Tonight's sunset

Don't move or I'll shoot!

Norcia is a town famous for it's hams and other pork and wild boar products and is well worth a visit if you are ever in Umbria. This display is from one of the shops there.

Trimming the vines

We have been trimming the vines that we have planted along the fence that encloses our vegetable patch. They had a very good year last year putting on a huge amount of growth. We have cut all this back to leave just two laterals.

Internet savvy

It is very fair to say that Italy has not been at the forefront of the internet revolution. Many businesses here have no internet presence and the phone and not e-mail is the preferred means of communication.

We have quite often e-mailed Italian businesses and have never received a supply. I have recently received a response from the Italian post office, whose website states that queries can be made by phone or e-mail.

The e-mail I received contained a word document which asked me to call the freephone service.

Lichen

This is a close up of lichen on the bark of a oak tree which I have felled and chopped into logs. There may well be some inspiration here for the artist is residence at Casa Margherita. I need to have a word. Something abstract.

Wild boar digging

This is the results of wild boar digging. There is quite of lot of this around this time of year as food will be harder to find. You can see that they are very powerful animals.

You can hunt boar legally here if Italy. They have changed the way permits were issued recently so that they were area specific and so hunters were not at liberty to hunt over unrestricted areas. The result has been that some hunters lay down regular supplies of food so the boar do not leave their area in search of food and so guarantee better hunting.

Olive spread

This is one of the fields in our local village, Manciano, where the local olive mill owner spreads the waste from the milling process. There is a limit to how much he can dispose of this way as it is quite an acidic product.

This by product can in much larger mills be further processed and more oil extracted.

The 'woody' by product of leaves and bits of branch can be further processed and turned into wood pellets or just burnt as they are.