Animals

We have two animals here at Casa Margherita although I think that they would rank themselves above animal status in the house - more like owner occupiers.

We have Louie, a 15 year old persian look-a-like but in fact just a basic moggy. Getting on a bit - eyesight not as good as it was. In fact most of the senses are slightly duller than they were. But he is still Mr Lou, as he is known affectionately.

We also have Winnie our West Highland West Terrior. She is rather younger at 7 years and is generally full of life and has yet to turn into a matron as our vet warned that she might.

They are great to have around and love life here at CM in the olive grove.

Old Olive Trees

We are very fortunate here at Casa Margherita to have a small number of very, very old olive trees. We do not exactly how old they are but they are many many hundreds of years old. There is here a picture of one of them which has just been pruned so maybe looks a bit threadbare but is still a magnificent specimen. The circumference of the trunk is 4 metres!

On the other side of Trevi from us in Bovara is an olive tree known as St Emiliano's olive tree. St Emiliano is the patron of our local town, Trevi, and is is reputedly against this tree that he was killed by the Romans and on dying bled milk for the people. Thats what they say. This tree has been dated as being over 1,700 years old. Incredible.

Who is Margherita?

Our Margherita is not the Queen of Italy during the reign of her husband King Umberto 1 and has nothing to do with the pizza margherita which co-incidently was created in 1899 for the Queen Margherita.

No, our Margherita lived in our house in the early years of the 20th century. She was a shepherdess and made ricotta which she sold locally. She was also the local wet nurse and took in children from the valley below who suffered from respiratory problems as the air here is cleaner and fresher. For these reasons our house in known locally, more especially by the older inhabitants, as the house of Margherita or Casa Margherita. For this reason our olive oil business is named Casa Margherita.

Scuderia Ferrari - Shanghai

Liked Alonso's move on Massa cheeky but cool and legal. Without the drive through penalty then maybe A would have been on the podium.

Andiamo avanti a Barcelona.

L'orto - the vegetable garden

Spent a few hours tidying things up in the orto in preparation for planting in the next couple of weeks. We don't have too much in at the moment - garlic which this year is doing well as well as some lettuce and onions.

The next couple of weeks will see the major planting of tomatoes of which we will plant around 50 plants of various types - cherry, San Marzano, bue di cuore, datterini and any other that takes our fancy. We freeze quite of lot of the crop either whole or pre-cooked into tomato ragu. The taste is just so much better that any tin or bottled tomato.

Where is Casa Margherita?

Casa Margherita is in Umbria, Italy the central land locked region of Italy famous for its olive oil.

Our house and the connected olive grove lie on the Colli Assisi-Spoleto at an altitude of 465 metres above sea level with a SW facing aspect. This later fact mean that our olives (and ourselves) are exposed to the sun for longest possible time during the summer months. During these months the sun rises around 7.00 and sets around 9.00pm.

The exact position of Casa Margherita is 42∘54' 07.32" N 12∘45' 13.30" E - for those of you with access to some earth mapping software will be able the see the actual house (Casa M) and everything in fact.

Tra poco...

Pruning Olives

One of the by products of pruning olive is all the olives clippings. There are various solutions used for them in our area.

One of them is to burn them which is very easy and still quite widely used. Another is to tractor them with a mowing attachment and they will rot down in situ. The option we use here at Casa Margherita is to shred them with an agricultural shredder. We then leave them rot down for a couple of months and then use them in the garden and around our other fruit trees as a type of mulch. This helps reduce water loss from the soil during the hot summer months and reduces weed problems. Here is a picture of the machine.