Springtime in Umbria

This weekend the weather has turned for the better with lots of sunshine. This has in turn encouraged people to get out in to the countryside and in the olive groves and pick some wild asparagus. One of these precious spears is shown above. They grow at the base of olives trees and in embankments.

They are eaten in a wide variety of ways but in a sugo with pasta is one or in an omelette another.

Other olive grove news is that we have finished pruning here at Casa Margherita and so it is off to a new grove I have rented this week to knock that into shape.

Olive oil is healthy

Eating a Mediterranean diet rich in either extra-virgin olive oil or nuts cuts by 30% the chances of those at risk of heart attacks or strokes suffering either event or dying of a heart condition, research rpublished by the New England Journal of Medicine reveals.

What better way to start eating more olive oil than by buying some good quality Italian olive oil direct from the producer and here at Casa Margherita and you can also by our cookery book which is full of Umbrian recipes to inspire your Mediterranean cooking. Go to www.casa-margherita.com

Olive grove fashion

This season we are mainly taking our stylistic cues from Ron Moody's Fagin albeit with the use of contemporary fabrics with splashes of colour on the wrist trim.

Prune and rant

As I slowly prune the trees here at Casa Margherita into shape you are afforded a lot of time to mull and muse on stuff.

Today was politics.

The USA fail to put a stop to the long signaled budget cuts despite the knowledge that failure to do so will be a brake on US and world economic growth and so exit from recession.

1 in 4 Italians vote for a the new M5S party who want to draw a line under the old moribund political system and make some radical (not really) changes. Having won this powerful position they are not now willing to engage with any of the other parties thereby wasting a vital opportunity and consigning Italy to another period of flux it can well do without. Things could change on this....

France elects a socialist government whose almost first act is to alienate the drivers of economic growth by raising the highest tax rate to 75%. How old school is that. A one term President, Mr Hollande.

More olives tomorrow. What will I muse on....

Olive branch

This is a useful photo to explain how olives bear their fruit. This tree was not picked last November and so the branch from the last olive to the tip is all last years growth and it is on this that the tree will bear fruit this year.

On the subject of branches I saw an advert for a tree surgeon company and they were called Special Branch!

I love olive (s)

                          Summer olives, Umbria by Karyn White   http://www.karynwhite.co.uk


I think I may have lost my senses but I have agreed to rent another two olives groves this year which total another 500 trees. Yes I think I have. Anyway, the pruning has started here at Casa Margherita and at Le Corone and with the weather seemingly set fair and the l'artista going back to New Zealand for a couple of weeks I am looking to get really stuck in.

Le Corone

Le Corone (the Crowns) is a small hamlet at the other end of the valley from our local village of Manciano and it is here that I have rented another olive grove. A lovely parcel of land containing around 200 olives big and lovely but untended for a couple of years now as the owner is too ill to maintain them.

Today was our first day starting to clean the land and prune them back into shape. It is a great feeling being able to bring a piece of land back into production.

This may lead to a new label of olive oil from Casa Margherita. Exciting.