Olio nuovo arriva

Lovely. Vibrant green and at this point unfiltered. None of your anaemic supermarket rubbish here.

Windmills of my mind

One of the many advantages of picking olives is that you have plenty of time to think as the actual task is very easy. So your mind is able to wonder and you can ruminate on all things great and small. The banal, the personal, the rude, the crude. The big ones - love and death. As George W Bush fabulously said the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.

Good job you cannot pick olives all the time............

Tough picking

Our dogs Winnie and Ugo love the olive harvest. They get to spend all day in the grove watching, guarding, getting in the way, biting the net, chasing birds and generally having a fantastic time.

Now its dark and having been fed they are tucked up in small balls trying to get to sleep while I play loud music. Povera loro!

Festa della castagna

Manciano is the name of the small village where Casa Margherita is located and this weekend has seen the second year of it's Festa della Castagna or chestnut festival.

We wandered up yesterday evening to have a glass of red and have a chat today with friends and neighbors.

Today back to picking in between the showers.

Stagionato - I don't think so

Back to Assisi today to check out the festa they are having called Unto. There were numerous stalls with many offering tastings of this years new olive oil - olio nuovo. I am biased here but I thought most were rather lacking in taste as so rather disappointing. There was only one that had the big full flavor and deep green colour that is associated with new olive from this area.

I also noticed one stall holder offering olio stagionato which means seasoned or aged. It is normally used in the context of cheese, wine and meat. The oil on offer was last years olive oil and frankly was just old.

The sky at night

The sky last night in fact.

Today we have been picking olives and are now getting ready to go to the launch party of the
Novello d'Autore of Di Filippo for which Rachel has created six paintings to form the labels for the wine. These can be seen at www.rkwilliams.com.

Up we go

Weather permitting we are going to start picking tomorrow. May need a bit of luck this year as there is rain forecast for 9 of the next 10 days. Proviamola.