Of novel plants, wine tastings & Paganini

Ladies & Gentlemen, boys and girls, dear pets,

may I proudly present to you a world first: The Melumber! As you can see a cucumber and on the top of the plant and a little lower a baby melon. Must get that plant patented!

Joking aside, things on our land are doing extremely well. The weather during June and July has been almost perfect for farming: warm at times hot, with the odd sprinkling of rain inbetween, just enough, so that we did not have to water quite on a daily basis, but not enough to cause problems with rot. In addition here near the coast, we almost always have a pleasant cooling breeze.

As a result we are having bumper crops of tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, yesterday the first ripe melon, green beans, yellow peppers, aubergines etc. We have harvested the first crop of our 'two-season' fig tree and made something a little different with it this time, a fig salsa. I've got the recipe of the Italy Magazine Forum or rather community as they like to call themselves now, although modified it slightly. Goes well with meat. Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.italymag.co.uk/community/post/fig-salsa. Unfortunately the quantities are in American measurements, which I never quite understand.

I have also become quite innovative in the use of courgettes, being constantly on the look for recipes to work our way through tons of the stuff. Here's one for a courgettes soup:

Ingredients:

olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped

a tbsp each of finely chopped fresh rosemary & sage

1kg courgettes

the corn of 2 sweetcorn cobs or 1 tin of sweetcorn

200ml cream

salt & pepper

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and lightly saute the onion, garlic & herbs until soft.
2. Add the courgettes and sweetcorn and heat through, then add 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes until well soft.
3. Leave to cool for a bit and puree the mixture, or pass through a tomato mill or colander to remove the larger seeds and any possible stringy bits.
4. Add the cream and reheat gently. Season to taste with salt & pepper.

On the wine tasting front there have been some developments too. I will now be working together with the Strada del Vino dei Colli di Candia e di Lunigiana. I know a bit of a mouthful. They are a group of wineries from the province of Massa-Carrara at the northern tip of Tuscany who have joined up into a wine route for tourists. They will help me find work and I will help them promote their wines. Their link is: http://www.stradadelvinoms.it/.

On Tuesday we had a kind of test event with the local wine club that I run. We visited the winery of Pier Paolo Lorieri (http://www.scurtarola.com/), the president of the Strada del Vino, for a wine tasting of some white wines of the region. His winery is beautifully situated above the town of Massa with sweeping views over the Versilia coast line.

The tasting really showed the variety of wines produced in this small region. Each wine was very different and individual. Apart from wines made entirely or predominantly from Vermentino, we tasted a rare example of a single varietal Albarola, which normally is a minor blending partner of Vermentino in this region as well as more famously in the Cinque Terre. We also tasted a wine made from a blend of the rare and unusual local varieties Durella and Luadga.

Anyone wanting to know more about the wine tastings I do please check out my web-site and pass it on to anyone who may be interested:
http://users3.jabry.com/tuscanytipple/

Other than that we had a couple more events in the village. On Monday night some 150 odd people from in and around the village went for a night walk to the nearby ruins of Castello della Brina. Little is known about this castle and excavations are ongoing. A professor from Pisa Universty gave a talk on it's history as far as it is known, which was fascinating. It now lies oddly isolated on the Via Francigena footpath towards Sarzana, but appears to have been a major settlement during it's heyday between the 8th to the 11th century. It was destroyed around 1300, and the attackers really seemed to bear a grudge, because they raised the place to the ground. In the absence of dynamite the knocked holes into the bases of the solid stone buildings and the lookout tower, stacked wood into them and set fire to it. The heat then produced cracks in the stonework, which then collapsed. This practise apparently was quite common in Britain, but is almost unique in continental Europe.

Anyway the reason for the walk was actually to mark the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and some anorak gave a very boring presentation on that subject. Is just me who is thoroughly bored by the subject? What's the point of going to the moon, if we've got so much to do on our own planet, saving it for a start!

Tuesday night there was a chamber music concert in the inner court of our house as part of a Paganini festival. A young violinist, Francesca Dego and a pianist, Francesca Leonardi, played works by Beethoven, Schubert and Paganini. The atmosphere as usual was magical, the performances were impressive and the acoustics in our court yard is great for this style of music.

On Week(/d)days & Our Terraces Part V

One last word on weeding (well maybe not a last word; I feel a philosophical discourse coming on, on the meaning of life as seen in the absolute cunning and will to survive of weeds, indeed the virtual impossibility to kill weeds). I am absolutely determined to stay on top of the weeding business this year, so I have declared Wednesdays weeding days, no getting side tracked or anything (unless it’s raining of course).

