Busy times

Good Lord, it's been a busy old time. Hardly have time to draw a breath, getting behind on the gardening work and have loads of catching up to do on the blog. So here it comes, a big one today.

First of all this week turned out to be a bloggy friends visitors week. Monday our blogger friend Stefani and her husband Eric came all the way from California to see us (hey I think I might have finally worked out how to do a link!). Of course they didn't come all that way just to see us, but they took a day out to come down from Genoa, where Eric attended a conference.

We picked them up from La Spezia and gave them the guided tour of our land and our village and fed them some of our food, broad beans, as well as a mallow soup and some cherries and strawberries.



Stefani and I had a great time exchanging gardening tips and discussing the pros and cons of a small intensively used garden in contrast to 18 sprawling steep terraces.

On Wednesday our blogger friends Babette and Paul turned up. Babette was amongst the first followers of my blog, apart from friends and family. They are semi-professional pilgrims, if there is such a thing. After taking early retirement they followed the St. James' Way to Santiago di Compostela on horseback. Looking for a new challenge they took their horses down the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome on horseback. This much less travelled route goes straight through our village and hence the connection.

Having found on their first trip, that signposting was not always good and facilities for would-be pilgrims were rudimentary along some stretches of this route, they decided to do it again, this time on bicycles and write a guide book about it. They now have written and published a number of books on their travels.

Their latest venture is finding a connection route between these two routes, whilst at the same time raising money for a charity that is building a school in Burkina Faso. So please do look up their blog and donate if you can! 2 months ago they set off from their home in Arles in Southern France, on foot this time, but accompanied by their trusty pack horse Nelly and their little dog Flea (Eddies new best friend!). We met them 15 km before our village on the other side of the mountains and walked back with them.


They've been having a few rest days with us here, before heading off back home on Sunday.

As this is meant to be a gardening blog, here a few impressions of the current state of our plot:

kohlrabi

Lentil in flower

Ripe cherries (Hurray the fruit season has started!)

Winter squash.

Max the pumpkin

Basil

In other news, Eddie the puppy is growing fast. Here he is lounging on a deckchair on our land.

...and here he is chasing a pine cone (we'll try him on rabbits next).

Furthermore, I had to go back to Franco the bicycle man saying he no longer needed to keep the bike aside for me, I found one on a rubbish tip. All thet was wrong with it was that it had a bent front wheel. I didn't even need to change the height of the saddle or pump up the rear tyre. I replaced the front wheel with one from my old bike (one of the few bits that were still ok on it) and hey presto: a virtually brand new bike!

Here's the kittens trying it out: Pelé steering...

...and Georgie trying to pedal.

Incidentally we have found a home for the third of the trio, so one down two to go. Sure you wouldn't want one? They are very sweet!

kittens at 4 1/2 weeks

As we came home quite late last night from the festa, I noticed a small object outside our kitchen door. At first I assumed it was a dead mouse delivered by one of our feline friends. On closer inspection it turned out to be a newly born kitten.

We assumed it was one of Senna's, Rooney's sister. As a quick explanation, when Senna and Rooney arrived at our house with their mother, Rooney took to us imediately, while Senna wouldn't let us touch her and ran a mile every time we tried. Hence the name Senna. We feared she might be pregnant too, but what could we do?

So I found this tiny kitten, thinking at first it was dead. But as I picked it up, it moved and squeeked weakly. It was very cold, so I warmed it in my hand for an hour or so, trying to find it's Mummy, but no chance in the dark. I thought It won't make it through the night, so I tried feeding it some watered down milk through a syringe. It didn't like that much, but when I soaked a corner of my shirt with milk, it sucked it dry.

Still, what to do with this kitten? So I decided I'll slip it in with the others, while Rooney was feeding them. And hey presto! Aunty Rooney has adopted her little nephew / niece, and the other, bigger cousins don't seem to mind either. Especcially Cruyff, the ginger one has taken to looking after her wee cousin.

And then this morning, we found Senna just outside the door on a chair with a blanket over it and 4 further kittens. Heeeellllp!!!

