New Cultural Venue for Ponzano

When you think of Italy’s cultural heritage sites, you usually picture Roman ruins such as the Forum Romanum in Rome or locally to us the former Roman port of Luni, from where the marble was shipped (until it got silted up and is now 1 km inland, which is inconvenient for a harbour). Or you may think of the many Medieval cities with their historical buildings, such as Lucca or Florence or numerous others. But you never think of the more recent past. It seems Italy skipped several hundred years of history and an Industrial Revolution, which was taking place all over northern Europe, to arrive directly from the Middle Ages in the modern age.

However, Ponzano Magra (as opposed to Ponzano Superiore, where we live. Superiore, because it’s in the hills above, and Magra, because it lies in the valley by the river Magra) has one of the few sites bearing witness that an Industrial Revolution did take place in Italy. In fact it’s the largest site of its kind: the Ceramica Vaccari.

Around 1880 a ceramics manufactory was established in what at the time was in the middle of nowhere. Carlo Vaccari took over the site 10 years later. He had obviously seen and decided to copy industrial villages in England, such as the textile mills of Yorkshire, where forward thinking factory owners not only supplied a place to work for the local population, but provided them with everything from housing, medical care, a school, shops, a social centre and even a chapel. This was the birth of the village of Ponzano Magra. After World War II the site fell into increasing decline. The site still produces ceramic tiles, but due to modern machinery needing a smaller workforce and less space, a lot of the old buildings now stand empty and the former workers houses are now not exclusively inhabited by employees of the works.

I have always been fascinated by old industrial buildings. I visited the gasworks in Belfast shortly before they turned them into trendy housing and a hotel. The walls of the gasworks were immortalised in the song “Dirty Old Town”: “I kissed my love by the gasworks wall. Dirty Old Town…” And it was dirty there in those days. A canal carried the most solid water I’ve ever seen through the site, and it stank to high heaven.

Anyway I digress. I always felt that leaving this site mostly unused was a shame and I feared, they’d probably turn them into yuppy flats too, when they would be so much better as a venue for cultural events. So imagine my delight when this is exactly what they’ve now done. Currently there is a series of concerts being held there under the heading “Bella Canzone”, featuring Italian singer-songwriters as well as an arts exhibition being held under the title “Emergenze7”.

Yesterday we had a chance to go for the first time. The theme of the art exhibition was loosely based on the impact of industrialisation on humans, which was a fitting subject for the surroundings of the derelict factory halls. Works included “Amazzonica by Stefano Tedesco. It consisted of a large, black, cylindrical tent that you could enter. Inside you realised that there were actually different shapes of black and you were surrounded by 8 speakers giving out jungle cicada type noises, which also may have been noises of some kind of machinery. Another exhibit by Aurora Pornin and Daniela Spaletra called “M16: mondo sommerso” was put together mostly from materials actually found on the premises. A mosaic, partially from old tiles, partially from old tools, rusty tins and engine parts is to show the set roles each man woman and child has within the confines of a workers village. Next to it these overalls are hung up, like the ghosts of the workers who formerly occupied this space, above a hopscotch game drawn on the floor.

Very original were also the works of Matteo Ratti collectively under the heading of “Cermobil”, who has created giant insects and humanoids out of old machine parts, incorporating the odd skull. Very dark, but impressive. Below is what looks like a heavy metal guitarist.

And a spooky spider and insect arrangement

The concert we saw there last night featured Francesco Tricarico. He was obviously known to the audience, but I hadn’t heard about him before. I wasn’t too keen on the music either. His accompanying band consisted of 2 guitars (presumably because he had 2 friends who could play the guitar), a bass, which was turned on too heavy, throbbing my bladder (in fact I think the bassist himself needed to go for a wee himself, the way he was prancing cross-leggedly over the stage), a keyboard and an over-enthusiastic drummer. All that background noise distracted from the singing in my opinion, mind you the singing wasn’t all that great either. He was being interviewed before the start of the concert and the interviewer suggested he was influenced by Bob Dylan. I’d agree insofar that like Dylan, he couldn’t sing either, but Dylan unlike Tricarico could write songs

Well it was a free concert, and hopefully not the last time an event like this is organised. The exhibition is on until the end of the month, if you are in the area. The last of the concerts is tonight, so you’ve gotta get your socks on to make it.

