I'm back...

This is not so much a gardening post, but an update on what's been happening to us.  Good god, has it really been over a month since my last post?  Thank you for all your enquiries about our well-being, we're still here, although our lives certainly haven't been boring.

The reason for my silence?  Well it was a tale of broken friendships, betrayal and sex and you really don't want to know about it...  Well I'm not going to tell you about it anyway, even if you do.  The consequences: Conspiracy Cousin is back in the Netherlands for the time being, but has threatened to return soon, we went on a holiday to clear our heads and another lesson learned about humanity.

Well this holiday turned out to be particularly eventful.  we went to see our very good pilgrim friends (you may remember them from the visit they paid us with their horse and dog last year) in Arles in the Provence.  Just 5 km into the journey we smashed the car against the wall.

It was very spectacular, with airbags inflating and all.  Luckily non of us was hurt and the car only had some minor damage.  So on we went to France to relax a few days with friends.  Eddie re-aquainted himself with his old friend from last year and the 2 dogs got on like a house on fire.  So when one day we went to see some vineyards in the region we felt it was safe to leave the 2 dogs in the house.  Unfortunately Eddie felt he had to live up to his name of Eddie, the B(eagle), named after the famous yet inept Britsh ski jumping legend, and jumped out of this fist floor window:

and got himself lost amongst the many lanes and alleyways of the city.  It took a few hours of wandering around and quizzing the neighbours until we finally located him, as he had been taken in (kidnapped) by a family and held for ransom.

At the end of the week we finally limped home on a flat tyre.  We had two very nice Norwegian helpXers house sitting in the meantime and looking after Mickey the cat and watering our land.

What else have been up to?  We went grape picking for some friends:

...and I'm finally seriously working on a book: edible and medicinal herbs along the pilgrim routes of Europe.  That'll keep me busy over the long winter evenings.

and in the garden?  Although the temperatures are still pleasant, autumn is definitely in the air.  We've had the first bits of rain after months of drought conditions and evenings are getting cooler.  Generally yields this year were lower than usual as expected due to the loss of topsoil during last winter's landlsides.  Weather conditions were almost perfect this year though, hadn't it been for that hailstorm, which destroyed much of our fruit crop.

Amongst the successes were litchi tomatoes, or rather as I prefer to call them by their less confusing scientific name (as they don't have much to do with tomatoes and nothing with litchies), vicious bastards.

It was Mr. H.'s sick sense of humour to send me some seeds of these.  Yes, they do grow really easily, are drought and disease resistant and very decorative.  But man! those things have some mean spikes on them!  And now that I have a whole lot of these fruits, what do I do with them, having got bleeding fingers from picking them?  They taste ok, a bit cherriesh, a bit tomatoish..., but I miss a bit of acidity in those things.  They are fine as an addition to a salad that involves real tomatoes.  So what else can you do with them?

Anyway, enough of this.  A second crop of green beans is coming along very nicely.  The first crop succumbed to disease and were finished off by the hail, but this lot's long healthy and is delicious.

Watering is no longer needed as seem to have enough dew at night to keep the soil sufficiently moist.  I'll try not to make the next gap between posts so long.

Oh and we had a little concert in our house as part of the annual poetry competition:

What's wrong with this world

No I won't be attempting you give you a comprehensive answer to that.  This is just to hook up with the recent post appealing for help for our helpXer who had all her kit stolen out of our caravan.  First of all thank you everybody for your offers of help and support.  Unfortunately, for reasons I don't really want to speculate about on a public blog, our helper has left in rather acrimonious circumstances, not really cooperating with any efforts to help her.  I have therefore had to refuse any of your kind and generous offers.  But thank you again, I was touched to hear from total strangers, who don't even normally comment on my blog.

In the meantime it has come to my attention that there has been quite a spate of small crimes committed in the area.  A number of our immediate friends and aquaintances have had their houses and/or cars broken into.  At the same time in England kids have taken to the streets for several days in a free for all rioting and looting extravaganza.  What's going on?  Have you noticed or heard of an increase of crime where you are?

Here is my take on the story.  What those looters stole or even the damaged they caused, without of course wanting to condone any of it, is peanuts compared to what speculators and stock brokers have looted from the markets!  Our whole system is based on greed and greed only.  These bankers are no more than large scale thiefs and robbers, helping deplete natural resources.My fellow blogger Jeremy puts it much better than I could.

I also loved the quote of my money-less friend Mark Boyle, who said:

I love the way that we call people who break into chainstores 'looters', yet the rest of us law abiding citizens get to loot the entire planet and are deemed peaceful. Instead of H&M, read rainforests. Instead of JD Sports, read oceans. Instead of Tesco, read soil. If you want to see a looter, look within, we're all looters. Just some are culturally normalised.

 We live in a consumerist society where what you have defines who you are and if you have nothing you are nobody.  We are bombarded with adveritising telling us what we must have.  The politicians keep telling us the economy must grow so we must spend, spend, spend.  According to this ethos we only contribute to society by spending and buying consumer goods, thus at the same time depleting the world's resources.  

But as the gap between haves and have-nots is ever widening, those who don't have the means to buy all those glitzy new gadgets, the latest car, the newest fashion accessory will inevitably find other ways of obtaining them.  And as they see those criminals at Wall Street and in the City, the big company bosses and corrupt politicians get away with murder, they feel they haven't got much to loose.

They won't fix the system by locking up 12 year olds for stealing a bottle of wine, but by radically changing to a fairer more just, not to mention DEMOCRATIC system.  All those guys giving their lives in Lybia and Syria aledgedly fighting for democracy.  What a rude awakening they'll have when they find out there's no such thing...