Talking about getting side tracked, I know I was ranting a bit about the months and the unjust distribution of days within them, but where do the names of the week in English come from? In Italian you don’t have to be scholar in ancient languages to work out what the names mean: Lunedì – Moon, Martedì – Mars, Mercoledì – Mercury, Giovedì – Jupiter, Venerdì – Venus, Sabato – the Jewish Sabbath (probably means something in Hebrew too) and Domenica – Day of the Lord. All the heathen gods get a mention as well as the Christian and Jewish one (the latter two being allegedly the same). But in English? Ok, Sunday – Sun and Monday – Moon, but Tuesday? And Wednesday? Thursday probably was dedicated to Thor, who was the Germanic equivalent of Jupiter anyway. Both were in charge of Thunder, which would also explain the German Donnerstag – Thunder Day. Was Friday an early Muslim influence on the Germanic culture, meaning Free Day? I’m puzzled. Well in an effort to shed some light on the mystery I will from now re-christen Wednesday Weednesday, as probably in the olden days being the day when farmers did their weeding and I’m carrying on this ancient tradition.

What else has been happening? We’ve been out in Arcola most days to water. It’s been warm and no sign of rain recently. We’re eating our daily helping of fresh broad beans and for a bout a week a daily small handful of strawberries (delicious with sparkling elderflower wine!). The cherries are taking on a pinkish hue, the first figs will be ready soon as well as plums. Olive trees are breaking into bloom, although not as profusely as last year. And we started on “Project Shed”. Susan started digging the foundations for it (Don’t call me a slave driver, she insisted! She said it did her biceps a world of good and put her in good training for her bid to become part of the Olympic shot putting team. Nobody will believe she’s not on steroids!). We’re gathering more and more material from skips: old doors and wardrobes and any other old bit of timber we can find. The previous owner of our land had already gathered some roofing, which was stacked behind the old shed. As we lifted the stuff we discovered a snake nest behind/underneath it. Just harmless grass snakes though, which slithered off into the sunset.

I’ve had a couple of positive reactions to my mini-series “Our Terraces”, you seem to quite a enjoy it. So I won’t keep you in suspense any longer; here comes part V:

Terrace number 9 is where we currently pick our broad beans from. At either end is an olive tree. It also features our kiwis that we planted just over a year ago: Stud and his two female companions.

Terrace 10 is known to us as the strawberry terrace, although there’s quite a lot of other permanent stuff growing there. On the right foreground you can spot a fig tree and an olive. On the left foreground there are a number of cherry trees. In the centre there’s a young apple tree, a plum tree and on the far side another olive. Around the apple tree we’ve planted courgettes, melons and cucumbers this year. This is the terrace we spread our homemade compost, which means that it’s now more melons then cucumbers and a few tomatoes, have also sowed themselves out there, which I left in situ or transplanted a foot or so to the left or right.

Look out for Part VI of the riveting series “Our Terraces”

Things are looking up!

Well apart from spring in the air putting a spring into our steps there are a good few things to be optimistic about. First of all to our agricultural activities. The mini-winter that usually hits us at the end of March / beginning was a lot shorter and less severe than in previous years. The last weekend in March, especially the Sunday saw quite a lot of rain. It caused another minor landslide on our land, at the end of the terrace where we just planted potatoes. However, by the middle of last week the rain had fizzled out to just the odd light shower and by now has given way to very pleasant temperatures with warm sunshine. We’ve had a couple of foggy mornings, but nothing worse than that.

Accordingly everything has been getting a real growth boost and what the smallholder calls his ‘hungry gap’ - the time of the year when the winter vegetables have been harvested, the preserves come to an end and the spring vegetables are not ready – is nearly over. Another week or so and we’ll be eating our first fresh broad beans of the year, soon followed by peas, strawberries and plums.


The cherry trees are in full flower now, as are the pears, and the apples will follow soon. On the turn of the moon phase we went into sowing overdrive too. Courgettes, melons, cucumbers, broccoli, sweet corn, sunflowers, parsley, dill, celery all were sown out into outdoor beds. In the meantime the seeds sown indoors are growing fast and we shall start planting them out soon. All this helps no end improving our moods.

In addition to that today the prospects of actually earning some money again have drastically improved today. I had closed my small wine agency business at the end of last years as business had dropped off completely due to the current economic climate. I am now in the process of building up something new. I have had a meeting in Pistoia today with an agency, which rents out villas all over Tuscany to tourists. They will add a page to their website with my details offering tutored wine tastings to anyone staying in their villas. I will bring a selection of wines and give an informative and entertaining wee chat. So first of all I should give a recommendation of this agency which has given me this chance to anyone out there looking for a holiday villa or apartment in Tuscany. They are www.italytuscanyrentals.com. My page will appear there shortly.

Si if anyone out there knows of any other agencies near us, renting out villas or running B&Bs or even hotels, I’m available to run tastings for foreigners. Any contact may be useful.