Fall Update and a Trip to Palinuro

lunedi, 30 ottobre

I have heard that winter has arrived early for my Minnesota friends.  I am truly sorry as I sit on my porch and admire my rose bush that is blooming again - in late October.  No I am not rubbing it in but just confirmation that I love the southern Italian climate.  I do hope winter is kind to you.  

You can tell the seasons are changing as there are some trees that change color - but not many here in the south.  The temperatures are now in the 60's during the day and cooler at night.  But not too cold where you can't sit outside for dinner.  Last night Angela, Luigi and I ate at the Rosticceria and sat outside under the stars.  Layering and a scarf around your neck and you are all set.  It was heaven.  

So now how about an update on a few of my house projects? I thought you might also enjoy a little site seeing from southern Italy.  A few Minnesota friends visited for a week and I took them on a boat excursion to Palinuro.  More on that in a minute.  But first the house projects.

My fireplace is almost ready to use.  My new screen is here - now just waiting for the grate for the logs.  I am holding off as long as I can to put a fire in the fireplace - similar to the urge to turn on the furnace back in MN - you want to wait as long as you can.   Oscar's ready!

Also I hired my cousin Antonio, the carpenter, to build closets (armadi) for me in the office/spare room.  This will provide some much needed storage for clothes, Christmas decorations, luggage, etc.  It will be a full wall of storage.  I got a sneak peak of the progress on Saturday as I needed to pick out the handles for the doors/drawers.  His workmanship is amazing.  Check out the pictures.  Installation is scheduled for next Monday and I can't wait.  I am so excited.  They are solid wood!  I will send another picture when they are installed.  

The two closets without the doors. Notice the closet
on the right will have 4 drawers.

These are the cabinets that will be on top of the closets
They will also have doors and will go all the way to the ceiling.
I am using every bit of space.

The drawers with a sample of the handles I picked out.

I was excited to have two Minnesota friends visit recently.  One day we took a boat excursion to Palinuro.

From Wikipedia "Palinuro is part of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, an area of "shrubland" typical of Mediterranean countries.

It is popular with tourists, especially in summer, due to the cleanliness of its waters and beautiful beaches; and is regularly awarded five stars Blue Flag^[2]
The town is also famous for the caves along its coast,^[3] which are regularly visited, especially by frogmen."

The boat leaves the port of Marina di Casal Velino in the morning and takes a slow ride down the beautiful coast. It takes a few hours.  Once we get close to Palinuro the boat stops and then starts to off load everyone into smaller boats.  Some people will go relax on a beach/or go swimming as many of the young Germans on holiday did that were on the boat.  Or some people chose to go snorkeling - the boat provides all the wetsuits as the water has cooled over the past month.  My friends and I chose to relax on the beach.  We also took a hike up the mountain trail that takes you to a hotel.  The path is supposedly to be used only by hotel patrons but the hotel is closed for the winter so we chose to ignore the signs telling us to stay out.  As in Italy - rules are made to be broken.  HAHA!!

Carol and Susan enjoying the small boat ride to the beach

Enjoying the beach while the younger tourists enjoy the water 

A view as we start to climb the 444 steps to the hotel at the top

Picturesque coastline

A view down to the beach

Many are surprised by the rocky coastline

Bellissimo mare

The color is amazing

The smaller boats pick us up after a few hours and on the way back to the large boat we explore the grottoes that are famous in this area.  There are three that we visited.  The Sulfur Grotto - there is a smell of sulfur and an underwater sulfuric flow - notice the movement in the water in the video.

https://youtu.be/tFwS751A1QM

Next is the Blood Grotto - due to the redish color on the outside and inside of the grotto.  The color comes from the iron deposits on the rock formations.

https://youtu.be/C74z9sSHxwg

The third Grotto is the most beautiful and of course I had a phone/camera malfunction when I was trying to video so I only got a still photo of it.  The name comes from the effect from the sunlight penetrating into the grotto from an opening that is 100 feet deep in the water.  The color is so beautiful!

Inside the Blue Grotto

Small boat ride along the coast as we tour the grottoes

Beautiful rock formations

The large excursion boat waiting for its passengers to return

Palinuro is a must see for anyone visiting southern Italy!  

Fino alla prossima volta!!

