oil and yet more oil (From Western Telegraph)

November 2011

3:00pm Wednesday 1st December 2010

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The 1st of the month is a bank holiday, All saints day, and the huge annual market at Perugia starts on this day and continues for 6 days. Its been held every year since 1260 with various names as the centuries and tastes went by. Unfortunately it seemed the whole population of Umbria decided to attend the first day. The access road from the superstrada (like the motorway but free) was cordoned off by the police so we had to go two junctions on and wend our way through the city centre back to the sports fields where the fair was being held. Easier said than done as there are strange one way systems and many lane changes to circumnavigate through. Having eventually arrived in the vicinity we were then lead a merry dance by the local constabulary who were sending people into all ready too full parking zones and generally causing more chaos than they were curing. Still we eventually found a spot and walked back to the field of battle having spent an hour having spent an hour to do so.

The fair is a real mixture of local produce, meats, salami’s, cheeses, dried fruits and bottled fruits, salasa’s, sauces and the like. Artefacts made of wood, wool, ceramic and cloth. Imported items from junk to jewellery, a real mixture with displaced persons selling umbrella’s, dodging the finance police as they clearly didn’t have a licence to trade. On the other side of the park there is a large fair with all the rides and traditional sticky sweets and stalls with games of chance for the youngsters. It started damp but quickly turned wet and then the heavens opened. We got drowned and soaked through to the skin, so we gave up without completing the last 4 rows of stalls and made it back to the car. We sat and pooled, the only good side was we had managed to get most of the items we went for and it wasn’t at all cold, still 18 degrees.

The following day was bright and sunny, a relief as we needed the olive grove to dry out as we hoped to begin picking the following day. Our workaway lass, Chelsey, arrived as planned from the USA via Rome and was bright, helpful and a willing helper. 2 Brits, who work 6 months on Elba before touring and working their way through Europe for 3 months and then they have a holiday for 3 months in exotic places, a nice life style and they were tremendous help. A friend who also had 2 helpers from New Zealand, loaned them to us to help for 5 days so we could get the majority of the picking doe as quickly as possible as there was a window of 5 days of good weather followed by 5 days of damp and you can’t pick the olives wet as they go mouldy and raise the water content, producing very poor oil.

We spent 4 days picking with a maximum of 7 people and a minimum of 3 and managed 911kg of olives that gave us 139lts of oil and we were just half way through! The weather then decided to turn wet and blustery so we all had a few days off, the helpers went to explore Arezzo, Castglione del lago, Orvieto and Perugia while we caught up with the household chores. Five days later we started on the last 80 trees out of 120 that were bearing fruit and finished with another 500kg of olives producing a further 78lts of oil. We kept 1ltr in a glass bottle to taste on toast to sample this years flavour, bright almost florescent green, with a buttery flavour with a slight peppery after taste, fantastic.

Unless you've been here in the haze of oil drenched air with the machinery pounding in your ears, farmers and the mill owners arguing at full bellow about the different productivity of certain types of tree, the weather, what manure is best to use, to hand pick over using a machine.... nothing can compare to the flavour of the oil you have actually nurtured and produced yourselves and seem from start to end product.

As we’d had lots of help from both friends and our workaway teams we reciprocated by helping them with their harvest so the fruit could be picked before the harsh weather came in or the fruit fly took over and the crop was lost.

The workaway scheme is to be recommended both for people willing to work and those wanting a helping hand. Naturally there are a few who take advantage by not making an effort to help out and those who expect too much from their volunteers but over all it works well. One of the couples helping us work 6 months of the year under contract with a camp site, wend their way home to the UK via the workaway scheme and then have 3 month holidaying in exotic places where their vehicle cannot take them.

The Fabro Truffle fair was held mid November in the old town center. Very well organised with a free bus service ferrying people to and from the event. Over 50 stall-holders were exhibiting their wares, everything from wine, liqueurs and grapper to cheeses, sauces and meats with truffles in the mix to articles to do with foods, a fondue maker a ploenta cooker and so on. The town hall had opened it’s cellar to host the communal meal, bruscetta, followed by a pasta dish, a meat course, vegetable a quarter ltr of wine and water for under 15 euros a head. A fun evening and worthy of a visit.

With Christmas lurking around the corner the shops are beginning to fill up with tinsel and festive food stuffs. Our local supermarket had a promotional week of British foods including brown pickle, cheddar cheese, marmalade and shortcake. To the Italians it was exotic and odd but we filled our basket with glee.

So seasons greetings to all and have a Happy Christmas.

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