A big thank you and the kitten VIDEO of the week

Here comes my second post of the day. First of all I want to say a very big thank you to the following people for sending me seeds: Beck of http://greenspain.blogspot.com/, who sent me some tomato seeds a while back, Angelika, who sent me some Jimi Hendriks ("Purple Haze") carrot and some sunflower seeds, Mr. H of http://subsistencepatternfoodgarden.blogspot.com/, who sent me more seeds than I know what to do with including some exotics like tomatillos, litchi Tomatoes and a rainbow of carrots, plus a useful mushroom picking guide and some gardener's handcreme, and finally Get Soiled of http://www.getsoilednow.com/, who also sent me some seeds, but which seem to have got lost somewhere in mid-Atlantic. I'm still hopeful that my postman will eventually deliver them.

I don't know how I deserve such lovely friends from all over the world. All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Before today's new moon I wanted to get some of the carrot seeds into the ground. So I sowed the following varieties: Purple Haze, Purple Dragon, Solar Yellow, Atomic Red and Belgian White. Some of them I put into the cold frame, which I now leave open. This is because this is where I have my deepest, richest soil. I can't wait to get to try all these varieties.

Finally for today here comes instead of the kitten photo of the week the kitten video of the week! They are starting to taken an interest in their environment now. Occasionally they even crawl over the edge of their basket. Enjoy!

this 'n' that

I'm a bit busy with other things at the moment, so again just a quick post with a few photos from the last week or so.

First the kitten photo of the week: Kittens at 2 weeks. They now have their eyes open, except Cruyff, who has only opened one eye.

...followed swiftly by.... our puppy photo of the week! Yep one of those 10 day old little worms has got our name on it! They are Beagles, so thinking ahead I was thinking of Snoopy. I'd have to get him flying goggles and a leather helmet. Alternatively Gigi, as in Gigi Buffon the goalkeeper of the Italian national team to complete our football team. Susan wants to call him Ben. Any other suggestions out there?

And here's the Mama.

on the land the figs are coming on,

the cherries are in flower,

closely followed by the apples,

the kiwi leaves are sprouting. Although in previous years they've always made a good start to then slow right down and refuse to flower or give us fruit. Maybe this year?

and finally the potatoes are breaking through the ground. So all looking good.

Next week I promise you the next instalment of the wild food of the month series.

We're Grandparents!!!

Well cat grandparents at any rate. Our model daughter hasn't yet decided to curtail her career. Yesterday I woke up with a splitting headache. As it coincided with the Scirocco once again sending wet an miserable weather our way, it was the perfect excuse to spend the day in bed. At some stage a couple of our cats, Rooney and Senna demanded entry, so we let them in and I went back to bed, while Susan busied herself downstairs in the kitchen.

After a wee while I became aware of some unusual activity. So I carefully opened my eyes... and there... right on my favourite TV chair was Rooney giving birth to a kitten. We knew she needed neutering, but couldn't afford the vet's bill. She had increased in size suspiciously, so it was bound to happen sooner or later. By the time I got my camera ready, the first one was already out: a tabby, just like her mother and grandmother (her natural grandmother that is, Susan is only her adoptive grandmother (Susan isn't tabby either (not even tubby I hasten to add))).

Here's number 2 coming through!

... and she's made it safely!

...but what's this? It's number 3!

Number 1 and 2 aren't sure yet whether they like being bored... born, sorry born!

And finally number 3 has made it too! Quite enough for a small cat like Rooney.

Here's Auntie Senna congratulating the new Mum and asking if she can be the godmother of number 3 who looks so much like her.

Finally, after much confusing woozling about, each finds a tit to suck Mummy's milk, and Mummy can finally have a rest.

And this is them 24 hours later all well.

We've sort of already thought of names. Now for my friends from across the Pond, they may not realise after whom Rooney was named. Wayne Rooney is currently the best English football (or as you would prefer to call it soccer) player. Now we didn't name her that because I am a particular fan of Manchester United, Rooney's current club, nor because he's a particularly good looking fellow (he isn't), neither would Wayne Rooney win the Brains of Britain competition (our Rooney would beat him hands down), nor was it because our Rooney is a partularily good footballer (although give her a wine bottle cork and she dispays some talent at dribbling!). The naming came about due to another marked similarity between the two, when Rooney was still a kitten (our Rooney that is). She had huge ears, just like her namesake. Whilst the footballer is still afflicted with those ears, our Rooney sort of has grown into her ears, but the name stuck.

