Back to the Land: 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..............