Tin Man 2

Drove a couple of hours north today to just south of Florence to pick up some tins for our olive oil. All our local suppliers are not getting any new stocks in over the summer.

Actually it was ok as they were a lot cheaper direct from the manufacturer although the car temperature gauge did touch 39 degrees on the way back - ouch - thats just a little bit too hot for me.

Not had that happen before

The phone rang this morning and it was Trevi tourist office who had an Austrian couple who had seen our olive oil in the Trevi Olive Oil Museum - http://www.treviturismo.it/ - and wondered if they could adopt one of our trees. We said yes of course and guided them to the website and then about an hour latter they had arrived in our local village of Manciano and wanted to come and meet us.

Rachel picked them up and we gave them a short tour of the grove. They were very nice people who were coming to the end of their holiday staying up by Lago Trasimeno and so bought some tins of oil to take back as gifts.

Beetroot 1st

After years and years of research here at Casa Margherita we have finally perfected the world's first bonzai beetroot tree. Seen here for the very first time. Quite impressive I'm sure you'll agree.

Garlic and grapes

We have just dug up our garlic and this year is the best we have had so far. Normally we have really small bulbs but this year we've gone large.

I like garlic as a vegetable as its very easy to grow and you plant it on the shortest day on the year and harvest on the longest. These are rough guides but right up my street. Also garlic is very low maintenance. We do have more than this by the way.

Also this year after years of having done nothing our vines are bearing fruit. We are a very long way from being able to produce a Casa Margherita Classico but .......watch this space.

Oggi

Got up and walked Winnie (our Westie) up the hill into our village of Manciano. She had a great game with some of the local dogs but was very very overheated on the way back so i think that will be the end of walks until it cools down a bit.

This afternoon I was packing up sets of Casa Margherita infused olive oils for our olive tree adopters. They get a chilli infused, a thyme and a lemon infused olive oil which will be perfect with those summer bbq's.

During this there was a thunderstorm which lasted less than an hour but in that time took the temperature down from 35c to around 22c. A drop of over 13c. It is warming up again and so is our poor laptop which each summer we think will give out on us as it gets so hot. Hopefully not quite yet though.

Il Obolo

Sunday in Italy for a substantial number of people means Mass. During Mass the collection plate will make it's way up and down the pews. Durin g the Sunday closest to the 29th June the monies collected go towards the Catholic Church's charity works rather to the local Diocese.

These offerings are known in Italian as Obolo di San Pietro and in English as Peter's Pence which I think is  rather wonderful.

Here endeth the lesson.

Don't call me hardy!

Olives are very hardy plants indeed. They are perfectly adapted to the Mediterranean climate of long hot summers and cold winters.

Below is a shot from an adjacent grove where the owner is reducing the number of trunks from 3/4 down to one but has not yet removed them and so there remains a stump a couple of feet high which you can see is sprouting new growth.

A lot of other plants would not survive this kind of treatment but the olive continues on.

We have here at Casa Margherita pruned some trees by chainsawing a trunk back to a metre off the ground and then developed the re-growth into the classic wineglass shape. After 3/4 years the tree will be bearing fruit again.