Now staying on the football theme, we decided to give the kittens footballer's names too. The dark tabby one (in the middle of Susan's hand) we decided to call Pelé, after the greatest footballer ever to grace a pitch. The ginger one (to the right on Susan's hand) shall be named Cruyff (pronounced more or less Kroif), after Johan Cruyff, the best footballer ever to come out of the Netherlands. Finally, the youngest multi-coloured one shall be called Georgie, after George Best, the best ever footballer from Northern Ireland and a particular favourite of Susan's (don't get her going on the day she accidentally passed him on the Belfast airport that now bears his name...).

Now instead of being broke and having 5 cats to feed, we're now broke with 8 cats to feed! Not sure if that puppy has been born yet. Well anyway, any donations of cat food will be gracefully accepted and if any of you ever fancied a wee kitten... Pleeeeeeezzzeee, taking them off our hands! I believe you can even eat them!

of juniper, pine kernels and castles

Although we don't have any pressing commitments most of the time we do try to stick to some sort of a routine every day, just to give our lives some structure. In the morning we wake up around 8ish. Sorry let me rephrase that: in the morning we get woken up by the cats around 8ish (if we are lucky).

Incidentally, if you've been wondering what's happened to our cats in the meantime, at the last count there were still 5 of them. We have refused any further applications for assylum and have turned back boats filled with cat refugees at sea to return back to Cat Land. Our original cat, Dot is only occasionally visiting now, there's far too much happening in the refugee camp for her liking. She's still cross that we've hung on to her daughter, who was supposed to have left home months ago! The daughter, Mickey, is most attached to us and is home most nights. I go out of the door last thing at night to call her in, and she comes running around some corner. Tigger, who arrived a few months ago as a skinny rake is gaining weight and looking well now. We're going to have to have her neutered next, she seems ready to send her kittens into the world. Luckily we have a friend who will do that for us, as we couldn't possibly afford it ourselves. Of her two kittens, Rooney (named because she has huge ears, just like the footballer) is the more friendly. She purrs happily and loudly if you only as much as look at her. Her brother or sister, we're still not sure yet, we aptly named Senna, because she is as fast as the Formula 1 driver. Apart from running away fast as soon as you move she counts eating as one of her hobbies. Despite the obvious energy consumption of running away a lot she/he seems to develop a double chin already!

Anyway, I digress. We start the day (after feeding the cats...) with a good breakfast, which is usually Susan's job to make: Juice, from our newly aquired juicer, muesli, wholemeal bread with homemade jam and coffee. If the cats get me up particularly early, Mickey will sit on my head purring, I will do the first part of the breakfast.

Next I will sit down on the computer to see if anyone's been sending me any messages or if there've been any other exciting news, while Susan clears up the kitchen from the night before. Unless there is then anything pressing to do, I'm quite happy to lounge about like that and read the on-line newspaper or so, but Susan tends to get ants in her pants roundabout then and says she needs to go out for a walk to wake up properly.

Today she went on a quite a short roundwalk, the weather was still beautiful and clear, and came back asking me what now? I've gone quite Italian when it comes to going for walks. I don't actually mind going for a walk, but I like it to have some purpose: going from A to B, i.e. to the shops, even if they are an hour or so away, discovering something new or, most importantly, foraging for wild food.

So off we went armed with a couple of bags and jars down the Via Francigena. Our village lies right on the pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome as walked by Archbishop Segeric the Serious in 995 ad or so. Following this path we headded down the hill towards the nearby city of Sarzana.

Halfway down, I never cease to be surprised, as you leave some woods, on a rocky basalt outcrop, to come across the extensive castle ruins of the Castello della Brina.



Every year archeologists of Pisa university dig up a bit more of it. They are still not sure when the place was actually built. Written records go back to the 10th Century, but they have found items going back to Roman and even Etruscan times. It was destroyed in the 15th century, when it was a castle of the Bishop of nearby Luni. The attackers really bore a bit of a grudge, because they raised the place to the ground and toppled the round tower.


The rocky sub-soils on this hill provide a home for quite a unique flora, such as box, laurel, sloe, Aleppo pines and juniper. So today we were chiefly after juniper berries. In small quantities they are good used in pickles and cabbage dishes. However I'm after making a type of gin, juniper being the main ingredient of course (from Dutch Genever = juniper - short gin). Lacking a still it'll be more of a gin liqueur or 'gineprino' as they call it in Italy.


