A winter's sunset

The winters sunset's here in Umbria are often fantastically vibrantly colored. A visual treat even when in the depth of winter - boiler not working, wood won't light etc.

The balm of nature.

70 years on

The Allied advance up the length of Italy was a slow and bloody campaign against the German in 1944/45.

Today saw the some of the surviving combatants gather at the Anzio landing site near Rome for what for some maybe their last visit.

There is a Commonwealth grave nearby below the imposing hill upon which lies Assisi. There is a group of Italians who look after the cemetery and they have each adopted a number of the soldiers graves. These they visit and maintain. It is moving place as the soldiers were generally in their early 20's and the war had so few months to go.

RIP

Che schifo

Browsing the net earlier I came across what at first sight seemed like a great recipe for a chocolate mousse made with olive oil. Always a sucker for recipes using olive oil I delved deeper.

For some reason the creator of the recipe listed the ingredients as including "light olive oil". What the. What is light olive oil? As my olive oil resource online says "In the U.S., flavorless and often low quality (refined) oil is sold as "lite" or "light" oil for a premium price. The "light" designation refers to flavor, not caloric content, as all olive oil has the same amount of calories. There is no official definition of lite or light". Thanks to the Olive Oil Source website.

Roma

A queue always attracts some interest, more so if your English maybe, and so when I was in Rome i was intrigued to see a queue outside a restaurant on the way to Campo Dei Fiori. This was around 6.30pm so not at traditional eating times.

Eventually someone came out and they had a piece of fried baccala in a brown paper wrap. Fantastic. Street food is achingly hip at the moment but this is old school. Luscious big flakes of rehydrated salted cod in a crisp batter.

Ah Roma. Ti amo.  

Sunset 9-1-14

This was the sunset earlier this evening. You can just about make out fog in the foreground which has covered the valley for the last couple of days whilst here at Casa Margherita we have been bathing in the winter sun.

I dropped down into the valley this morning and the temperature was a brisk 1°c and I bumped into a neighbuor who said he was going to come up this afternoon to get out of the fog and get some light.

After a few days of this the air quality also drops and you can see the fog is tinged a brown colour which in the main is wood smoke as burning wood is the primary form of heating and I would wager that this year less gas and electric are being used for heating and more wood burnt.

The fine art of selling

Or maybe that should be the fine feeling of selling.

Selling as most people know is a real skill which most of us do not possess but wish we did. As I am not blessed with this ability then I just need to plug away in my own inimitable way.

When this works and I make a sale then the feeling is fantastic. So I was extremely pleased when I visited a shop in Rome the other day and they placed a good sized order for my olive oil which here in Italy we have re-labeled as Paterno which is the name of the hill where our house and grove is found. Check out the website at www.oliopaterno.it

And it came to pass….

Polystyrene nativity figures in Trevi. Ho ho ho it must be Christmas.

Finished

At last we have finished picking. A day short of two months, over 700 trees picked and more than 5,500 kilos of olives, we have finally reached the end.

 The last few days there has been a constant mist in the valley which has made picking wet and very unpleasant but today we had some sunshine to finish with.

There are many words that I can't use to describe how we feel but as they say here we are 'cotto' - cooked. In fact we are cottisimo.

Roll on Christmas.

The day of the century

 Today is the day of the century.



                                                                11.12.13

Adopt an Olive Tree this Christmas

Find out more at http://www.casa-margherita.com

Go Panda go

Still busy picking olives here in Umbria.

At the end of the picking day then the roads are filled with old Fiat Panda's packed with an assortment of tired pickers, olive nets and crates packed with olives. Some on the way to olive mills and some taking tired souls back home for the comfort of a warm fire and a relaxing bath.

This evening I left the house to take another load of olives to the mill. The track from the house is fairly steep and I had heard an unknown vehicle struggling upwards obviously laden with olives from a days picking.

Following possibly a little to close behind I came across an Ape (a example below)
obviously making its second attempt to get up the final twisty curve of our track. The high pitched note of the engine and a cloud of blue smoke serenaded a successful attempt to the summit of the track.

Following behind I noticed the said Ape was full of olives but had originally had a driver and two passengers - the passengers had been ditched for the final attempt. Talk about overloaded.

I really fancy getting one of these. They seem to be really great workhorses.

Olio nuovo arriva

Off to the Frantoio tomorrow to press another haul of olives into a lovely drop of cold pressed, unfiltered, extra virgin olive oil from Casa Margherita.

It's easy this picking. Don't see what the fuss is about………….

Olive handcuffs

I have found out that one of the largest olive mills or Frantoi in the area works in the following way.

It itself has no substantial olive groves so relies on many small olive grove owners to sell their olives to them so they can sell olive oil bearing their name. Nothing uncommon about this.

What they do however is not pay for the fruit for 12 months or until the next years harvest. These appalling terms means that the mill owner maximizes his cashflow as the expense of the small olive grove owners who cannot leave and take their fruit elsewhere as they would not be paid for the previous year - olive handcuffs.

Keep the serfs down.

Festivol a Trevi

This weekend is the annual 3 day festival celebrating the new season's olive oil - olio nuovo. Many of the local olive oil producers exhibit their new oils in Villa Fabri in the centre of Trevi.

Casa Margherita is one of the exhibitors and I am delighted to say that after two days we have sold the all the oil produced from our first pressing. I am well chuffed as they say.

We will celebrate tonight and then tomorrow its back to picking for the next pressing on Thursday.

Still picking..it's hard work I tell you

Belt tightening

Today I went to my local hardware store to buy a ladder as we start olive picking. Normally for this I would get an invoice but today I was told they could not give me an invoice. This is a common situation at the moment as small businesses concentrate on cash only to stay afloat.

Indeed the olive mill that I use has not had there POS machine working for over a year now and I would bet that a lot of mills in Umbria are having the same problem!

One result of this is that even more economic activity has become 'nero' Or under the counter and so the government is able to collect less tax. This could develop into a vicious circle.

It's getting close to picking time

The olives are starting to change colour from green to a deep purple color. We will start picking towards the end of next week to enable us to have olio nuovo for the olive oil in Trevi on the 1/2/3 November.

You can get a glimpse of what's on from the website www.festivol.it

If you are in the area then come along and have a taste of our olio nuovo.

Nocturnal feasting

Our neighbours grove this morning after a visit from a sounder of wild boar looking for their favourite roots and bulbs.

Meanwhile our two guard dogs, Ugo and Winnie, slept soundly and undisturbed....................

L'Artista

Sand and Sea - RKWilliams

Rachel has also updated her website and is showing the work she has produced over the last 6 months or so. Have a look at www.rkwilliams.com