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..............

the archaeological architecture.this one represents a " tomba dei gigantic". the tomb of the giants. a burial site ,

" santa cristina sacred well". The miniature replicas are well made and the animals using it seem to be very happy!

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. 

Sardinia

I am back to Sardinia where I found a warm climate and no rain! Temperature is keeping around 26/28 degrees and it is pleasent most of the day. Comes midday it is too hot to be out and do anything, so generally is the time to relax.
I went back to Oliena first and then visited the land in Locoe where I found that not everything was dry and yellow. My brother informed me that August was unsettle and it has been raining regularly between very hot spells.
Fruits are very abundant, especially pears, apples and prickly pears. Grapes are not doing as well as we expected but the quality seems to be good, so the wine we are going to make should be a good one. The plan to harvest is for the end of the month.
The kitchen garden has plenty of vegetables still growing and so far I have been eating lots of tomatoes.
As the water in the wells is still plentiful, more vegetables have been planted.
I am hoping to produce  " unconventional wine" from apples and prickly pears, so I might start these soon when back to Oliena. I am at the moment in Marazzino with my brothers Graziano and Tonino ( plus kids) as we were working tiling the back room roof. Job finished yesterday so it is now time for them to enjoy a bit of seaside swim. I am posting a few photos of fruits and the prickly pears for the ones who do not this abundant wild fruit.

 prickly pears

 grapes

 porcini drying( very abundant crop this year). Graziano's present.

pears

 courgettes

 new lettuces

 aubergines

 massive marrow plant

 Pear (closed up)

Some tomatoes still growing

Back to Scotland

We arrived with the rain and we left with the rain.  On the last morning we woke up in Locoe land and although we were planning to water the plants, we soon realised that the sky was covered with clouds and soon after the coffee it started raining quite heavily. We prepared the food for the dogs and waited for my brother to turn up to give us a lift back to town and have lunch together before leaving for the airport.

The experience of three months working the land was as we expected. Busy, unpredictable at times and with many surprises, which includes the amount of rain we had from  the very beginning . Water in Sardinia is like gold, and the blue gold is certainly more precious than the  metal one.  Everyone was happy to see  it raining so often and so much. The water reserves are full and will last hopefully for a long time.

All is growing well

The main visible benefit of this monsoon type of situation is in the green grass around the hills, which is unusual at this time of the year. In fact, the forestry rangers have issued a delay in forbidding the start of fires in the countryside. Normally at the beginning of May no one is allowed to make any fires to burn excesses of garden cuttings. But as it has been raining so much and the grass is still reasonably green in many places, gardeners and people working in the countryside are now allowed to burn stuff till the end of the month.

Another good crop of olives?

                                        Goji berries fruit all ready to be picked

Lot of pears this year...

The other visible benefit is the health of the plants and the abundance of fruit. The vineyard are smiling and this year we should have a very good crop of grapes. We have lots of pears, apples, peaches and figs, plus more other types although not in such abundance. Everything can change as the weather is now really crazy and we are hoping that nothing strange will happen between now and end of September

....and quince

...and figs

...and peaches

We had a few problems with the house roof, and it is not fixed fully yet but next time round we will be making a bigger repair. Most of the vegetables we planted will be harvested in the next two  months, but  in September we will enjoy many of them. Having plentiful of water at our disposal allows you to plant more, but we already discovered that planting too many crops in different areas makes the watering more complicated and it takes a long time. The other thing is that you will get too many types of vegetables at one time and there is no way you can consume them. My brother thinks that is better to plant more rather than less. “ some for the table; some for the freezer and some for the friends and neighbours”. He must be right.

Our vines after grass was cut

grapes developing

Our  neighbours in Locoe  have been very friendly and often on the way back home they stop at our place to have a chat. They come to Locoe on a daily basis,   but go back to their village at lunch time or late in the afternoon. None of them sleeps there.

