December update and an award

I've won an award once again.  A while ago they seem to come along all the time, but then seemed to go a bit out of fashion.  I'm particularly pleased as this one was given to me by a relatively new bloger friend, Tanya from Lovely Greens.  Tanya is an American who somehow got stranded on the Isle of Man, that big blob between Britain and Ireland that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhail threw after his Scottish foe.  There she gardens, forages and makes things such as soap.  I don't know how much German she knows, but 'Liebster' in german means darling!  My wife is getting a little worried about these advances by strange women! ;)

Part of the award is that I am to pass it on to 5 other bloggers... I have recently not got around to following as many blogs as regularly as I'd like (partially due to my wife nagging me about spending so much time on the internet chatting to strange ladies...) well let's see, here we go:

1. Top of the list has to be the blog by my adopted virtual sister at Ohiofarmgirl' Aventures in the good land.  Her stories about he she manages her menagery of farm animals make me laugh out loud without fail and never fail to cheer me up
2. Jason at Zuchini Island in Australia has et himself a target of 80% food self sufficiency from a standing start.  I think he is finding it harder than he initially thought, but seems to have a lot of fun trying
3. Next fellow Italian farmer and revolutionary blogging from Puglia in the south of Italy on olive farming, dry stone walling, many recipes etc: La Contadina's blog 
4. Next a blog from the opposite end of Italy the far north at the foot of the Alps: L'Orto Orgoglioso, the proud garden, by Rowenna, a Hawaiian in Italy, I believe.  Her motto is: "You may not be reciting Dante in your dreams, but in the end, anyone can be the owner of a proud garden."  I like it!
5. Finaly I would like to pass the award to Little Paradiso.  Not a gardening blog, but it describes the life of a Texan in Monterosso in the Cinque Terre.  She recently wrote a lot about the destruction caused by the recent rains and the efforts of the villagers to rebuild their homes.  Do visit her site and find out how to help these people in desperate need..

Right, awards out of way here's what's happening in our garden;  There's been a wee bit of rain in the last few days, but temperatures are still more like spring fooling many plants into sprouting lush greens in what should be winter.  On the land I planted out seedlings of pak choi, tak soi and kale:

This the seed packet described as 'Japanese spinach, but are clearly of the brassica family:

Swiss chard sowed itself out all over the place and is looking lush:

Even the litchi tomatoes is still producing:

The broad beans for next year have started off well:

Conspiracy Cousin is back helping out.  Here is in action picking wild autumn olive berries for making our Christmas jam.

Other than that we are slowly getting ready for Christmas, which we will be spending up in the mountains again.  We've baked mountains of biscuits / cookies, including kaki cookies.  The little rain in the last few days has brought up some interesting fungi again, so hopefully we'll find some edible varieties in the mountains:

Have a great pre-Christmas time everybody and don't yourselves too stressed, it's not worth it! :)

Life Is Good!

 

When I started blogging I did it as a way of keeping in contact with existing friends and family, as a note to self and maybe, quite possibly come across some like-minded people who might find my ramblings useful or have some useful advice to give to me, because, quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing when I started on my path to self sufficiency.  So the last thing I was expecting was to make new friends via this medium let alone find new additions to my family.  

But that is just what has happened!  Not only have I made some great friends, some of whom I have actually met in REAL life (non of them so far have turned out to be axe wielding psychopaths...) and I have gained a brother and sister.  So I am especcially pleased to have received an award from aforementioned sister (needless to say our brother got one too... :)).  She goes by the name of Ohiofarmgirl and she blogs about her life in an Amish village (I don't think she is Amish given her like of Tequila...) growing food, raising all sorts of livestock and hating pigs.  So thank you sooooooooooooooooooo much sis, I shall oblige with the rules of thanking you, answering a bunch of silly questions and passing it on.  

Here we go:

1. If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing this? If you are not anonymous, do you wish that you had started out anonymously, so that you could be anonymous now?
I sometimes think I should have stayed anonymous, especcially since various authorities and banks are after me around Europe and I'm now rather easy to find.  But hey, who's worried?  I never thought this would go much beyond my original circle of friends.