As we walked on we also found a whole handful of pine kernels, at least €10 worth I reckon. They are quite a pain to gather and even worse to then afterwards shell, but at €3 for some 30 grams or so, it's worth it. We still have a bit of basil growing on the land, so I can make an authentic pesto.

As we walked back I couldn't stop sniffing my fingers, which smelled gorgeously aromatic of juniper and pine resin. (that was until I had an itchy bottom and added a bit of an earthy note...)

In the end we walked all the way to Sarzana (1 3/4 hours if you don't gather anything), because we needed a couple of things from the shop. By the time we got back it was time to think of dinner, which is my job.

free super foods

Like the Italians I'm always on the look-out for free food to be gathered from from the wild. Whatever the season, there's always something: aspargus, blackberries, elderflowers and elderberries, wild onions, chestnuts, to name just a few of the more obvious ones.

Now I have found a new one. I had an e-mail from the American Simply Recipes Web-site (http://simplyrecipes.com/) with a recipe for a Tomato, Cucumber and Purslane Salad (http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tomato_cucumber_purslane_salad/). I had never heard of purslane before, but there was an explanation and various links, including an article in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea). It's scientific name is Portulaca oleracea and is also known as Verdolaga, Pigweed, Little Hogweed or Pusley. It's particularly popular in Mexico, but is also considered a delicacy in parts of Europe, Greece and Turkey in particular.

Looking at the pictures and descriptions I thought, I know this stuff... I've been pulling it out from amongst my peppers and aubergines in great big bundles as a weed. Nobody's told me it's edible. This is what it looks like.
Well, if you find this in your garden, don't pull it out, it's deliciously fresh and crunchy, and not only that, it's one of the richest sources of Omega-3 fatty acids, in particular alpha-linolenic acid. These are essential fatty acids, which cannot be produced by the body and its other prime source is fatty fish such as mackerel or salmon. Do you know what fish costs these days? And this food is entirely free. There were also links to some other recipes such as Purslane, Tomato, Tomatillo Soup or Pickled Purslane. I shall try my way through them and experiment a bit. We tried the salad this evening and it's good!

Oh, and I know you've been dying to see the othe 3 cats, here they are. From left to right: Rooney, NoSi and la Mamma, Tigger

An urgent Appeal

Actually two appeals. Firstly, so far I have always refused offers of empty jars, thinking I've got so many clattering up our cantina already, I'll never run out. However, it has happened, we've run out of preserving jars. The litres and litres of tomato sauce I do on an almost daily basis are ok, I just bottle them in old beer bottles, no shortage of those. But the berry season has started. We already have a backlog of blackberries and elderberries in the freezer, because I don't have any jars to put them into, and the peaches and the second batch of figs are getting ripe and will want using.

So, PLEEEEEEEEASE, PLEASE, anyone reading this living anywhere near us, save us your empty jam jars and all and we will come and collect them!

On that subject, with the last of the jars I tried making a new preserve I have not tried before. I had read a recipe for an elderberry jelly on the internet, but I don't like adding artificial pectins and I can never be bothered with dripping jellies through muslin and all that hassle, so I came up with my own recipe for elderberriy jam:

1.5 kg elderberries (weight after de-stalking)
5 crab apples
1/2 untreated lemon
1 kg sugar

1. After collecting the elderberries, freeze them. That makes de-stalking them an easier and less messy job. Once frozen, de-stalk them by running a fork through the bunches. Chop the half lemon, skin and all and core and chop the apples.
2. Combine those ingredients and cook in a large pan over a low heat until the apples are soft.
3. Add the warmed sugar and boil rapidly until setting point is reached.
4. Now pass the whole mixture a couple of times through a tomato mill or press through a sieve.
5. Re-heat and bottle in hot jars.

Now to come to our second appeal. My regular readers will remember our cat saga. In November last year, just as the weather started turning unpleasant, a cat turned up on our doorstep, a red tom. Because of his canning resemblance with the cartoon cat, we called him Garfield. He seemed a nice, well behaved cat and we started buying food for him.

Shortly afterwards, he started bringing his girlfriend. She initially just came for meals, but did not stay the night. She was black and white with a black dot on her nose, so we called her Dot.

Now we were getting a bit worried, because she very much looked like a producing female. And right enough, a few days later she brought her kitten with her.

