Of Telecom and festas

Ok we changed telephone company, but… Unfortunately Fastweb rents the lines of Telecom Italia, and when something goes wrong with those, I tell Fastweb, they tell Telecom, and one day they may even turn up and fix the problem. As usual the line went down on a Friday, just before the weekend. An engineer turned up after shouting down the line on Monday afternoon (miraculously minutes after I complained. He claimed he’d solved the problem and left. However the problem was not solved and another one was sent. Again, minutes after I complained as to where this new chappie would be, I had a phone call saying he couldn’t find my house. Had he been wandering around the village for hours or had he just stopped at the bar for a few apperitivi I wonder?

Never mind, hopefully this isn’t going to be the pattern of things to come. It’s festa time around here, and we couldn’t miss our favourite ones, even if we are skint. With our Swiss friend Irene and our English friends James and Alison (and Holly), we went on Friday to the Sagra di Ravioli in Arcola. The serve some of the most delicious ravioli there, best served simply with butter and sage or a creamy nut sauce.

Saturday and Sunday we went to the Medieval festa at Santo Stefano. It commemorates the handing over of the keys to the castle of Sarzana by Piero di Medici to king Charles VIII of France in 1495 after France had conquered this part of Italy. Or as one neighbour put it, “I’m not going there, they are celebrating a war we lost!”

Anyway it’s all just harmless fun, with the entire village dressing up in medieval garb and showing off ancient skills. Have a look and a listen at some of the impressions from this year’s fun:

These guys are known as Sbandieratori:

This chap is the notary presiding over the Medieval market

A spectator on daddy's shoulder

These are the keys to the castle allegedly. I always thought they should be bigger

These are 2 dear friends of ours who have a B&B at the bottom of our hill. When they see us starting our descend on our bikes, they ususally insist on inviting us in for a homemade limoncino.

This is Cristina with her wee girl. She plays the Queen every year together with Pino on his horse as King Charles. This year was a special occasion for them, as they got married just a few hours before!

Story time for the kids:

These 2 young ladies tried to lure into their house of ill-repute, but Susan was dragging me back.

Trampling on grapes

Chestnut season

Allora! The weather is still holding, pleasantly warm temperatures during the day and balmy evenings. Today we were in Arcola finishing the autumn clearing job. I applied the strimmer to the top terraces, even clearing up some corners I hadn’t attempted before. There is a beautiful olive tree on the very top, which I very much assume is on our land, but which was totally overgrown by 2 ancient, rampant vines and plenty of ivy. The tree is actually heavy with olives this year, so I freed it from the invaders and cleared up the ground underneath. While putting down the strimmer for a minute I had a little, actually quite a big, visitor who settled on it for a wee while, a Praying Mantis. Not only people in Italy are religious…

This work ,of course, resulted in plenty of burnable rubbish. So Susan lit a fire nearby, and then went on the hunt for some lunch. Chestnut season is in full swing, so she collected a good kilo of them, which we roasted on the fire, Hmmmmm! We had already feasted on chestnuts on Sunday, when we went to the Sagra della Castagna, the chestnut festa, at Barbarasco on Sunday. Apart from roasted chestnuts we had pancakes made with chestnut flour topped with ricotta cheese, ravioli and lasagne made from chestnut flour with a ragu sauce and finally sgabbei, puffed up bread balls, with a selection of cheeses and salumi with not a chestnut in sight. A couple of handfuls of roasted chestnuts actually fills you up better then a sandwich.

As the fire burned down we threw the hot embers down a terrace into the entrance of a hornets’ nest. Not that I have something against hornets per se, but they built their nest inside the base of a rather large cherry tree of ours, which has been hollowed out by termites and which is likely to die and collapse soon anyway. It also blocks the path to what this summer was our lettuce bed. Just passing the nest was fine, but when Susan was trying to dig it over last week to turn it into a pea bed, they got a bit upset and stung her. So to enable us to cut down this dying tree and to grow peas behind it these hornets, I’m afraid they have to be evicted. Not sure yet if it has worked, but it certainly created a panic amongst the insects.