But enough of the ranting.  It's been boiling hot our way, so physical labour has been off the schedule for a while.  Thus I've had some time to rant a bit.  But now the sweat is starting to drip on my keyboard so I better stop.  

 

Oh but one more thing:  I'm now the proud foster parent of Foster, the Ducklet all the way over in Ohio.  Check out my "sister's" blog here.

 

Farmer Heiko's latest adventure with Mr. Monsanto

Bad Luck Strikes Again

After the landslides in winter and the hailstorm last week we again face ourselves with another disaster.  This time caused by humans though.

Until today I have always felt we were living in a relatively low crime area.  In our village we routinely leave the key in the front door, even when taking the dog out for a walk.  I have repeatedly forgotten to lock the car, even leaving the windows open for a few days on the village car park.  But today we found that you shouldn't let your guard down, because there's always some opportunist out there.  We were on this occasion not the victims ourselves though, but one of our helpXers, which makes us feel particularly bad.

We are currently having two young girls staying in our caravan on our land helping us with some work in exchange for some free lodging.  While we were all working a few terraces lower, not having locked the caravan, one of the girls, Diane from France, had all her belongings stolen in broad daylight yesterday morning.  Her rucksack with everything.  The Carabinieri aren't interested.  They're just saying come back Monday morning!  

This is Diane a few days ago lifting some potatoes:

Diane was at the beginning of a trip of a lifetime.  She had planned to stay 2 weeks with us followed by another 2 weeks in Italy and a few months in India.  She luckily had her passport and cards on her, but lost a considerable amount of cash as well as all her clothing and various other personal things.

Those of you who know us and/or have been following this blog for a while, know we don't have any money.  Neither are we or Diane insured.  However we feel responsible for this, as she was staying as our guest.  I'm asking any of you please (!!!), to give this young woman back her confidence in humanity.  If it is at all within your means donate something for her, so she can continue her travels.  Every little would help.  Please be in touch, send us an e-mail (heikover@libero.it) if you can help in any way.

Raspberries & Festas

Yesterday we want on another raspberry finding mission.  This time we went to the other side of the mountains, where a friend was going to show us exactly where to loo.  We brought our latest little helper along, Athelas from Taiwan.  We are getting very international lately...

After passing through some beautiful beechwoods at about 1,100 metres altitude...

... we soon spotted our first raspberries.

We soon dived into the raspeberry bushes picking busily:

Athelas had never seen or tasted raspberries before!

 

We gathered over 3kg and made lots of jam.  Reason enough to hug a tree in thanks to nature:

Athelas was also lucky as she arrived at the height of the festa season.  She arrived on Friday and we took her directly from the station to our neighbour village of Caprigliola where there was a Festa della Contadina a Festival of the Farmer's Wife.  Part of the festivities included a fashion show, where young girls where showing off the wedding dresses of their grandmothers.

And yesterday after the raspberry picking we went to our town of Santo Stefano di Magra, which was turned into a scene of Monty Python for the annual Medieval Festa...

including whiches (BURN, BURN!!!):

...body collectiuons (BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!):

Fun was had by all ages:

Happy August everyone!

Another Minor disaster...

Einav and Yotam our current helpXers are leaving tomorrow after doing a sterling job for us weeding, pruning a tree, dog-sitting, securing a terrace and building a movable compost toilet and a new little viewing terraces right above the toilet as seen on the picture below:

However the last night they spent in the caravan they thought the heaven was falling on their heads.  We heard the thunderstorm on our side of the valley, but didn't get hit by it's full force.  However as soon as we drove into Arcola we realised that it must have been much worse around our land.  On the way up the hill we saw trees stripped of their foliage.  Still not quite realising the full extend we arrived on the land.  These were the size of the hailstones several hours after the storm with the sun already high up in the sky!

 

They must have come down the size of golf balls originally during the night!  The damage was pretty extensive.  Some of our plants looked like they've been through a shredder.

This was the volunteer pumpkin plant:

The surface of the pumpkins themselves looked like the planet Mars with numerous craters caused by comets:

Another squash with craters:

Swiss chard shredded to pieces:

...and the Greek corn:

and courgettes:

Many unripe tomatoes have been blown off the plant, but at least most of the plants themselves seem to have survived.  Many apples and peaches were scattered prematurely.  Another little step back, the vagaries of nature... :(.  At least the caravan survived the onslaught, our guests were safe and all the terraces are where they were before.

In other news we took a trip into the mountains today to a village called Vinca on the a tip that we might find raspberries up there.  I love raspeberries, but can't grow them on our land.  They only thrive in our climate above a certain altitude, so I was very excited.

The surroundings up there were stunning:

and Eddie played with his new friend Yotam:

but alas no raspberries.  Either we went up the wrong path or someone else got there before us.  We found one and Yotam ate it.

We might try another path next week and I'll let you know if we find anything that time.

Finally everybody, it's time to sow your cats for next season:

She's done it again!

Do you remember last year?  I was lying in bed with a splitting headache when right in front of my nose Rooney, our semi-feral cat dropped two kittens.  She did it again!  Not right in front of my nose, she only brought them after a few days, when their eyes were already open.

So anyone wantong a sweet little kitten... or can help us get Rooney neutered once she's finished suckling these little terrors, pleeeease come forward!


In other news, Shaun and Molly from Texas have moved on after leaving our caravan enriched by this little piece of artwork:

... and they have been replaced by Einav and Yotam from Israel who are busy weeding and building a compost toilet: