. Broad beans inevitably get attacked, however, the earlier you plant the fewer problems you have. I sowed them out in October and have now finished harvesting them. When (not if!) you get the first sign of an attack, it’s on the tender tips of the plants. As soon as you spot this, you pick of those ends, wash off the black fly, boil and eat them (the plant tips that is, not the black fly). If you do this the black fly never take over enough to completely spoil your beans. I have also had a slight attacks on my newly planted cherry tree as well as on the sunflowers, which I’m treating with my own invention of anti-insect spray.

Cultivating everything organically, as I want to eat the produce myself, I don’t use any chemicals to combat pests and diseases, so I have come up with my own recipe for, what is more an insect repellent rather than an insecticide. I had some very old dried garlic powder bought years ago at an Indian corner shop. It was so old it had solidified into one solid lump. I put that lump into a saucepan together with a grated bar of natural lavender soap, a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and about a litre of water and brought the whole thing to the boil. Once cool again dilute at a rate of about 10 to 1 with water and spray about once a week onto your plants.

The mixture stinks to high heaven, but has proved effective. Black fly don’t like, nor do the ants, who look after the black fly and aphids. Most effective it has proved to be against a red and black beetle (not a ladybird, a bit bigger and a longer body), which has destroyed my brassica in the last couple of years. I’ve sprayed the stuff onto my Tuscan black cabbage as well as on my Brussel sprouts, and they have stayed away from them since. I still spot them amongst the general herbage, but they stay away from my cabbages.

I dare say it would make a good mosquito repellent as well, if you don’t mind smelling like a garlic salesman on cheap aftershave and don’t mind having no friends… Mosquitoes are of course a problem too. Where we live in Ponzano, we have no problems with them, living on top of a hill, exposed to the prevailing winds and with no standing water near, but on our land we are protected from wind and the insects evidently find places to breed. The most worrying are the tiger mosquitoes who have become more widespread in recent years. It’s not only that there bite is worse than the one of their smaller cousins, but they are also potential transmitters of disease. A couple of years ago there was an outbreak of a tropical disease near Ancona on the East coast carried by tiger mosquitoes and of course with global warming it is not impossible that Malaria will make a re-entry into Italy.

Until not very long ago Malaria was prevalent in Italy, which is one of the reasons why many villages were built up on hills, where there is “bell’ aria” (good air) as opposed to the plains, valleys and marshes where there is “mal aria” (bad air). To this day, when we tell people around here we live in Ponzano Superiore, they’ll tell us: “Aah, Ponzano. C’e bell’aria!”

To finish off on pests, there is the olive fly, which puts it’s little maggots into the olives, but it not enough to worry about. In a bad year 10% of olives are effected, in good year like last year none. Maybe I should try some of my garlic spray on those as well though. Oh, and the white butterflies which lay their eggs on brassica are also deterred by my spray. Other than that we don’t seem to be pestered too badly by pests.

Now to part VI of the continuing story “Our Terraces”: this is terrace number 11.

It’s dominated by cherry trees in the foreground. At the back we found space for one bed, which has a mixture of the above mentioned Brussel sprouts, red onions, Swiss chard as well a few spare courgettes. Bear in mind that all photos of this series were taken on the 25th April, so in the meantime the cherry trees are heavy with fruit.

Terrace 12 has an olive tree in the foreground and more of those wild cherry trees, which have sowed themselves out there. Behind there is a wild plum tree. Don’t miss the next episode of “Our Terraces” as we are nearing the conclusion.

'Critical Wine' Tasting

I meant to give you all an update over Easter and wish you all happy holidays, but Telecom Italia spoiled those plans. Yet again we were the entire Easter weekend without a phone line! This time there was a thunder storm just in the vague vicinity and bang Saturday morning the line was down. Of course they don’t work over the weekend, so it wasn’t fixed until Tuesday some time. I’ve had about enough of this company: they can’t do us a broadband connection for our computer and every 6 to 8 weeks at least the line is down for 3 or 4 days. What am I paying service charges for? If anyone knows of an alternative telephone service provider in Italy they can recommend, please let me know.