As she must have been born in the neighbourhood, that meant she was born under the shadow of the church of San Michele Arcangelo, who is also depicted on the stone relief on the wall opposite our bedroom window. So we called her Michaela, or Mickey for short.

Now, that we had two intact females in the house, we had to kick Garfield back out again. He has died in the meantime. He had evidently been attacked by a dog. Anyway, cut a long story short, we've had our two girls neutered, and they are still with us. However words has evidently gone around in the cat world that we are a bit of a soft touch for cats.

So a few weeks ago another regular visitor arrived, a very sad skinny looking female. We called her Tigger, because she is a grey tiger type. A couple of days ago she introduced us to her kittens, Rooney (originally Ears, because she is more ears than cat, but re-named after Susan noticed the floppy ears of Wayne Rooney at last night's match of England vs Holland) and NoSi (can never make up its mind, "shall I come, or not. No... si...").

So between them the five cats are eating us out of house and home. So any cat lovers out there, the PONZANO SUPERIORE CAT SANCTUARY welcomes any donations of cat food!

of computer problems and climatic anomalies

Well, again some technical problems forced me into a short break from posting on this blog. This time it was a virus on my computer. A pop-up claiming I needed to update my Google tool box turned up on my screen and couldn’t be clicked away. Alarm bells should have been ringing then, but foolishly I clicked ok, the only option that seemed to work and bang! there it was. I couldn’t access the internet for a bit. Our extremely helpful and friendly neighbour Marco came up with a solution though and everything is running smoothly again without any permanent damage. Thank Marco for that!

Talking about technical problems, my printer, a Canon Pixma IP 2000, was also playing up. A message told me that it’s ‘ink absorber’ was full and that I would have to take it to an authorised Canon service department. Marco did a quick internet search and also found a solution to this problem. All I had to do was press a few buttons in a specific sequence and, hey bingo, the printer works again. Is this some sort of scam by Canon to get their service departments some work? You take your machine to one, they tut and hah: “ooh, that’ll cost you mate…”, give it back to you the next day and charge you €30 for a 2 minute job. Sort of an inbuilt, pre-designed fault to make you spent some more money with their company? Sounds ridiculous to me.

Anyway, what else has been happening in the meantime I hear you ask. Well It has rained a lot. A hell of a lot! Shortly after the last post it started. Some villages along the rivers Magra and Vara were cut off from the outside world due to flooding. Below you see a photo of the Magra on one of the few days on which we had a break in the weather and judging by the rubbish stuck in the trees (which normally stand on dry land!) the river was up to about 2 ½ metres above it’s normal level.
This weather is being blamed by a wind called the Scirocco. It’s a south-westerly originating in the Sahara desert in Africa. Now you’d think a wind coming from the desert brings nice warm and dry weather to your shore, but unfortunately it crosses a fair bit of the Mediterranean on it’s way here, where it can pick up plenty of water. Once it arrives up here with us it meets up with a cold air sitting on top of the alps and northern Appenines and simply dumps half of the Mediterranean Sea over our heads.

And talking of climatic anomalies, our car appears to have developed it’s own micro-climate. Somewhere it has sprung a leak and with all that rain there are some serious puddles, if not to say ponds inside the car. This means, even when the sun is shining outside, it’s raining inside the car. It’s like a tropical rainforest. I need wipers more urgently for the insides of the windows than for the outsides! And with us transporting a lot of freshly cut wood in the car, we have introduced quite a varied wildlife to the car as well. In one of the ponds I believe the first signs of some primeval life form have started to evolve.

Enough of all that. Since about Wednesday the weather has finally improved again and the sun is back. We built a small poly tunnel as you can see above and will sow some early lettuces out in there this weekend. Today I sowed the first indoor seeds, namely various tomatoes, various peppers, aubergines, melons, cucumbers, chillies, basil, savoury, chervil, dill. And the best news of all, Mickey the kitten is finally over her period of being on heat and doesn’t miaow at us all night, nor do the toms outside.

Quiet winter days (and disturbed nights)

The weather since the last post has mostly been good, albeit cold at night. The exceptions were the 7th January, which was decidedly unpleasant with driving rain and a chilly wind and yesterday which was grey and drizzly. Other than that the sun has been shining with pleasant daytime temperatures, but quite cold nights. Little frost for us though. So we cut quite a bit of wood on our land, spending cosy nights by the fire with the cats.