Of accidents, flowers and wine tastings

It’s been a while since my last post, and I think I abandon the series of “Our Terraces” The last 4 terraces didn’t look all that exciting on the 25th April, so I hope you won’t be too disappointed. If you are you are just going to bloody well come here and have a look at it yourself!

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks since the last post. The weather cooled down at the very end of May, beginning of May, with a couple of days of badly needed rain. This was followed by slightly changeable weather with odd sprinklings of rain showers, which meant we didn’t have to water the land until yesterday. Now the hot weather has returned. Cherries are finished and plums keep falling on our heads, loquats are finished and we’re eating our courgettes. The sunflowers have burst into flower too as you can see.

So much about the land.

Last Monday we had cycled to the seaside to see our Swiss friend Irene, who works there at the moment. On the way back we had to negotiate the busy Sarzana by-pass road during rush-hour. Just as Susan, feeling quite chuffed with herself about surviving so far, had got around a particularly busy roundabout, a car pulled out of private property right in front of us. This left us with no alternative, but move over to the extreme right of the road to avoid a collision with said car. As it happened the father of the lady-driver was busy cutting some major branches off his hedge bordering the road, and one of those branches came down precisely in front of Susan who was cycling behind me. She didn’t even see what was happening, before the branch had wrapped itself around the front wheel of her bike, sending Susan onto the tarmac. I only noticed after I had gone on a bit and found her bleeding from her face, left shoulder and right knee.

The driver stopped and the owner of the property still with saw in hand came rushing out of his garden. He did kindly offer to drive her to hospital, but a brief examination revealed she hadn’t broken anything and her injuries seemed to be superficial. He then offered the use of his wife’s bike, because Susan’s was not rideable. The front mudguard was broken, and the front fork was badly bent. So we took up his offer of the bike, leaving Susan’s wreck with him and exchanging phone numbers before we left.

It turned out that the proprietor was a senior officer in the Guardia di Finanza. I was a little worried about that fact, because I did not want to pursue a confrontational stance in demanding compensation, as he no doubt would be in a position to cause us more problems than we could him (I don’t want to go into any details in case the Guardia di Finanza read this blog…). However, il Capitano rang us the next morning to ask how Susan was. He sounded relieved, when I said to her that she wasn’t too bad. So I asked him: “what about the bike?” He said he’d take it to his local bike shop to be repaired. Later he rang us again, confirming what I had suspected, namely that it was beyond repair. So he bought Susan a brand new pink bike, with the same specs as the old one, but with everything in full working order. I had been thinking that both our bikes needed a general service anyway, so I now won’t need to do that one anyway. Picked it up on Friday and Susan was very happy with it.

Today though, Susan was obviously still a little nervous after her fall, we were riding down to Santo Stefano, where there was the annual Festa di Corpus Cristi, where the streets of the historical centre are decorated with flower petals. At the first hairpin bend, Susan applied the well functioning brakes of her new bike a little too hard and hit the tarmac again, resulting in another bang on the same knee and a couple of cuts and bruises on both elbows. The bike sustained only a few scuffs this time though, which is just as well as this time she didn’t have anyone else to blame. Now I’m on the look out for some falling branches myself, because I could also do with a new bike.

So much about Susan’s accidents (she says, she is going to stay off her bike for as long as it takes for her wounds to heal). Despite Susan’s fall, we did make it down to Santo Stefano to the floral display. Those who have followed this blog for long may remember the pics from last year. This year the folk of Santo Stefano excelled themselves again at some spectacular floral pictures along all the streets of the old town. My favourite this year was the representation of the church of Santo Stefano.