To all those who have asked about the Abruzzo earthquake, thankfully we were far enough away to not have been affected by it or even have noticed it. We don’t know anyone in the L’Aquila area either, but it does make you think, an event like this. You feel all snug and safe in your century old, solid stone building and there even historic churches fall over like card houses. To those of you who can afford it, do give to the various appeal funds to help the victims who are now staying in tents. We heard reports on the BBC channel that Silvio Berlusconi told those victims that they should see the fun side of it all and treat it as a “camping weekend”. Significantly this wasn’t reported by the Italian media and our neighbours were disgusted when we told them, quite rightly so!

Right, now that I have got rid of my two annoyances of the week, ‘what did we get up to over’ Easter, I hear you ask. The weather has been good despite forecasts to the contrary. Only today the Scirocco is blowing rain in our direction again. We planted out some more tomatoes and we’ve been harvesting our first broad beans, lettuces and radishes (the size of golf balls!). Just in time, before we start suffering from malnutrition.

Good Friday I made my traditional Swabian ‘Maultaschen’, a kind of German Ravioli stuffed with spinach (or Swiss chard in our case, can’t grow spinach to save my life in this climate) and minced meat served in a broth. The Swabians being a very religious, but also very cunning people, try their hardest to stick to lent and not eating meat during the run up to Easter. However by the Thursday before Easter (they call it Green Thursday for some reason) they get quite desperate. So they disguise the meat with the green of spinach and stuff it inside the pasta, in the hope that the Lord above doesn’t see them cheating.

On Saturday I still had so many Maultaschen left, that I took them across to our next door neighbours, Marco and Susannah, and we had them together with them, followed by a secondo of lamb chops. It was a lovely evening and with our and their food combined we had the best meal in a while.

Easter Sunday we went to a wine tasting in Montaretto near Bonassola. The title of the even was ‘Critical Wine – Terra e Libertà’. I wasn’t sue exactly what to expect, but with that title it was bound to have something to do with wine. We took a morning train to Bonassola, a pretty little Ligurian seaside resort on the other side of the Cinque Terre.

From there we could either take the shuttle bus, which winds itself 10km around bendy mountain roads to the village of Montaretto, or we could take the shortcut up a steep 3km footpath. It was a nice day so we opted for the latter. The views became more and more spectacular as we fast ascended above the sea. We heard Montaretto before we could see it. The whole village, a place about the size of our small village, was in party mood. On the outskirts an ad hoc campsite had sprung up on what normally served as the football pitch. A remarkable number of long-haired, flower-power hippy types seemed to be around for this 3-day festival. I was glad I hadn’t donned my business attire for the occasion, I would have looked a right fool.

Despite all that it was actually a serious wine event showcasing mostly organic wine producers and leftish-leaning co-operatives (sometimes combined). Most producers came from Liguria, Piemonte and Tuscany, but other regions were also represented. It was interesting to taste these wines. I must say though that many a small producer uses the tag organic as an excuse for dirty winemaking techniques. Quite a few had a tendency to be oxidised and just lacked definition. Others have produced good wines though, so I shall use some in upcoming tastings. As one of the suggested tastings I am offering is organic and biodynamic wines, as I do get asked a lot about the subject.

To name a couple of the highlights of wines you can also look up on the internet, there were Chianti Montalbano from Fattoria Castellina on www.fattoriacastellina.com, Candia dei Colli Apuani (Just down the road from us) Vermentino (tastes of Banana!) on www.viniapuani.it, Barbera Colli Tortonesi (Piemonte) from the Co-op Valli Unite www.valliunite.com (especcially their Vighét 2005, made from old vines) and a lovely Verdicchio di Castelli Jesi from La Marca di San Michele, www.lamarcadisanmichele.com. In addition to wines, there were offerings of beers, preserves, Sicilian bread, honey, organic beef, donkey salami, sheeps cheeses, etc.

Despite the fact that Susan in the end was a little unsteady on her legs we walked back down along a different, but no less scenic route again.


Maybe next year we’ll return to this event and join the tent colony, so we won’t have to wobble down the steep mountain after drinking large quantities…