Talking about the cats… well, Dot the mother has had her operation last week and is now neutered. She was understandably a bit groggy for a few days, but seems to be recovering fine. However, Mickey, the little one, has now started to display all signs of being on heat herself. The poor wee thing couldn’t be more than 4 months old and already all Toms out of the village queue up outside our window and give nighttime concerts. Mickey herself has her hormones going wild too and she’s been keeping us awake for the last 3 nights. So we’re starting to feel a bit under the weather ourselves.

Susan has stared her teaching in Borghetto Vara this week. It’s only once a week, but it’s a start, because we desperately need to earn some money. Borghetto and it’s neighbour village Brugnato are two picturesque quiet villages in the valley of the river Vara, behind the Cinque Terre. The old centre of Brugnato is shaped like a key seen from the air. Yesterday (the drizzly day) we went to Aulla for a spot of shopping. Aulla is not a pretty town, having been destroyed during the war and not very sympathetically rebuilt, but it does have some hidden gems. We walked up to the castle yesterday. The path leads through a woodland with a botanic garden. From close up the castle actually looks much nicer than from below, where it looks squat and ugly. Inside is the Lunigiana Museum of Natural History. We’ll have a look at it next time.

I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left

Well the end of 2008 is nearing and it’s time to reflect on the past 12 months. First of all an update on the events of the last couple of weeks. The weather up to Christmas eve was glorious. We went for some walks and carried on pruning trees, something we started over a month ago but was interrupted by the bad weather. On the 23rd we had an earthquake, 5.1 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre about 50 km Northwest of here (as the mole digs) on the other side of the Appenines. We noticed a slight tremor and I don’t think anything serious actually happened. The link for more details is http://cnt.rm.ingv.it/~earthquake/data_id/2205007630/event.php.

Christmas Day turned cloudy and we had our usual quiet day, eating and drinking lots. We are now drinking our own wine, which strictly speaking isn’t ready yet, but as it was sitting in our cold cantina at Villa, fermentation had simply stopped and wasn’t likely to restart again until late spring if at all. So it’s now a semi-sweet rosé, but still at a hefty 13% alcohol or thereabouts. The highlight of the Christmas dinner was the guinea fowl stuffed with a chestnut stuffing which I made and froze when the chestnuts were in abundance. Santa brought me a the new CD by Seasick Steve, “I Started Out With Nothing and I still Got Most Of It Left”. Seasick Steve is an excellent Blues musician who seemed to have suddenly shot to fame a year ago when he made an appearance at Jools Holland’s New Year Hootenany on British TV. He plays mostly his own music in the Delta Blues fashion and he has an inimitable story telling style. Not only tell his songs stories, but he quite literally tells stories on his CDs mostly about his former life as a hoboing tramp, travelling America by jumping onto trains or hitchhiking and generally living it rough. His great sense of humour always shows through, which is something I always appreciate in any art form, whether it’s music, painting, sculpture or conceptual art. Life’s too short to take everything serious. Check him out on http://www.seasicksteve.com/

Boxing Day the weather turned seriously cold with an icy wind going. Yesterday we appear to have mislaid our kitten. She somehow escaped, but was with her mummy at the time, so we weren’t too worried, but to date she has not returned (the mother has) and with temperature around freezing outside now, and with the amount of unused cellars and hidyholes in the village a search being almost impossible, we don’t hold out much hope of her returning. Shame as we just managed to get her confidence and she was very sweet.

Anyway, to return to Seasick Steve, the title of his album: “I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left” pretty much sums up our year and my life in general (not that I’m complaining, mind). It’s not entirely true of course either. We may have been broke at the beginning of the year and still are now, possibly even more so, but we have gained experience, friends, memories and a cat. We are still here against all the odds and we are healthy.

