Anyone for some olive oil?

My friend Chris is here from England so we have had a lovely couple of days. We went up to the mountain plains today to see if the sheep and the dreaded Maremma (live stock guarding dogs) have gone down to lower pastures and they had so we were safe to walk about, yay!

Chris with the boys




Kofi decided he wanted to be part of this monument (which is to remember all the shepherds who had died on the mountain)




Then we came across a wolf kill (and some wolf scat) which the dogs were really interested in and they both went into super sniffing mode..



It's olive harvesting time here and all alongside the roads the nets and pickers can be seen. Chris had asked how they pick the olives and as this is Italy and people are always falling over themselves to show you their traditions we were whisked away to watch both some olive picking and how they make the oil before we knew what was happening.


The nets are placed under the trees to collect the fallen olives and then the pickers go up the ladders with little plastic combs and brush out the olives...






Then the nets get tipped into crates and the crates onto the tractor..







The workers get 7 litres if oil a day and pick from 7am to 4.30pm..


This then gets taken to the oil press where the leaves are separated and then the olives are crushed by big stone wheels (now mechanical but once pulled by mules). The paste is then out onto these round things (don't know what they are made off- haha)



And then all these round things are stacked and then for 2 hours are pressed together so the oil all drips out. It was fascinating to watch and the owner gave us a bottle of freshly produced oil to take home and try. They didn't seem to mind the intrusion of 2 English people who wanted to come and be nosey and see how oil was made..!

Birthday boy

Kofi turned ONE last week, I don't know where the time has gone as he still seems (and looks) like a puppy to me! :-)


Trying his grown up pose..




I decided to take the boys to the beach for Kofi's birthday as he has never seen the sea and Shilah loves it. Thought he might be a bit worried about the waves but fear is not in Kofi's vocabulary and he just dived straight in after Shilah.



The beach was actually a bit disappointing as it was built up with loads of cafe's and bars. I was hankering after a windswept beach in the middle of nowehere!

We also had the first snow last week on the mountains, it has partially melted now but they looked beautiful with snow on!! Can't wait for more!

Forest colours

Just a quick post as I need to take the dogs for a walk before it gets dark, but I wanted to share some pictures of the lovely Autumn colours of the forest.


It changes daily and there are some really vivid colours that the camera hasn't quite captured.

Bits and bobs

I was thinking today that I don't think I have introduced the chickens on here yet! I had 6 originally but one was killed by a wolf/fox and so for a while I didn't let them out. But they always clamber at the gate so the last few days I have been letting them free range again which they love! I have also adopted a cockerel from my neighbours as he was getting bullied by a bigger cockerel. His name is Fonzie. :-)

It's difficult to decide whether freedom and quality of life is more important than safety but as they so love scratching about all day in the long grass I chose the former.






The only problem is that they don't like to go in until it's almost dark and I want them in before. So Kofi comes to the rescue and herds them in for me. I haven't taught him to do this, he just does it naturally (he is such a clever boy!). Shilah is scared of the chooks so he stays well away! haha

Bringing back the cheeky cockerel who has made a run for it..



rounding the rest up..


Herding them home having rounded them up..





It was sooooo damp and misty last week it was awful! For 3 days and nights it was like we were stuck in a permanent cloud, and everything was damp!



Sometimes I could barely see my veggie patch from the house and it was so damp that hundreds of snails attached themselves to the side of the house. I hated not being able to see the mountains for days on end and did I mention that it was damp?!

The snails also started to eat my pumpkins so I decided to pick them and bring them in. My neighbours pumpkins failed this year so I gave them 2 big ones and then kept these ones for me...



So far I have made some soup, toasted the seeds and experimented with making some sweet pie filling and putting it in a jar. I am going to see how that keeps before making any more incase it all goes off!

Some miraculous news arrived today, I might be getting my poles put in for my phone line next week! This is about the 9th date I have been given so I'm not completely convinced but the pole man did come to the house today and arrange things so there is a better chance than usual! Another miracle was that he didn't mind the dogs (most Italians are scared of them) and even asked me to let them out while they were barking at him through the window. Then he stayed for an hour playing frisbee with Shilah! A day of miracles indeed!!

The weather has turned a bit colder and now afternoons look like this...

Can't see the wood for the...

With winter approaching we took off to the forest to start stocking up for winter (privately owned forest). All the trees we cut were either already dead or had fallen over in the wind.

Here is some of the wood back at home..




Me trying out the new chainsaw (not so keen on doing this as i'm a bit scared of it!)



Dad doing some chainsawing




Because my stove is so small all the logs have to be cut up pretty small so after cutting with the saw, every log had to be chopped into quarters with the axe.




A sea of wood...




The weather has turned in the last few days so i'm glad we got the wood all cut as it's been so damp that we have had to have the stove on to dry things out a bit!

W.I.N.D!!!!

When I first came to see the land there was no mention of wind....after I had signed the deal, my neighbours began talking about not just one wind but something called the 'seven winds'. I still haven't completely understood what this is, if its a scale of wind severity or if it's the directions a wind can come from. But to put it plainly it gets very very very windy here! It's not windy everyday but it can come out of nowhere, be very strong and then just disappear in a second.

Back in June my dad built me a picnic table. When the neighbours saw it they tutted and mentioned the wind. It's a wooden picnic table we thought....surely it will be ok?




All was well until one night at the end of August when the wind picked up, all my shutters blew free of their catches and started banging against the windows, if I opened my front door EVERYTHING blew off the walls. It was a long and noisy night with the wind roaring past the house. In the morning all was calm. And I opened my door to a lovely blue sky and a big gap where the table once stood. I found it smashed to bits in a nearby valley. Should have listened to the locals!

The worrying part is that the neighbours said that the wind was only a breeze compared to the wind that comes off the Gran Sasso in winter! Heeeellllllp!

Anyway, undeterred my dad made another table with much thicker planks and they bought it out with them (dismantled) from England! It is lovely and much heavier, and this time we concreted it down!!




The boys showing how sturdy the table is. :-)




In other news.....

It is hunting season here (boo!!) and although everywhere I walk is national park and so there is no hunting allowed, I thought it better to be safe than sorry with the boys. Especially as the locals think Kofi looks like a wolf! So now when we are out and about in the forest the boys wear their jackets.




We have also been busy fencing off the bottom end of my land, so that no hunters can come up my track and also the boys can't go off scaring anyone going past on their tractor.

Safely behind the new gate...

Amazing sky..

I took the boys for a last run about before it got dark last night and the sky was just amazing...

First there was a rainbow in the clouds (believe this is known as a sun dog which is very apt)



And then all around the clouds were a mixture of pinks and yellows and blue with rays coming down. My photo's don't really do it justice but you get the idea..!











With my slow connection it sometimes takes a while to upload pictures to this blog and as I have no way of knowing if anyone is actually reading it, it would be great if people left comments sometimes so that I don't feel like I am just talking to myself. haha