Paradise Found

The search is over! After centuries of humanity’s search we have at last found the location of the fabled Garden Eden as described in the Book of Genesis and depicted in numerous works of art. Columbus thought it was in South America, others sought to bring paradise back to earth by either converting the rest of the world to their holy faith or, failing this, just slaying them. But it’s already here above the small town of Arcola near La Spezia, Liguria, Italy. It’s just like it’s been described, you reach up or down and you find something to eat. The snake seems to have moved out, but fig leaves are still available as items of clothing. Most other animals seem to get on with each other too, except me and the mosquitoes and the neighbour’s cats with each other. Incidentally there is an excellent book on the subject “Paradise – A History of the Idea that Rules the World” by Kevin Rushby. He follows the history of the paradise myth back from the Greeks (Pythagoras), the Persians through to Columbus, the pilgrim fathers of America to modern paradise seekers, like ourselves, looking for their own piece of heaven in foreign lands. The book is a really good read and comes highly recommended.

Sorry about the long gap between postings again. We’ve been busy keeping our little paradise tidy and well watered. It has rewarded us with plenty of produce. Apricots, apples and since today hazelnuts are all ready. Of course there are still plenty tomatoes and other veg, which is just as well as we are pretty much skinned at the moment and would be reduced to begging if it wasn’t for our own food. We’ve been busy preserving too, blackberry and apple jam, ginger and pear sauce (great with pork), green beans in brine with herbs, roast tomato sauce, dried beans, celery in brine (just an experiment, see how that turns out), mixed fruit salad in syrup.

The weather has continued to be warm to hot and dry with the exception of the main national holiday of Ferragosto, when normally virtually the entire population of Italy heads for the beach. This year they were a bit stranded, or un-stranded as the case may be, as it was unsettled, windy and showery all day.

Last week was our sagra at Ponzano Superiore, the Sagra della Scherpada, our local version of a covered vegetable pie. As usual it was extremely busy on all 4 days, although we only we went the one day, Saturday. Over the period of these celebration the population of our village swells from some 300 to some 3000 and the volunteers cooking and serving really have their hands full. On Sunday we saw our neighbour Mauro playing with his band Tandarandan again. They performed at the Ethnological Museum of the Lunigiana at Villafranca. That way we had a chance see the contents of the museum too and were amazed to see many agricultural exhibits and tools that looked exactly like things we still use now. I knew some of our tools are a bit old, but I didn’t thinks they were museum exhibits yet.

History in Santo Stefano part 1

It is still festa season. Friday night we went with our friend Irene to the Sagra del Raviolo in Arcola. It’s one of my favourite sagras of the year, because the ravioli really are special. They are handmade, stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach and a choice of toppings: ragù (minced meat sauce), sage & butter, or nut sauce. The delicate flavour of the butter and sage best enhances the flavours of the ravioli themselves without overpowering them, but the rich walnut sauce is also delicious.

Last night we went to another highlight of our year the Historical Re-enactment of a Medieval market along the Via Francigena in the old town of Santo Stefano. This annual event is a great excuse for all the locals to dress up in medieval garb and have a great knees-up. Proceedings begin with a procession headed by the drum-rolling, fanfare-blowing, flag-waving ‘sbandieratore’. They are a group of young people, waving, throwing and juggling large flags around skillfully. They are followed by all the nobles, first and foremost by King Charles the I don’t know how manyeth of France, who was given the key to the city of Sarzana in 12something (I really must find out the historical details sometime). He was played as every year by our friend Pino, who rides in majestically on his horse.

All ages get involved.

After them the soldiers and knights in shining armour march in and finally the convoy is tailed by the ordinary trades people as well as the entertainers, the jugglers and musicians. After the ceremony of the king sitting down on his throne and everyone shouting “hurrah!” lots, the flag throwers, the knights and the other entertainers show off their skills. The trades people in the meantime, the weavers and cobblers, the bakers and cooks, the painters and wood carvers, the fortune tellers, and basket weavers, the herbalists and archers set up their stalls around the narrow alleyways of the town and show off their skills. As you can see, great fun is had by all.

Cooking sgabei, puffed-up, deep-fried bread balls of the region