2. Describe an incident that shows your inner stubborn side.
Well, the recent landslides on our land and my determination to carry on illustrates it quite nicely I think.  But another early incident in my life was when I was hitchhiking to Greece with a friend aged 18.  I refused to take a bus even for a few miles to get to a better spot to hitch a lift, preferring to remain at a dusty spot for 36 hours on the outskirts of Zagreb.

3. What do you see when you really look at yourself in the mirror?
I don't look into a mirror much, only when trimming my beard, which only happens when I start eating more hair than cream cake.  Then I see lots of hair.  I've given up going to hairdressers, because I get spooked by sitting in front of a large mirror for any length of time.


4. What is your favorite summer cold drink?
There's nothing like a cold beer after a hard day's work.  If I don't have that excuse, a fresh glass of Prosecco with some olives and bruschette.

5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?
Reading is high up on the list.  Anything from light fiction to old classics, gardening books, philosophy.  Listening to some music is also great.  Again my taste is fairly Catholic (in the sense of all encompassing...)  I listen to anything from Bach to the Stones, a lot of weird and wonderful world music, Mongolian throat singing, Finnish folk, Blues, Jazz, you name it.  As I write this I am listing to Ojos de Brujo Flamenco.

6. Is there something that you still want to accomplish in your life? What is it?
I still want to reach a greater degree of self-sufficiency.  Livestock will have to be a part of this, bees, chickens, goats, a wild boar or two...  We're also phantasising about an eco-village... And I want to meet my long lost brother and sister in the flesh.

7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the shy person, or always ditching?
I hated school from day one I hated school.  My brother (the one that I have met) taught me everything I thought I needed to no (counting to 1000 in German and English, the alphabet, who played at Woodstock and how to get into a cinema for films rated 16+), so I wasn't interested.  I went to one of the roughest schools in town, so it was best to keep your head down to avoid being head-butted.  Whenever it was safe to stick your head up though I tended to make the jokes.  If I did offend one I could always refer them to my big brother, which usually did the trick.

8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what would you see?
When I was 5 years old going to Rotterdam City Hall with my mother (I was brought up in Germany).  It was time with our constant travelling between Holland and Germany that I had my own passport.  The only question was, whether it should be a Dutch passport or a German one.  So my mother took me along to ask whether I would be drafted into the Dutch army when I was 18 if I lived outside the country..  The answer was no, thus I avoided both the German and the Dutch army draft and stayed a pacifist all my life.


9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?
Nope, this is me as I live and breathe.

10. If you had the choice to sit down and read a book or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?
Read a book every time.  I find it difficult talking to people I don't see.  When I worked with deaf children many years ago in India I found that when you only have your body language available to speak, it is impossible to lie.

I would like to pass this award on to two people: Laura at the French Country Challenge who has threatened to visit me in the near future, even if she has been a bit quiet of late and Vrtlarica, with the unpronouncable name, who gardens and smokes bacon in Croatia (ps: I believe the first part of her name means garden...)

Spring Tart and another award

I'm happy to have received yet another award from a fellow blogger. This one I received from Jenn of Sweet Water (http://murphyjenn78.blogspot.com/) ( I still haven't worked how to do proper links). Jenn blogs in Canada about cooking, photography and her fight against depression and I always enjoy her posts. Today's post will mostly be about something I know is close to her heart as well, i.e. local food.

