Back to the Land: half way

Friday, 19 October 2018

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.