Leaving Locoe land

Time is up. Soon I will be back to  Scotland .
This morning the sun was shining and lasted all day. But there was a strange quietness in the air. The shepherds  have removed the sheep to another area to graze, quite a distance from here, and their orchestra of bells  which normally resonates all day long is now silent.
You can now hear the birds singing  more clearly and a couple of cuckoos calling each other.  The Sardinian owl which is permanently on a tree just behind our house can be heard every evening .
Yesterday there was new arrival in the land on the river side.

The new arrivals

Two of my brothers with two kids were here last night to pass some time together before I go back to Scotland.  It will be up to them to carry on looking after the plantation and watering the vegetables and planting others as needed. The chickens also will be in their hands. They have been good,  laying an average of 10 eggs a week which is more than we use here (only two chickens laying out of three).

The carasau bread. It is just 1.5 mm thick. I have measured with the calibre.
We made the bread a couple of times/#. Hard work but this is the quality of the home made bread,

Tomorrow I am attending a wedding  and I will be in good company as there are 450 people invited. It will be a long day as wedding starts at 4 pm in the church to then have a dinner  starting around 8 or 9 pm. I might escape at 12 midnight or 1  am to came back here and lock up the chickens. No guarantee I will manage that.

My last week's meals consisted in a plate of salad twice a day. Lunch and dinner with either, our eggs or cheese and olives, or pasta with almond sauce. Once with some meat, or with the other typical Sardinian dish as below

Carasau bread with olive oil and grated cheese. This is normally made in summer as bread is wetted with cold water and fresh tomatoes are eaten with it.

Penne with my experimental almond sauce.

Or when my brothers are visiting they bring something different....

Sardinian mullet cought in the southwest of the island

I realised now that this job is a full time job for one person and the amount of time needed for watering is something I did not expect. As we have different plants and vegetables in so many different areas, a rotation  for watering is essential. It normally takes 2.5 hours to water everything .
But luckily rain is forecast for the week end. Lots of it. So no need to attend to the vegetables.
Some rain is still good now, especially for the fruit trees and olive trees. Olives trees seem to have an abundance of fruit this year which would (we hope)  compensate the disastrous crop of  last year.

For the grapes it is early to say but we are also hoping for a decent crop. I think we are leaving the place in good shape and when back in September we are hoping to find  a good variety of vegetables and fruit to enjoy.

I was cracking almonds to take back to Scotland to have them as snacks

peaches starting to grow..

and figs...

pears..

plums...

quince...

Kaki (persimmon) still to flower

One of the chickens escaped from the netted area to wander around.

 See you in September....

Flowers of wildness

One week to go now. I was going around the land and taking pictures of trees, flowers, animals, insects and so on. I will post now a selection of them. I will not make any comments but I just want to say that this world is unique and beautiful. We should take care of it; embrace it; give it a cuddle.Just to say thank you.

bizarre weather again

“It is Monday the 13th of May. I am sitting in the kitchen and facing out  looking at the grey sky and the persistent rain of the last 14 hours or so.
Saturday11th was a very hot day with temperature around 28 degrees and we were not able to do any work after lunch time. The sun was so hot that you felt it burning on your skin. We did some watering late afternoon as the ground was very dry.

Next day was a real mix. Temperature dropped suddenly over 12 degrees and clouds started to form above us. Good day to work outside comfortably. We managed to do some fencing on top part of the land.

Fencing and clearing  brambles near the cultivated area
After lunch it started raining and at times hailstones were bombarding the place and making lots of noise on the veranda metal roof. Vines are in the process of developing the grapes and are very delicate. So is all the young fruit on trees.  This is not good.

Last week the vines in then north Sardinian were badly damaged by a strong cold wind. leaves were burned and local authorities called  an emergency weather event. Still under 0bservation the big vine makers are predicting a big loss

A couple of hours later the temperature rose again and the day ended up with a lovely evening!.
 Lovely as it is, I am concerned about the fluctuation of the temperature which is making me think that our future relationship with crops will change and we need to adapt and accept the uncertainty of the harvesting.

Potatoes in good shape. The bamboo structure is for supporting the future beans.

More beans and aubergines planted beside the green house



A few days ago I was reading of the devastating consequences of three different atmospheric events which have been affecting the North Korean food production.  People have been living on a 300 grams of food intake a day.
These events are now a norm and shift from one place to another around the world.
Some of these events are happening simultaneously in different places around the world with dramatic outcomes both in terms of loss of lives, destruction of infrastructure and food production.

The Idai Cyclone which has devastated  Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe is only a tip of the spreading problem.

Here we can see how the change in climate patterns is affecting the production of food generally. When this happens on a big farming production system, the government is asked to provide monetary support to cover these losses. But money will not feed people and the effort should be focusing on how to adapt and secure food production on a global scale. Even if we can survive here, people will struggle in big urban areas.

Here in the meanwhile, most of the vegetable crops have been planted. We have an abundance of lettuces at the moment but aubergines are struggling to grow. Beans are ok and tomato plants seem happy but checked this morning to find they are waterlogged which is a problem. We can only wait and see.

Wild asparagus and wild fennel are still growing well and these are definitely not affected by these changes. In fact my dinner last night was wild asparagus, ricotta cheese and eggs with some salad and bread.

It will be impossible to replicate what we eat here at the table in terms of local, own grown food.
Salads, bread, cheese, wine, olive oil and even water all comes from few metres away from here. Very happy with this as long as we can continue to be able to produce it.

A typical Sardinian dish called " pane frattau" or bread in layers. it is made with thin layers of carasau bread with intervals of tomato sauce, pecorino cheese. My lunch the other day.

When the weather is rainy making pasta or cracking almonds is one of the activities to keep you going.

The abundance of last year crop of fruit is not to be duplicated this year but it seems that there will be lots of pears and figs. Less apples and peaches and some apricots. The wild fico d'india ( prickly pears)  are in good shape so we think there will be lots of them. I ca say that wild perennials plants seem to doing well despite the changes in climate patterns. Something too think about it.

May is a good month for enjoying the natural garden of Sardinia. Myriads of wild flowers appears creating beautiful landscapes.

A snake surprised us on a cold windy day and tried to come into the house maybe looking for a bit of comfort....There are plenty of wild   " pets "  around.

Only two weeks before going back to Scotland and join Lesley who left Sardinia on the 7th.I will try to do another post before that.

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