But first I have to deal with the obligation coming with this award of listing 10 things which make me happy. So here it comes:

1. A disvovery of a new food topped by the fact that it is gathered for free. I love experimenting with such ingredients and when it does work out, like the example below, that makes me extremely happy!
2. A walk / hike in the country, especcially if it's coupled with finding some wild foods. (there's a theme developing here, I feel)
3. A good glass of wine. It doesn't have to be your top of the range classed growth Bordeaux (although I wouldn't say no), but an obscure discovery gives me just as much pleasure.
4. Watching seeds grow and become fully fledged vegetables that sustain us.
5. A musical jam session with our next door neighbours. We are extremely lucky to have some really musical neighbours. Mauro plays the squeeze box and bag pipes, Marco is multi-instrumetalist, playing the guitar, banjo, fiddle and other instruments. Between them they know some of best musicians of the province. Occasionally all those gather in our neighbour's kitchen and they don't mind me contributing my feeble efforts on guitar, banjo, harmonica, tin whistle and vocals, and we just make music for hours on end.
6. A good book
7. An act of kindness towards us. As I said a few days ago, there's nothing like "a little help from my friends".
8. Eating my first meal of broad beans in spring. It's the first veg ready on our land. I love it just boiled briefly and with some olive oil and lemon juice over some pasta. It's the taste of spring (well I'm going to have to add my spring tart now as well (see below))
9. Following number 7, it makes me even happier if I can help others. So if you need anything, if it's in my power, just ask!
10. Best of all would of course be all the above in combination! A good meal and a nice few bottles of wine shared with friends, while making music contributing all in various differing ways. What could top that!

Finally I would like to pass the award on to the following:

• Mrs. Ayak at http://ayak-turkishdelight.blogspot.com/ (I believe it's Linda isn't it? How do you do?) She normally sends awards in my direction so now it's my turn to return the compliment. I reckon her village in Turkey and ours in Italy should be twinned as they sound just the same.
• The other one I would like to pass on to Beck at http://greenspain.blogspot.com/. This is for offering to share some of her tomato seeds with me. She is relatively new to blogging. She writes about her efforts to live a more sustainable lifestyle in Spain, something that can only be applauded.

Right so much about that. Remember a couple of weeks ago I was blogging about the edibility of primroses and reprinted an historic recipe for a spring tart from http://www.theoldfoodie.com/. As the recipe was from 1733, it was rather lacking in detail and also when I was posting about this, another ingredient, the violet, wasn't ready. However now they are and this is my take on this ancient recipe.

Spring Tart

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

• 200g flour
• Pinch of salt
• 75g sugar
• 1 egg
• 125g cold butter

For the filling:

• ca. 2 pints of mixed leaves of primroses, violets and wild strawberries
• 1 handful of primrose and violet flowers
• 150g spinach
• 400ml cream
• 100g grated sponge biscuits
• 2 eggs, beaten
• Pinch of salt
• ½ grated nutmeg
• ½ tsp grated cinnamon

30g sugar

Method:

1. Mix the flour with the salt and pile on a your work surface. Make a mould in the centre. Put the sugar and the egg into the centre. Dot the cold butter cut into flakes around the edge. Knead all this quickly together into a smooth dough. Wrap in foil and refrigerate for an hour or so.
2. In the meantime make the stuffing. Wash the leaves well and separate the flowers and set aside in a small dish with some water to keep them fresh. If you have a juicer, simply juice your spinach and keep the juice aside. If not, maybe just boil the spinach with a drop of water and liquidise. Use a little less spinach in that case.
3. In a large saucepan bring a little water to the boil. Add the leaves and blanch for a couple of minutes. Drain well and place in a food processor together with the cream.
4. Whiz leaves and cream in the food processor and return to the pan. Bring to a boil and simmer for another few minutes (3 or 4). Take off the flame and leave to cool for a moment. Add the grated biscuits, the eggs, the salt, the nutmeg, the cinnamon and the sugar and stir well. Finally add the spinach juice to colour your tart green and most of the flowers set aside, leaving a few behind for a garnish

1. Preheat oven to 175 C. On a lightly floured surface roll out the pastry to fit a round cake tin with about 2cm going up around the edge. Grease the tin and place the pastry inside. Pour in the filling and bake for about 40 minutes.

• Leave to cool and garnish with the remaining flowers

I think it should have turned greener, but it sure was tasty. We had a bunch of people around for a wine tasting yesterday and I let them judge without giving away the ingredients beforehand. It was an unqualified success!