It is inspiring to see these people, most of them over 80 working hard every day and keeping fit without  going to the gym. But, it was also very inspiring seeing the two young girls looking after the family sheep from early morning to late evenings. Such a commitment is not easy to contemplate. I have to admit that I owe them some respect for what they do and it also makes me be more positive about the future. And thanks for their incredibly tasty fresh ricotta and cheese.

Good producers of cheese and ricotta...

The countryside needs to be repopulated and worked if is to survive the aggression of modern farming. It is especially important for the preservation of the biodiversity and the survival of the local seeds. If we rely on big-scale farming producing food for everyone, then they will feed us with what is more convenient for them to produce and we have no control over they way they produce it.

pomegranate tree

How to get back people to the land is a matter of restructuring society, at least in places where land is still owned by individuals and families. City people I am afraid have to rely on others to be fed. But, they do not have to eat rubbish. Incentives to young people to work the land and produce what the nation needs is the easiest way, but if we change the way we look at people going to retirement and let them go earlier as fifty, these people can then work the land ( if they wish), produce and keep healthy. There is nothing to be afraid of new ideas and if we cannot get away from the status quo then we are trapped by our own mental laziness and lack of initiative.

As for the impact on the planet it is now clear that growing your own food  helps to reduce the “bad“ emissions…especially if food is produced without pesticides and other chemicals. Plus eating local avoids the crazy travel of thousands of miles for food which actually does not belong to the local diet. And the exercise involved in cultivating the land has health benefits for the body and mind.

In September we will be collecting the ripe almonds (good crop this year). Our almond trees do not need to be watered as they do in California for the production of almond milk and drinks which is creating many problems in a place where water is also very scarce. Then we will be harvesting the grapes to make the wine. Later at the beginning of October we will start preparing  the ground for the olive harvest. For the vegetable garden there will be more winter planting and possibly experimenting  with new crops.

see you then...

Until then we will try to make the best of the time here in Scotland which so far has reserved for us the best weather we could  imagine.

Visiting Bosa

26/05/18

Summer has arrived on the island! Blue skies and temperature rising. The rain is a thing of the past and as the green fields are becoming yellow-gold, the thinking of people here is that now they will be facing  2 or 3 months of very hot weather. My brothers have been busy cutting the high grass, as soon there will be danger of potential fires.  (This is a recurrent problem in Sardinia as every year numerous fires start, burning hundreds of hectares of Mediterranean macchia.)
Bosa from the Castle

Time is up for us and we are ready to return. The one day trip to Bosa finally took place and the weather this time was clement. The little town on the west coast is a pretty place and the B&B where we stayed was situated on a hill slope overlooking the Castle above Bosa. The place is called
"Giardini Malaspina" and the family who run it is originally from south Sardinia and now they have established themselves there running three different businesses. They were very nice to us and our stay was comfortable and pleasant.

The B&B Giardini Malaspina seen from the Castle

We visited the museum of leather making (tannery). It was interesting to find out that to make a piece of it would take between 6 and 8 months in a long laborious process.

Tomato tins made into flower pots along the streets of Bosa

Narrow streets of Bosa

One of the ways down from the Castle

Fisherman on the river Temo in Bosa.

The view of the Castle

After Bosa we went to see a small village on the top of a hill called " Monteleone Rocca Doria  ". This is a place I always wanted to see, and after reading that the village is destined to disappear due to the young people leaving the place for a better chance to find jobs elsewhere, we discovered that it is a true reality. There are only 90 people living there and we bumped into one of the last old persons born there. He was sitting on his own enjoying the morning sun and we stopped for a chat. All his friends are dead and it was sad to see that also all his sons have moved away.

Giovanni Piras, one of the oldest in the village of Rocca Doria

The lake below Rocca Doria and the escavated corrie  of tufo where Giovanni Piras used to work making bricks.

A small church in Rocca Doria

lesley and a gigantic plant (as yet unidentified)

The village has a post office which opens 3 times a week for a few hours. No school as there are not enough young kids left. No shops but a delivery van comes once a week to deliver some food. The place is in a beautiful position but this is not enough to entertain people. Many villages are destined
to disappear and not just in Sardinia.

An old house with carved stones from the corrie