Let’s start our review of 2008 with this blog. I started it just over a year ago and find it useful in many ways. It disciplines me into actually doing things worth mentioning in the blog, it reminds me at what we have been up to at any particular time, when we planted, pruned, harvested what and I get the occasional contact and even tip from interested people all over the world, such as what to do with kaki from someone in China. I am amazed at how many people from so many different places reach my site. On the 29th of March I installed that little world visitor map at the top right of this page. From this I gather that 2,247 visits have been registered since, that’s just over 8 hits a day, from 75 different countries. Almost exactly one third came from the UK, which does not surprise me. Number two was the USA with 23%, which does surprise me, given that I don’t know many people there. Italy is at number 3 with 15% and Germany at number 4 with 6.5%. Amongst the also rans I’m surprised to have had more hits from India than from the Netherlands (I am Dutch), and even places like Vietnam, Madagascar and the Palestinian Territories featured. How do you people find me? I’d love to know and would appreciate some comments. People who have given me feedback to this site have been all positive, so I shall carry on for the time being.

On our agricultural activities, this is the first year we have more or less dedicated ourselves full-time to them (having pretty much given up the business with the deteriorating economic conditions) with encouraging results. We keep learning new things by the tried and trusted trial and error system. Amongst the new things learned this year was that it’s generally best to plant a particular crop, such as peas or broad beans just the once, rather than staggered to increase the length of time to harvest. There tends to be a window of time which will give the best crop, whilst early or late crops won’t do so well. If you have too much produce at that time we have discovered many new ways of preserving crops, which will then come in handy when you haven’ got much else. Circumstantial evidence recently also seems to indicate that moon phases do make a difference to crop success. We sowed to beds with peas within 10 days of each other, the first during the waxing moon in ground not previously enriched and the second during waning moon a terrace down in a bed that has had compost added the previous season. The latter had over half failing to shoot whilst the former is looking a lot healthier. We have had a similar experience with onions, which are supposed to be planted during the waning moon phase, and they did do better than those planted shortly before during the waxing moon. The trouble of course is, no matter how carefully you plan your farming year, something always crops up which puts you behind schedule, the weather most notably, or equipment failure slowing the rate of ploughing or pruning and other unforeseen events.

As far as our finances are concerned nothing much has improved. My endeavours in finding a job haven’t really got anywhere. I’m registered with most job agencies in the province, but if anything at all they come with jobs I am not qualified to do such as accountant for metal company or such like. I’ve tried to get a job grape picking with some of the larger vineyards in the area but also to no avail as they already have a plentiful supply of cheap and willing Eastern-Europeans on their books. One wanted a qualified oenolgist, but whilst I have an idea of the theory, I can’t lay claim to this title. Susan in the meantime will get some teaching work again in the new year. She is going to teach a couple of classes in Borghetto Vara, a small town in the Vara valley and is likely to get her job in Sarzana back, where she worked earlier this year.

All in all it’s been a good year, if it wasn’t for the constant lack of cash. But we’re getting there and looking with some confidence into 2009. Oh and the photo on top, I have no idea what these berries are either, we saw them on a walk recently. Maybe they are the ‘fruits of our labours’… Oh and I just noticed this is the 100th entry of this blog!

Born Under A Bad Sign

In the words of Albert King and other Blues greats, I must have been ‘born under a bad sign’, ‘for it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all’. Or maybe it’s the arrival in our house of those cats (‘My baby’s got a black cat bone’) or punishment for some other sin.

Things started going wrong on my birthday, 17 November. Incidentally many thanks for the various birthday greetings. The weather had been good around my birthday and we decided to get the olive harvest in. We picked a total of some 30 kg of healthy olives. It’s a bit of an awkward quantity, not really enough take to the mill to turn to oil, but a bit too much for simply eating. However we did pickle them all in brine, so shouldn’t have a shortage of eating olives in the house for a bit.


As we got home, I tried as usual to go onto my computer to check my e-mails and maybe post something on the blog, but no can do. I couldn’t go on-line. After trying various things with the help of Marco from next door, changing the modem twice, I only just now managed to get back on-line now. So sorry for any un-answered e-mails etc, and hence the long gap between postings here.

Two days after this mishap our baking oven gave up it’s ghost. I use it a lot, not least for making bread every other day. When we arrived here we bought the cheapest stove we could find and it seemed fine. The oven however can only be switched on with a timer, and the spring inside the timer had given way. I located a shop where I could order a replacement, but at a whopping €50 and a waiting time of 10 days. The whole bl***y thing cost only about €250, how can such a small part cost that much? Just as we are short on funds anyway. Well we had to bite the bullet and the machine is back in operation.

