Weather or not (From Western Telegraph)

Weather or not

6:16pm Saturday 13th March 2010

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The year started mild enough, just to lull us into a false sense of security perhaps, so we made plans on how to trim the olive trees, taking advice from those who had husbanded them for generations and others who adopted the technical approach and had done a college course on the subject. We concluded, having been inundated by information, it is difficult to kill an olive tree unless you get a really prolonged freeze, 1956 killed most trees locally leaving just one or two out of hundreds and then 1979 took out many more. They cut the trees off at the base and then selected the strongest growths to re-establish the tree, which is why you get a cluster of 3 or 4 trunks, originally it was a single 300 year old tree.

To trim a tree in the local fashion, weeping willow effect, you cut out all rising growth to keep the tree level. Remove anything over 12 feet high because if you can’t pick it why encourage it, branches that cross over or grow back into the centre. The resulting effect should be of an open cup shape that a black bird can fly through easily and produce dappled shade, to air the fruit to stop it mouldering on the branches and to encourage good sized fruit. The branches should have any twiggy growth or diseased wood taken out as well as all the young shoots that populate the trunk and branches to force the nutrients to the branches selected to grow. In Sicily they leave the trees grow as big as oaks and lay nets out underneath and either let the fruit drop naturally or use a huge machine that shakes the tree to it’s roots to dislodge the fruit as the trees are too big to pick any other way. End of class 101 on olive tree pruning.

We bought a pelleted organic food, not too rich in nitrogen as that produces leaf not fruit and discourages oil, as we were not prepared to lug horse, sheep or pig dung over 5 acres of ground. We also found someone with a baby tractor who would cut under the trees at the same time he was doing his own in the spring and autumn, for a very reasonable rate, so all we had to do was strim where he couldn’t go. We didn’t go to the many carnivals (carne = ‘meat’, va lo ‘it goes’ literally but it was to say goodbye to meat for lent) that were put on but friends who went to Foiano said the huge floats were spectacular, perhaps we’ll have time next year.

We began on the 1st of February and finished in a blizzard on the 9th March, this was not every day as the weather decided to be difficult, being the wettest, season for 20 years. So we worked perhaps 4 days a week around the rain, hail and tempests. January and February are normally the coldest times of the year, dropping to minus 9 on several occasions but we had days of brilliant blue skies and had to work in shirt sleeves, picnicking on the grass at lunch time with friends who had come to help out.

The bonfires we had, 4 in total, were enormous, each pile of off cuts being about the size of a transit van, but a morning dedicated to feeding the fire ring steadily had them don e with, then we covered them with mud, turf or sand to ensure they didn't flare up should a wind rise in the night.

Around the same time as we began the pruning our neighbour started the fabrication of the property next-door. 30 cement lorries in convoy arrived one day, when we were out, and we failed to negotiate the road home as the vehicles had sunk up to their axles in the mud making deep ruts our car couldn't ride over, becoming totally mired. They quickly got a JCB down to us and leveled the road before us so we could get home. The last day of the convoy a lorry slipped off the road and fell against a tree, stopping it rolling down trough the woods, effectively blocking the road while a huge crane got it back on the track, and we though we had problems! By way of an apology we were invited to dinner at the developers house. We had a glass of perseco to start in the sitting area with nibbles while we got to know each other. Then we moved to the dinning room where we were served pasta with fagoli and saffron. It was a very delicate taste and the "soup" didn't move, we could have eaten it with a fork, but very nice. Ginni (pronounced Jenny), Mr S, said he personally thought beans should be served with pepperoncino as they are a robust legume and saffron was too subtle for him. We had house wine, a red Merlo, grown in thier acres with it. Then we were served thin slices of beef with a layer of fresh soft cheese and Parma ham all folded over with small cubed roast potatoes. A side salad, (they ate theirs afterwards) of rocket and tomatoes with a vinaigrette over. This was accompanied by a huge glass of Bruneto, supposedly the best wine in Italy and not to be drunk before it's 15 years old, our sample was 19 years old. Actually very smooth and a deeper red, but there was no fruit flavour like his young house wine. We had 2 soft Italian cheeses with walnuts and bread, served with a red wine from near Montipulcano. The apple cake was served with a shot of something that is not grapper but has the kick of a mule 40% proof and the flavour of arsenic (bitter almonds) made from the whole grape and distilled, where as grapper is made from whatever is left after the grape must has been selected and turned into wine. We declined to try the other clear bottle having seen the 75% proof on the label.

They explained the development by us had to look like the original property to keep in with the surroundings and they would be making a maximum of 6 apartments there in the main house, then 2 in the old tower area later on. In the distant future they would be 2 more reconstruction's making a total plan of 4, with gardens, woodland walks, pool, tennis and using the latest green energy technologies so no-one had to lug wood for fires. They would be reconstructing the road and inconveniencing us and our neighbors as little as possible, but the weather had made everything so much more difficult. They would also be repairing our car park a sea of mud where they were turning the construction lorries around. They were so apologetic and keen to replace the road with a much better 2 lane surface, we were not making any complaints.

We quickly learnt to watch for the workers, if they arrived on site at 8am then it wasn't going to rain and we could get to the trees, if they didn't show it was going to be wet or worse. Unfortunately on March 9th they turned up to inspect the last concrete pour so we went off, just as we were finishing the last of our rental trees, it began to snow. We barely made it home, slithering sideways and using 2nd the whole way as we slid from rut to rut in an effort to make the journey home, preying we'd not meet anyone as we weren't sure we'd be able to stop and if we did, re-start. We made it through the gates but had to leave the car just inside them as it failed on the last stretch of hill up to the house. Mach1, our cat, was pleased to see us home early and we quickly got changed from our soaked clothes. In under and hour we had over an inch of snow, 6 hours and six inches lay over the countryside. Mach1 was horrified, he needed to go out but this was up to his middle, so he came back in and asked for another door to be opened, then a third and the forth. He was so cross he bit our legs as if the cold white stuff was our doing. He has 2 litter trays indoors but prefers to use the outside, so some hours later, having opened every door several times, he gave in and used a tray. We suffered small damage, an olive tree on a bank split and collapsed and the cypresses lining the drive splayed out, we hope they'll recover in due course.

In the North it was very sever with trains canceled and motorways blocked in places as the snow was falling faster than the snowploughs could clear it. In these cases the police delivered water and food to those in the jams and ensured no one was in need of medical attention. “ days later and we're back working in shirt sleeves and sunshine, looking at the snow covered field on Mount Cetona to the West of us. What a start to the year!

The remainder of the month would be helping those who had given their time to help us, which is very common here, everyone pitches in to help their neighbor and they get helped in return to cover the seasonal jobs as most people only have the weekends to do the work in the family fields.