Harvest time

Sunday 23 September

Last post was on 8th September. Since then Lesley has arrived and we spent a few days in Marazzino doing some tiling around the windows and the sink at the back of the house, using up various tiles left over from previous decoration jobs. Learning a new skill is always good but, having got the knack of it, we ended up doing more tiling than planned.  We enjoyed  tiling  and improving the look of he place together.

Our tiling...

   

We managed to go to the seaside and have some swimming as well.

The clean waters of our sea

Leaving the seaside home to go back to Oliena / Locoe, we have now returned to our camping  routine. There have been some improvements in the washing facilities as Bastiano the plumber came to connect both shower and kitchen taps to a new gas  boiler so we can have longer warm showers without running out of water and without switching on and off different switches in order to operate the old system. The toilet now flushes, too!

When we arrived back in Locoe, it started to rain and the second day was like a monsoon . We looked at each other in disbelief. The surprises and frustration that we experienced back in the springtime seem to have continued throughout the summer here in Locoe, where it has rained significantly, even in August, the hottest of months.  Now, as we move into autumn, it seems uncertainty over the weather is going to dog our efforts to harvest successfully.  Here, traditional farming practices don’t take cyclones in mid-September as a norm!

So, back to the plot…..this weekend has seen the sun win through strongly again after days of cyclonic periods of heavy rain.  The countryside looks unusual for the time of year, when we would expect fields to be brown and exhausted after a long hot, dry summer: dead grass is grey and rotting, and there is fresh, new growth all around, more reminiscent of spring than autumn.  Here’s how things stand:

  Vegetables: second lot of runner beans, planted end of August, are looking and tasting great.  Lettuce and cabbage are loving the abundant water, and – something new for the family here – our beetroot are massive.  We are still eating tomatoes by the plateful and they are so fragrant….with or without the basil.  Still some courgettes and aubergines, and all the potatoes have been collected for storage.

A variety of zero miles vegetables

Few tomatoes

Grass cutting:  there is a lot of long grass in all of the fields – especially where the olive trees are.  It takes a lot of hot messy effort to strim it all (grazie, Pietro) so that the place looks a bit tidier and cared for.

Fruit:  with a bumper crop of apples and pears, our neighbour’s pig is having a feast, as it is not normal to have such a large amount.  I guess we are familiar enough with that in Scotland – hence the abundance of recipes with apples, including juice and cider – to deal with the glut.  Guess what?  Yes, we are making some apple wine out of the windfalls!

   Apple wine?

Almond trees are currently bearing their precious fruit, disguised and protected by their tough shell and strange outer husk – pale green and downy in spring, but blackened and peeling by the time autumn comes.  Cracking them open using a hammer is time-consuming and sometimes painful…..perhaps justifying the relatively high cost of this product. Tonino was out with us yesterday collecting some of the almonds and he was pruning the almond trees ….. using a chain saw….. then we shook and beat the fruit down onto a tarpaulin spread underneath. 

    Almonds drying in the sun

Almonds are collected and at the same times trees are pruned, so we are making some wood alongside. The almonds are then dried in the sun on a bed made with bamboo canes. This is to facilitate the peeling of the outer layer and to help them to toast naturally.


Grapes, on the other hand, have been struggling to reach a good crop this year – they don’t much like getting themselves wet once they have formed their fruit and we are meant to be harvesting them next weekend.  Pietro has been keeping his vintner’s eye on them and will let us know when to pounce and start making the wine. 
All this rain is not good for the almonds.  It is not good  for  the grapes and olives either. The grapes need sunshine to improve their sugar content and the olives can suffer as the wet conditions increase the possibility of being damaged by a tiny insect which penetrates them.

White grapes drying .We are going to make white sweet wine from them

The grape harvest is planned for next weekend, but as the weather forecast is not good we might start earlier. We will decide on a daily basis which jobs to do first, depending on the weather (does this sound familiar to you Scottish gardeners out there?) .


In the evenings we are still eating out on our veranda as the temperature is pleasant. Last night we had a dinner made up entirely of vegetables and wild stuff from our land. We had tomatoes with basil; potatoes and bean salad; cheese; bread, puffball mushrooms. Wine,water, olive oil and salt. Everything at the table was from our land and even the salt is from Sardinia. We also had our illumination via the solar lights and an antique candelabra  for a more romantic set up. What more can we ask?

Nearly a full moon

Finally we can enjoy the full view from our window now that the rain has moved on. Yes, you can spot the moon rising on the horizon.

Wildlife watch!  (To be continued in the next post?)
In the afternoon as I was getting water out from the well I noticed a dozen dragonflies flying around the pool. They were beautiful with incredible colours.