Next thing that went wrong was the chainsaw. I was trying to prune back an overgrown plum tree and the chain jumped off and bent slightly. The costs of that I have not yet assessed. I’m hoping I might be able to fix it myself. Finally today the second of our two mobile phones seems be on it’s last leg and I cannot afford to replace it. I don’t use it much, mostly for time keeping and emergencies, but it was handy for that. And I thought bad things happen in 3s not 4s.

Anyway it hasn’t all been bad. As for the cats mentioned earlier, you may remember me talking about Garfield. Roundabout my birthday he had decided to move in permanently, so we started buying a wee bit of food for him. He never seemed terribly hungry though and, for a stray cat, he looked remarkably well fed. One evening, after Garfield had settled on our bed, another cat poked it’s head through the door, a very skinny, even emaciated, black & white female. She did not look well at all, loosing hair off her hind legs, having a bright red bottom and looking very weak. So we fed her some too. We called her Dot, because of the black dot on her nose. She and Garfield seemed to get on fine with each other too as you can see.




Dot, to begin with, would never stay for very long either. A bite to eat, ½ hour’s rest and off she went again. After a few days of this, she had turned up again in the evening, had something to eat and a cuddle with Susan, and off she went again… only to reappear after 5 minutes with a little grey & white kitten in tow. Kitten, having been born in the wild and not seen many humans, went straight into hiding in my pyjama drawer and wouldn’t come out for 2 days. Now, 2 weeks later, he (or possibly she, we haven’t been able to assess that yet) has become a little braver, but is still shy. We called it Mickey (which could be short for Michael or Michaela after the patron saint of Ponzano Superiore). He stays 24/7 in the house now, Mummy Dot herself sees to it. It’s far too dangerous out there for little kittens.

Garfield in the meantime has been evicted. I saw how the lady next door specially cooked liver for him, shooing away other cats, so he clearly has understood the principal of survival of the fittest, the fittest being the cat that charms humans into feeding him well. He is doing well for himself, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep an intact tom cat with an intact female in our house, unless we wanted to breed them. So now we have been chosen to become cat owners. I actually wanted a dog really.

Other than that winter has arrived earlier than last year. The end of November, the beginning of December have been atrocious. Snow in the mountains, rain, hail, gale force winds and cold temperatures for days on end. We’ve been sitting around the fireplace, baking Christmas biscuits and trying to coax the kitten into trusting us. In the breaks of the weather I’ve pruned over half of the trees on our land in Arcola, planted garlic and did a general tidy up. Yesterday and today were fine and sunny again. We’ve only done one more walk for the guide (Aulla – Sarzana) because the weather didn’t allow for much more.

Of Stray cats and Pilgrims

This is our latest house mate up there; we call him Garfield, because he is the spitting image of the famous cartoon cat. He does not seem to belong to anyone in particular, but he’s a clever cat and knows how to beg. On balmy nights he does not mind striding the alleys of Ponzano Superiore, but on rainy ones like tonight he seeks shelter with softies like us. As you can see he already feels quite at home and he fell asleep as soon as he had finished reading a couple of chapters of this thriller. He purrs very loudly and at night he has been known to snore loudly, but he’s such a dear we can’t bring ourselves to throw him out.

The weather just started to turn again this afternoon. This morning we were in Villa under grey skies, bottling the cider (it’s delicious!) and carrying on the strimming job until we succumbed to a fine drizzle slowly making work unpleasant. By the time we got home we were enveloped in low cloud and the rain set in in earnest. The weekend and Monday was mostly fine, with just the odd light shower on Saturday. Our neighbours used the dry spell to get their heavy olive crops in, but we decided to delay as at least one of our trees bears a particularly late ripening variety. We on the other hand got on top of the weeding on the late vegetable beds.

Yesterday we had some pilgrim visitors: Babette and Paul, the authors of a guide to the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrim’s route from Canterbury to Rome, came to see us while re-checking part of the route for a new edition. We had them around for lunch which extended to an all day affair. We found we had a lot of things in common, including a certain wanderlust, and it was a real pleasure finally meeting them in the flesh after having known them for some time purely as ‘virtual friends’ from the internet. I had a feeling we would be on a similar wavelength, but you never quite know until you actually meet people. They are planning to move closer to us, from Brittany to the Provence and I for one hope to see them again in the not too distant future. On their books see http://www.pilgrimagepublications.com/