working on a new vineyard in dule land
cooking wild weeds and wild asparagus
Lunch time
cheese. a present form our neighbour
more presents
planting peas and broad beans
vermentino vineyard and the house
Old vines kept as wood for the fire
It's so strange to be back - after 20 months of pandemic restrictions preventing our return by either one or both countries. And yet, the countryside is the same, the succession of vegetation and associated cultivation tasks are the same. But it is with an enhanced appreciation of the sufficiency of the land to supply our needs - physical and mental - that we have returned in 2022.
Last spring the family undertook a big replanting project on the vineyards, which we are sorry to say we had to pass on, being unable to be here. The old vines had to be uprooted, vineyards confines secured, rocks and stones laboriously collected and encased in cages surrounding the fields. Metal posts and wires had to be hammered in lines and bamboo cut to make stakes onto which the vines were tied.
Now it is time to give these new vines the best start they can get in their 40-odd year life, so we set about weeding and de-stoning the young vines, prior to spreading a bit of fertilizer to keep them happy at the outset. No sooner had we finished this task (today) than bingo! it starts to rain, and continues to do so all day. How's that for timing? This isn't Scotland. It hasn't rained here since October.
In the meantime, a touch of the dreaded Covid has been circulating in the family, so we have been working alone here in Locoe for nearly two weeks. Cut off from family but certainly not ignored by neighbours on the land - one of whom called by several times on his daily visit to his plot to give us freshly baked bread, home-made wine, and cheese from his town. Yet another called by bearing wine, and a third came round to invite us to join him for a macaroni lunch!
As our source of lazy food brought by our brother from Oliena has temporarily dried up, we have been enjoying experiments in 'weed cuisine' - and with some success! Wild asparagus has featured almost daily, and a variety of wide-lobed leafy wild radish makes a great substitute for spinach or beet, as well as being a product of our daily vine-weeding work. Having arrived in the nick of time to rescue a few rows of fennel, celery and lettuce from being finished off by the frost, we now have an increasingly varied source of salad. Brother Toni's home-made salami has been fried or roasted, brother Graziano's hens' eggs have been fried, frittataed, omeletted and, tonight, baked in the ashes of the fire. This afternoon, due to the persistent rainfall, I had the opportunity to tackle the (now 18 month-old) sackful of dried lentil plants, stripping them from their dusty stalks........into another sack. I am not sure what the next stage is, nor when I will have the will to tackle it! I'm just glad there is still half a packet of supermarket lentils in the cupboard. Battistino spent the afternoon cracking almonds.....unfortunately, there have been almost no almonds on the trees for the past two years, so these are from a reserve stock - though not past their crack-by date!
So far we have added a few rows to the succession of peas and broad beans started off by Toni at the start of the year. Got them propped up and watered...... in time for the rain!
More next time and hope you are all well.
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