The original looks like this:

The final bit of news, I have now got an official website on line for my wine tasting events. It’s http://users3.jabry.com/tuscanytipple. Sorry, it’s a bit of a long and awkward site name, but it’s free. Once business starts flowing I will register an easier to remember name. In the meantime if you or any of your posh friends are planning on a holyday and would like to learn more about Italian wines, please have a look at the site and recommend it to anyone you know. The link is permanently displayed at the top right of this blog. It’s still a bit of a building site at the moment (some photos missing, only in English so far etc.) so wear your hard hats. I’d be interested how you find it as well, so do leave your thoughts on the comment function of the blog. What this business is essentially about is that I will hold fun and informative wine tastings at your accommodation while you are having a holiday in Tuscany, Liguria or our end of Emilia Romagna (Parma way).

…and some poetry

One quick word in conclusion to the subject of pests. You’ve got to feel for the poor wee mites. I mean, they are just trying to live and procreate themselves. We just exterminate them, because they like the same things as us, and sometimes they are being bullied by other creatures too.

Working amongst all that nature you just sometimes can’t help being awed and inspired to become creative. So today, whilst peacefully listening to the drone of the petrol powered brush cutter, I’ve composed this poem about the red spider mite. It doesn’t actually affect us much, it likes greenhouses apparently.

The Spider Mite

There once was a little red spider mite,
Who spat at a spider out of spite.
The spider spat back, saying: “you little shite!
I’m a real spider, you’re just a mite.”

Rain at last… & Part VII of “Our Terraces”

However, it would have been nice if it had arrived quarter of an hour later, so I would have got soaked to the skin!

Yesterday we were making an early start to attack the weeds and trying to escape the worst of the heat. We also picked a couple of kilos of cherries. Around half-3ish, were in just watering, Susan pointed at some dark clouds over the mountains. I just dismissed them, thinking they’ll just stay there. As we made our way home on our bikes they did come threateningly close though. I tried out-sprinting the storm – we had left our windows open – whilst Susan managed to find shelter. The trouble about out-sprinting a storm is you should try and ride in the opposite direction rather than towards it. So half way up the hill I got absolutely drenched, battered by hail and nearly blown off my bike.

It only turned out a shower though and Susan was soon able to follow. Today’s temperatures as a result a markedly fresher and cooler, rather pleasant really. At home I turned the cherries into jam and used the stones to start off a cherrystone liqueur. It’s great the way nothing gets wasted. It won’t be ready to drink until roundabout Christmas though.

Here comes Part VII of the 9-parter “Our Terraces”:

Terrace 13 features a young walnut tree in front and an olive in the back. Between those we have planted our tomatoes this year, hence all those bamboo sticks. In the meantime they are much more visible of course and should produce the first fruit in a couple of weeks or so. Behind the olive tree is a bed of dwarf beans.

Terrace 14 is the only one with no trees on it at all. It used to have a fig, which I had to cut down. It’s since been dug over to accommodate mostly peppers and a few spare tomatoes. Hidden amongst the weeds is still some garlic, fennel and some Swiss hard. I bet you all can’t wait for the concluding episodes of the story!

On Pests & part IV of “Our Terraces”

This heat wave is showing absolutely no signs of abating, in fact is getting worse, so we’ve been having a bit of a rest day today. The long term weather forecast is predicting a scorcher of a summer too with temperatures well into the 40s, so this won’t be my last mention of the heat this year I don’t think.

As threatened, here comes a word on pests. We don’t seem to be too bad on our plot. We don’t have any trouble with snails and slugs for example. One pest troubling us is ants. We have 2 species: large black ones a small red ones. The latter have a nasty bite and are very aggressive. The main damage they do though is to our trees. As our land had been abandoned for a few years, the trees were not well looked after, suffering disease and being overgrown by ivy and brambles. This weakened them sufficiently for ants to get into them and really wreak havoc. A few trees I have already had to fell as a result. Ones established in a tree, they are almost impossible to get rid of. Fire and/or boiling water kill large numbers, but there’s always an astonishing number of survivors saving the at least some of the eggs of the colony.

