half way

We are half way into October and after the wine was made we started to work in " Dule" where we have grapes and olives growing. Here we are cutting a lot of wood from the perimeter of the land in preparation for the new vines being planted. This is a project financed by the European community and involves the planting of around 2000 vines.
Our vines are now too old to be productive and we decided that it is time to inject a new lease of life into our production. It will be a 3 or 4 weeks job and not all will be done when we are here.

In the meanwhile the rain has never left the island and in the last couple of days lots of flooding occurred in the centre south of the island. Not only Sardinia was affected badly, as Mallorca and Spain had lives lost and lots of destruction. This year will be remembered as the wettest ever in human memory.

As the wet weather has persisted for so long the  olive mills have now decided to open earlier so we can start picking our olives to be then made into olive oil. This early start of milling the olives is due to the fact that lots of olives are dropping from the trees and it will be a big loss if we do not start as soon as we possibly can.

But it was not only work as the previous Sunday we went to visit our neighbour village " Orgosolo" .There an event called " cortes apertas" ( open courtyards) was taking place. This event is now in its 23d year and involves the participation of several villages in the centre of Sardinia. The whole event starts in September and ends in December having  different villages opening its doors to people and tourists. (see September Blog post item on cortes apertas in Oliena)

View of Orgosolo from an elevated point

Where is Wally? Spot lesley in the crowd

In the two days around 300 pigs were roasted to serve the few thousand visitors. Street food was literally  everywhere offering local specialities and products from bread to cheese; from pastas to salamis; from honey to a variety of nuts and so on

Artisans from other parts of Sardinia were taking part. Here we can see woven rugs made in the village of Nule. Carpets are made with sheeps' wool and on the old fashioned loom. A big carpet  as shown can reach a 1500 euros.  We were told it takes two people working for three weeks 8 hours a day. Young people are not carrying on this craft, so I guess a carpet of this nature is worth the investment.

An Orgosolo lady working on the cocoon of the silk worm which is indigenous of the area

See webpage below to more information.

www.chasingtheunexpected.com/in-orgosolo-preserving-ancient-silk-art/

The Orgosolo female costume is my favourite amongst the hundreds of Sardinian costumes.

The filament from the cocoon of the silk worm  is only used to make the headdress of this costume.

Containers woven from wild olive shoots

An artist's impression of the Orgosolo costume This artist used to work in the building trade but became unemployed.   Using cement, instead of building walls, he is

now producing beautifully made colourful

pieces of art depicting local characters, architecture and customs.

The " murales " of orgosolo. Orgosolo is famous for its wall art which is anything but decorative. Wall paints here have a strong political and philosophical message, and consequently are frequently updated as you can see here. Then caption sais " Sos dirittos the sos populous non si ottenene in sa barbaridades".
People's rights cannot be acquired with acts of terrorism.

The people are happy when they do not need heroes

Another war? No thanks

No comment.

More information about the murales on web page below.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jun/01/street-art-sardinia-myth-magic-murals-orgosolo

The view of Oliena mountain from Orgosolo

Good grapes and bad grapes

The harvesting of the grapes is now over. It was a three day job and the grapes were collected in difference places. First, on Friday, in an area called Dule were we managed to fill up 9 crates (@ 20 kilos per crate)

A magnificent vine plant from " Dule".

Then on Saturday we went to my brother's friend's vineyard were we picked and paid for 20 crates of grapes; and finally here in Locoe  where the number of crates collected was 12. In total it was a business of around 400 kilograms of grapes. The hope is to produce around 550 litre of wine.

Lesley  with the harvest of the day

We bought some grapes as our vineyard was again badly affected by the weather and the production was poor. This is the second year round that the weather is compromising the harvest of the grapes, but for different reasons. Last year the frost and this year the extreme wet weather conditions. My notes are going to be a record of the changing weather patterns and how this affects the production of crops year after year.

The whole event was great and the grapes have already been crushed. The family who sold us the grapes were very hospitable and friendly -

The Maricosu family offered a picnic after the harvest with a taste of their own wine

Andrea offloading the grapes on the crusher

On Sunday there were many families around this area, all harvesting their grapes, which is normally a weekend activity and families and friends collaborate in this event which always terminates with a meal and a roast of some sort. All washed down with the wine, of course.

Then grapes will be fermenting for around 4 or 5 days before the liquid is taken out and put into barrels. What remains is the stalks and skin of the grapes which will be then pressed with a grape press to extract the maximum of the juice.

In the meanwhile my apple wine is fermenting well and the hope is that a good wine from the tempting fruit will convince my brothers that if a bad year of grape harvest happens again, and a good year of apples and pears materialises instead, we can produce a different wine.

Apple wine

Another cyclone affecting the whole of southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia blew in with the start of October.  That day, Lesley decided to head off north to the coast to enjoy a few home comforts in Marazzino. Battistino remained in Locoe and began the ongoing tasks of cleaning and pruning more trees - this time  not just almonds, but olive trees too, in preparation for the olive harvest in November/December.  There's a lot of long grass and persistent, tough plants in the fields where the olive trees grow and this needs to be cut down either by manual or mechanical tools.  The trees also need to be cleaned of their suckers with a variety of cutting, chopping and sawing implements (the names of which elude me...Lesley that is...) all in readiness for stripping off the crop.    While working on the almond trees we kept thinking we had finished the last one, only to be told there was another somewhere else that we had missed.  I suspect this is going to be the same with the olives.....

Before Lesley returned to Locoe, we were all invited to attend the church service for our nephew, Gianpiero's so-called La Cresima - confirmation.  Conducted by the Bishop of Ozieri with 300-500 family members attending for the 10 participants.  Yes, a big family affair!  The Bish made a good effort in his sermon, in our opinion, to steer everyone's attention away from the slick, fashionable outfits, expensive presents, elaborate floral displays, thoughts of the banquets booked to follow the service, group photographs, and all the customary razzamatazz, to think about the main reason they were there.  He repeatedly told us to return to 'the source'........ which is actually what we did afterwards, as the restaurant we had booked in to was called just that!

one of the many fancy houses for the many different breads of chikens

The cake...after a 4 hour meal.

It was actually a 'Fattoria'  a farm now operating partly with an  educational purpose - alongside various indigenous and foreign animal species, like wild boar, goats, ostrich,there was a large number of different species of poultry, each species designated to a separate little 'house', designed in a style imitating Sardinian archaeological architecture.  There were 48 of us at our family meal, which began with a first course consisting 11 different hors d'oevres dishes, after which we lost count.... not to mention the will to live, and we finally headed home at about 8 p.m., declining the invitation to stay for dinner..............

the archaeological architecture.this one represents a " tomba dei gigantic". the tomb of the giants. a burial site ,

" santa cristina sacred well". The miniature replicas are well made and the animals using it seem to be very happy!