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:

of getting side-tracked

It's easy to get side-tracked in any walk of life. There's been a couple of things recently which illustrate this nicely. First of all I have recently received this award, which I was meant to pass on to a deserving recipient. Well, ok I almost forgot about it..., but after much deliberation I have now come up with two deserving blogs to pass this award on to. Both of them go to America, which just goes to show that not everyone in that strange country is humourless and thoughtless. Gives you hope really... Sorry, I didn't mean to alienate all my American readers, but I've had some bad experiences. I know you sensible Americans also exist! Here it goes anyway:

1. http://subsistencepatternfoodgarden.blogspot.com/. In this blog Mike describes his adventures of living self-sufficiently in northern Idaho. He's clearly keeping his sense of humour despite battling the elements in this northern climate. He even manages to convince his wife to raid the flower bed for edibles, so well done that man!


2. http://siciliansistersgrow.blogspot.com/. This one I only very recently started following. It is about 2 sisters (according to the blog name of Italian decent?) growing and gathering most of their food needs in California. Again a great read and good tips for the small holder anywhere. They even keep exact count on what they grow over the year, that's what I call efficient!

Do have a look at their blogs, if you are at all interested in alternative living.

The other illustration on getting side-tracked (apart from forgetting to pass on awards) is when you get down to do relatively simple job. Being still hampered by that stupid piece of bamboo in my arm, we have recently got rather behind on a lot of the heavy duty jobs, such as chopping wood, digging over beds, strimming down the bush etc. On Sunday our next door neighbour Marco turned up with an apricot tree he had just dug up from his garden, did Iwant it? Well, yes, even if I think he dug it up a bit early in the winter.

Sunday we didn't have time to plant it. Monday the weather was appalling and we were stuck indoors trying to keep the rain out of our leaking window. Tuesday was glorious again, however we couldn't stick it into the car and take it to the land immediately, because it was far to big and needed to be cut down first. All our gardening tools however, including any secateurs and loppers, are sensibly stored on our land (for those new to my blog, we live 10 km away from our food source). So we decided to go over to the land, digging a hole for the tree as well as doing a couple other jobs, then bring back some loppers to cut the apricot to size.

So on Tuesday Susan started turning the compost, our annual job for the waning moon phase in November, whilst I started digging the hole. Now how long can that take? I found a nice spot, i.e. next to where last winter we felled a majestic but ill cherry tree. A ring of the hollowed out trunk still remained, so I thought I'll just split that quickly into a few logs for fire wood. The first couple of logs split easily, but on the next one my axhead got irretrievably buried. So I got another axhead to get out the first one. That also ate itself into the wood and wouldn't budge.

Not having done a lot less physical work recently due to my injury I also found that my strength wasn't what it used to be and I developed blisters on my hand. Finally after much huffing and puffing, with the help of Susan, an iron bar as leverage, a pick ax and a spade we managed to free the ax heads and chop the wood into bite-size bits.

It was getting time for some lunch and I still hadn't dug my hole! After lunch I passed my recently sown bed which was to contain fennel and celery. I noted with satifaction that the fennel was doing exceptionally well, but needed a bit of weeding, whilst I couldn't see any sign of the celery. I sowed the celery late this year, because last year, when I did sow it in spring, I had loads of celery in the summer. I like celery in soups and stews in the winter though, and by then there was nothing left! So I thought I'll try for a winter crop.

This is what the fennel looks like now (after weeding):

As I looked closer at the row where I sowed the celery, I found there were some tiny seedlings, but that all the weeds around it had contrived to look just like celery. So after going through it with a fine tooth comb (no hoeing here possible!) I did find quite a few seedlings. They were sown at the same time as the fennel, but are a fraction of the size. At this rate, they'll be ready in the summer again...

This all took quite a while again and Susan had gone on to dig over a large bed, which was home to cucumbers, melons, courgettes and tomatoes this year, where we are planning to plant onions next. Finally before it got dark, I managed to get this hole dug (I'd have done it in the dark!) and filled with compost in readiness for the apricot tree, but taking some 5 hours to dig a hole is what you call getting side-tracked.

So today we went back in sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier drizzle and planted this tree. Here it is. I hope it will survive. It still had all it's leaves before it got dug up, but at least it got watered in nicely.

Finally, number 5 in our ever popular series of strangely shaped vegetable: The alien potato:

"ET phone home..."

Well, ahem, thank you

Well, I don't know what to say. I'm quite speechless. Or to put it in Barrack Obama's words: "Wow!". I received an award!


It was given to me by Mrs Ayak, an English woman living on some hilltop village a bit like ours in Turkey. She talks about her adventures on her blog: http://ayak-turkishdelight.blogspot.com/. It doesn't sound like your usual ex-pat hang out where she lives.

Well, I'm not sure what the etiquette is with these award thingies. Although this blog has been going for some 2 years now, I have only recently, with a bit of extra time on my hands due to the enforced injury break, started looking at some blogs by other people and mingled a bit. It seems you are supposed to stick it on the side of your blog, must work out how to do that, and then pass it on to someone else.

I've been rehearsing my acceptance speech all day in my head, but I think I'll just keep it short and sweet:

Cheers Mrs Ayak and everyone else who follows my blog! I'll have a think about passing it on and keep you posted. In the meantime you are all invited for Prosecco and nibbles this evening.

Unfortunately these news were a bit overshadowed by something very sad for me today. I'm generally a very positive, optimistic kind of person; easy to get on with; not easily thrown by events. I keep my sense of humour if I have to live on a Euro for a fortnight or when things just don't work the way I hoped. But there is one thing that makes me very sad: the loss of a friend.

I rarely put really personal things in my blog, especially if they concern other people. This particular person, I shall call her Y, is not likely to read this, but some people who know us and her may recognise her. She has been a good friend to us ever since we arrived in Italy. She has been almost embarrassingly generous towards us, showering us with unrequested gifts, helping us financially when we were in the doldrums, taking us for meals when we had nothing. Any protests she would put down with a "that's what friends are for."

She has long lived on her own and she doesn't have much in the way of family either, so sometimes I had the sneeking feeling that in her loneliness she was trying to 'buy' our affection. But we got on well, we saw each other often, I liked her sense of humour.

Last week we were invited to her house for dinner. She had sorted through a whole pile of clothes she didn't fit into any more and got Susan to try them on. They fitted her perfectly, so Y gave them to Susan. We had a pleasant evening together and went home late as usual.

A few days later Y rang us up and she said she was near us, could she pop up, she had something else for Susan. I said of course and she arrived with a brand new woolen coat and another cast off pair of trousers. Then she asked if Susan during our last visit, had accidentally taken a silk bra of hers, which may have been lying on the bed with the other clothes. I don't pay any attention to clothes, but Susan said she didn't think so. The two of them then went upstairs to have a look if they had ended up in Susan's underwear drawer. They hadn't. We promised, we'd have another look, as Susan's memory is not always the best.

Today Susan found another bra, which fitted the description and we said we'd meet her today to return it to her, she seemed quite upset about the loss of the garment. When we met up with her she said it wasn't the right one and now openly accused Susan of stealing the bra out of her drawer. Now Susan may have some psychological problems as a result of a brain injury sustained in a car accident 30 years ago, but kleptomania is not one of them. I assured her that I would guarantee her that she definitely did not deliberately steal this bra. If anything she may have accidentally picked it up with the other clothes, but we've had a major tidy up of our bedroom this afternoon, and it hasn't turned up.

Y said she couldn't have it that if she had people to visit that she would have to lock away valuables. Susan of course, and me feel badly insulted and we left under a black cloud. Me on the other hand, can't call somebody a friend who accuses me or Susan of stealing. I'm not too sure how to handle this situation. I'm thinking of sending her a handwritten letter, telling her that she must have made a mistake. But if she insists on her accusations, we could no longer be friends. I'd thank her for her friendship and her generosity, it would make me very sad to do so, but I would have to end it. I'll wait for a few days, in case she suddenly rings having found her bra.

I don't have that many good friends, so I don't like loosing any...