Another pest is the black fly. Broad beans inevitably get attacked, however, the earlier you plant the fewer problems you have. I sowed them out in October and have now finished harvesting them. When (not if!) you get the first sign of an attack, it’s on the tender tips of the plants. As soon as you spot this, you pick of those ends, wash off the black fly, boil and eat them (the plant tips that is, not the black fly). If you do this the black fly never take over enough to completely spoil your beans. I have also had a slight attacks on my newly planted cherry tree as well as on the sunflowers, which I’m treating with my own invention of anti-insect spray.

Cultivating everything organically, as I want to eat the produce myself, I don’t use any chemicals to combat pests and diseases, so I have come up with my own recipe for, what is more an insect repellent rather than an insecticide. I had some very old dried garlic powder bought years ago at an Indian corner shop. It was so old it had solidified into one solid lump. I put that lump into a saucepan together with a grated bar of natural lavender soap, a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and about a litre of water and brought the whole thing to the boil. Once cool again dilute at a rate of about 10 to 1 with water and spray about once a week onto your plants.

The mixture stinks to high heaven, but has proved effective. Black fly don’t like, nor do the ants, who look after the black fly and aphids. Most effective it has proved to be against a red and black beetle (not a ladybird, a bit bigger and a longer body), which has destroyed my brassica in the last couple of years. I’ve sprayed the stuff onto my Tuscan black cabbage as well as on my Brussel sprouts, and they have stayed away from them since. I still spot them amongst the general herbage, but they stay away from my cabbages.

I dare say it would make a good mosquito repellent as well, if you don’t mind smelling like a garlic salesman on cheap aftershave and don’t mind having no friends… Mosquitoes are of course a problem too. Where we live in Ponzano, we have no problems with them, living on top of a hill, exposed to the prevailing winds and with no standing water near, but on our land we are protected from wind and the insects evidently find places to breed. The most worrying are the tiger mosquitoes who have become more widespread in recent years. It’s not only that there bite is worse than the one of their smaller cousins, but they are also potential transmitters of disease. A couple of years ago there was an outbreak of a tropical disease near Ancona on the East coast carried by tiger mosquitoes and of course with global warming it is not impossible that Malaria will make a re-entry into Italy.

Until not very long ago Malaria was prevalent in Italy, which is one of the reasons why many villages were built up on hills, where there is “bell’ aria” (good air) as opposed to the plains, valleys and marshes where there is “mal aria” (bad air). To this day, when we tell people around here we live in Ponzano Superiore, they’ll tell us: “Aah, Ponzano. C’e bell’aria!”

To finish off on pests, there is the olive fly, which puts it’s little maggots into the olives, but it not enough to worry about. In a bad year 10% of olives are effected, in good year like last year none. Maybe I should try some of my garlic spray on those as well though. Oh, and the white butterflies which lay their eggs on brassica are also deterred by my spray. Other than that we don’t seem to be pestered too badly by pests.

Now to part VI of the continuing story “Our Terraces”: this is terrace number 11.

It’s dominated by cherry trees in the foreground. At the back we found space for one bed, which has a mixture of the above mentioned Brussel sprouts, red onions, Swiss chard as well a few spare courgettes. Bear in mind that all photos of this series were taken on the 25th April, so in the meantime the cherry trees are heavy with fruit.

Terrace 12 has an olive tree in the foreground and more of those wild cherry trees, which have sowed themselves out there. Behind there is a wild plum tree. Don’t miss the next episode of “Our Terraces” as we are nearing the conclusion.

on the Giro d’Italia and the heatwave

I know I haven’t posted for a while, we’ve been pretty busy with various things, so this’ll be quite a long entry today I think.

First of all, there’ll be a break in the riveting and popular series “Our Terraces” today to make room for some current sport coverage. Yesterday we had a rest day as the Giro d’Italia came to town. Yes I do like watching a bit of sport. As a kid growing up in Bremen, I used to watch home matches of Werder Bremen at the Weserstadion. I still like football, but prices to go to stadiums aren’t what they used to be and I’m getting rather disgusted with the play-acting, feigning injuries, complaining, winging and whining and plain cheating in the modern game. I also used to watch speedway, but other motor sports, like Formula 1 in particular, these days seems to be decided behind desks and in courtrooms, not to mention horrendous entry prices for a couple of hours of watching noisy cars going around in circles.