My First Olive Harvest

martedi, 10 ottobre

Today's adventure was my first day of olive harvest season.  I just returned last night from a 5 day trip to Tuscany with my cousin Angela and Oscar.  I will blog on that later but I have posted some things on Facebook for those following me there.

I have been looking forward to today for years. I have always wanted to experience the olive harvest from start to finish.  Today I did and what a great experience it was.  I will try to explain as best I can in words, pictures and videos.  

Angela, Luigi and I left around 9 a.m. and headed to the country land.  There are many areas of olive groves that need to be harvested. Today we will work on land that was owned by Angela's father.  While we were gone this past weekend Luigi and Francesco (Angela's brother and my cousin) started to work this part.  They did about half of the trees so today we will finish.  There is also land that Luigi owns that needs to be harvested, as well as the land behind my house - about 10 trees.  Angela's land, which is the old Gentile family land, will not be harvested.  She lost 40 trees in the fires of this past summer.  Many Gentile cousins lost trees in this area - it is so sad.  Angela can't bring herself to even visit the land to see the damage.  Another cousin lost over 100 trees.  Luckily the trees we are harvesting are nice and full.  What I don't know is if the damaged trees will ever produce fruit again.  

The first video is our short drive down the "country road" to the land.  This is maybe 5-10 minutes from my house.  Note as the car slows the road is washed out on the right side.  I always hold my breath when driving on this road.  I am always a passenger - I will never drive it!

https://youtu.be/PPYWCYmcb7A


Once there I thought - gee not a bad view from my "office" for today's work.  :)

The first step is to lay nets down under the trees that you will be working.  Note this land is not flat so attention is needed to make sure you are on solid footing.  

Once the nets are in place the work begins.  Angela and I work on the lower branches - literally picking the olives by hand - pulling them off the branches and letting them fall into the netting.  Luigi and Francesco use a machine that is like hands that grabs the branches and shakes and loosen the olives.  I did try my hand at the machine as well.

But Luigi and Francesco are the pros.  

https://youtu.be/dhg1-jdPXO4

https://youtu.be/ovCkkPp-xak


When a tree is done you need to gather the olives so you pull the netting so the olives gather in one spot.  You empty the olives from the netting into buckets and shake the buckets so the leaves, twigs, sticks will rise to the top. You want to pull out as much of this type of material before bagging the olives.  The remainder will be separated at the pressing plant but doing an initial pass is necessary.  Once cleaned you then empty the bucket into bags.  

While we were harvesting many others are doing the same thing - you can hear the sounds of voices and machines across the land.  Right next to us were friends of the family.  Interesting as they did not have the modern machine but were using the old fashion method of a long stick.  You take the stick and literally beat it in the tree to get the olives to fall.  Now THAT is a lot of work.

Once the olives are picked and bagged it is on to the press company.  It is a busy place these days.  Everyone is bringing their harvest for pressing.  And of course we run into cousin Antonio who is harvesting today too.

Upon arriving the workers take your olives - either from containers or bags and empty them into large square plastic bins.  These bins can then be lifted with a fork lift so they are weighed before the pressing starts.  They are also labeled with your name. 

When your turn arrives the olives are dumped into the machine for washing and separating the leaves, twigs, etc.  See the video below.

https://youtu.be/Y6-So5OLTHw


Once cleaned and separated they enter the press machine which is inside the building.  I am not quite sure how it works but this machine holds multiple peoples olives as they are processed. 

 As they are pressed they turn into a paste - see the short video - part 5

https://youtu.be/0UhzOK4vulk

When your batch is ready the oil is pulled from the machine into the containers that are then used to fill your smaller containers. 

https://youtu.be/RSP1d7ufVEg

 The whole thing is quite amazing and I am so curious as to how the large machines work.  I am going to see if someone can take the time to explain it to me with our next batch.  Today it was so busy I did not want to bother anyone.  Another amazing bit of information - check out the list of the different types of olives just grown in the region of Campania.  66 different types - who knew?

Today we harvested 7 trees, in about 6 hours.  We gathered 140 kilograms of olives - which equals 308+ pounds.  That then turned into 30 liters of extra virgin olive oil or 7.4 gallons.  

There are more days ahead of olive harvest.  I will say it is a lot of work but it truly is a labor of love for the people of southern Italy.  I can't wait to taste it!!