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:

A walk to clear the head

Last night I had a bit of an argument with this new telephone company we've joined earlier in the year over a phone bill. This morning, to my great annoyance, it stopped working all together, i.e. no internet no phone connection. We weren't overdue or anything. Phoning their service line is free from a land line, but not from a mobile, apart from the fact, that we have bad reception in our house anyway and they put you through the usual routine for 10 minutes: "if you are an existing cutomer press one, if your granny wants a new phone line press twentytwoandahalf," etc, etc. So I just went off in a big huff this morning.

We had some business at the local commune in the valley, so we left home on foot to sort that out. Then I said to Susan, I could do with a beer for lunch now, fancy wondering over to our cheap shop on the other side of the river in Albiano. Arriving there I still felt I needed to let off steam, so I said let's explore the hills above Albiano and see what's up there.

Well I can tell you now, we've had a fantastic day! Climbing up the hill opposite our village we came across a signpost towards Stadano Bonaparte. I don't like walks where I return the same way we went, and I knew there's a bridge at Stadano back across the river. Incidentally, you may have guessed, the small village of Stadano Bonaparte is the ancestral home of Napoleon, however, you wouldn't know about it, it's all modern buildings now.

Here's a view towards it:

The best thing was though that the path was not well trodden and absolutely teeming with beautiful mushrooms. To my regret I can not identify many for definite, but one of the most impressive looking and most easily identifiable is the parasol. I put my phone next to this specimen to give you an idea of the size of the bugger!

By the time I had the camera ready the small family of fairies sheltering under it had already disappeared, they don't like having their picture taken. You just have to take my word for it. Oh hang on there was a big fairy peeping out from one...

This is one from above:

and another which hasn't opened yet:

They are great fried with a bit of bacon. The closed ones make good stuffed mushrooms with a sage and onion stuffing. We only picked 2 as we couldn't possibly eat more than that, but I've read in the meantime that they dry well, so we shall return to pick some more.

Soon we found out, why the path wasn't so well trodden, it had eroded away shortly before Stadano and ended in a sheer cliff above the river. So we did have to return the same way we went. Here are some more impressions from our walk:

holly oak

fern on a stone wall

an autumn view of the village of Caprigliola.

And when we returned home, the phone line was ok again, thank god.

Of Saint Happy, Mushrooms and Frank meeting Franco

Just a little update on what’s been happening the last week and a bit or so. The weather has been a bit of a mixed bag and never as predicted by the weather forecasters, which makes planning the next day very difficult. One day you decide to get up early to get some work done, because the weather is supposed to be dry and you wake up to pouring rain. Next day you have a lie-in, because they promise you rain and the sun is out. Well at least last Sunday was a beautifully sunny and warm day as it was the ‘Fiera di San Felice’, the Saint Happy Fair at Santo Stefano. Saint Happy, or St Felix I suppose, is the patron saint of Santo Stefano (and not St Stephen as one would suspect…), and every 3rd Sunday in October this gives cause to celebration with a huge sprawling market through the streets of the town, selling everything from porchetta (Tuscan roast pork) to kitchen utensils to porchetta to live chickens and cattle to porchetta to tractors to porchetta to clothing etc. You get the drift. Porchetta is an essential part of any festa in these parts. On the photo you get a bit of a flavour of the event.

On the land, we finished the autumn clean-up in Arcola and started it in Villa. In Villa we also chopped down an old, diseased apple tree for fire wood. The wine had started fermenting with a bit of delay and therefore got slightly oxidized. So unfortunately it’s going to have rather too much volatile acidity (it’ll taste a bit vinegary in lay-speak), but should still just about be alright. The cider on the other hand smells divine, bubbling away in it’s demijohn.

One day we were both off sick after consuming some wild mushrooms, so for the time being I am banned by Susan to pick any more. They were of a variety that we had picked in previous years on our land and never had any problems with. In fact we had eaten the first ones on Saturday, but with a large armful of what I identified as Chanterelles from Villa (see photo above). The mushrooms in Arcola I had identified as Sheathed Woodtufts, which are described as good and edible. By Tuesday there were so many growing on our land, that I just couldn’t resist and fried some with the steak we were having that evening. I spent most that night on the toilet, whilst with Susan the effect arrived during the next day. Still, they tasted good… Either it was because of the much greater quantity consumed compared to the previous occasion, or that I did not cook them for as long as before. Saturday we stewed them in some milk and cream for a good while as a pasta sauce. Whichever way, it put us both off wild mushrooms for a wee while. We’re alive to tell the tale!

Frank our motozappa (plough) in the meantime had to go and meet Franco, the local ‘bicycle-and-small-machinery-repair-man’. The drive belt had apparently come off and needed to be tightened. For a good 45 minutes work Franco charged us all of €8. I know craftsmen in the UK don’t even get out of bed for that amount! So yesterday he (Frank that is) was put back into action to plough over a terrace in Arcola. Susan in the meantime gave the hornets in the hollow cherry tree their final eviction notice. Today we dug over the bed behind the former hornet’s nest and sowed some more peas. I know it’s not the right moon phase, but the soil is nicely wet now and I didn’t want to leave this job too long.