I watch other sports, mainly on TV, but there is no other sport I can think of, which you can watch for free and get THIS CLOSE to the top athletes:

This is Lance Armstrong, the undisputed superstar of world cycling. This photo was not taken with a fancy zoom lens, I just shoved the camera right into his face and was evidently even closer to the man then the TV cameras on the other side of the road.

Yesterday’s stage was a 60 km individual time trial through the Cinque Terre and was dubbed “the killer stage”. Rider’s were racing through this hilly coastal stretch against the clock rather than against each other. I have been to cycle races before. I saw the Tour de France a few years back as they skirted Germany, but we had positioned ourselves on a steep downhill stretch and the peloton was past within a fraction of a second. The only lasting memories were the smell of burning rubber as the 180 odd cyclists hit the bend at over 70 km an hour and the accompanying motorbike, which nearly ploughed into a nearby chip van. We saw the Giro the last time they passed as well, twice in fact, but both time on flat bits with the group being compact and passed in seconds.

But in a time trial you can watch each rider coming passed you one by one for 3 ½ hours. The stage was from Sestri Levante to Riomaggiore involving 2 steep uphill sections (one of them I have cycled myself before). We decided to position ourselves above our old haunt of Levanto, just over half way into the race. It was a great way of spending the day. We had a picnic with us, a couple of beers and shared into the banter with other fans. I even dusted up my old “proper” camera, I found I still had some film for it and it does have a decent telelens on it. However the photos from that camera won’t obviously be ready for a few days, hope they still develop real films.

Here’s another shot in the meantime of a Russian rider called Andriy Grivko:

We had originally planned to cycle towards the race, which would have involved similar tough climbs to the professionals, but decided against it, as we are in the middle of a heat wave, which leads me smoothly onto the next subject. Last Friday, the 15th, it made a half hearted attempt at some rain, the only time this month. Saturday summer arrived with a vengeance. Daytime temperatures are the highest ever recorded for Italy for May with the mercury climbing well into the 30’s. Our daily cycle rides to the land and work on the land itself has all slowed down a bit and both of us have caught quite a bit of colour already.

This also means that crops are ahead of their season. Broad beans, alas are now finished. I managed to conserve a few in brine, but to build up a proper store of them I really do need to plant 2 terraces of them. Peas are ready and we are eating masses of lettuce. Strawberries are abundant and sweet cherries have already been and gone. They had a very small crop this year and birds ate most of the rest. Sour cherries are coming on as well though and they are as plentiful as ever. The first tomatoes are in flower as are the first courgettes and we water practically daily.

Earlier in the spring, when all the wild herbs were starting to perfume the air, I thought how great it would be to capture all these aromas and maybe making some liqueurs from them. I didn’t know how though and decided to find some recipes, quickly forgetting about my resolution again. Last week we were in La Spezia and I found a recipe book on a book stall along the seafront: “500 recipes for jams, preserves and liqueurs”. It’s fantastic! It not only has some great recipes for all the traditional liqueurs, but it has suggestions for making drinks out of base materials you would normally throw away: an Amaretto from apple pips, liqueurs from cherry, peach and apricot stones or the skin of melons, cherry leaves as well as a variety of wild and cultivated herbs and spices.

Most of the are really easy to make too, although they take a while before they are ready. I already have 2 brews on the go: Granny’s Digestive (I can’t help thinking that grannies in Italy have more fun, mine used to such a sweet after dinner) based on lemon balm and a Wild Cherry Ratafia with sour cherries and cherry leaves spiced with cloves and cinnamon. Looking forward to the results.

On Saturday also we had the inaugural session of the “Luni Wino” Wine Appreciation Club at our house. About a dozen of us tasted our way though some Italian wines and I believe a good time was had by all. It sort of was the launch of my new little venture, although it mostly was a social event.

I was going to have a wee rant about pests after I went on a bit on weeds recently, but Susan is already in bed and I better finish here for today. So there’s something to look forward to as well as the next installment of the cut-out-and-collect series “Our Terraces”.

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”