Cinta Senese

Historical Pigs 
The cinta senese is a handsome pig, bred in these parts for centuries. The distinctive white band tends to include the forelegs.  This pig lives in the oak and chestnut wooded hills around Siena and is prized for the sausages, hams and salame it provides. There is a small farm of cinta senese beside the unsealed road on the ridge east of Le Ripe.

The internet will tell you that the British saddleback, which resembles the cinta, is a 20th century breed, but there is documented proof of the Sienese cinta's antiquity.

detail from wall depicting effects of good government

Visit the Palazzo del Popolo in Siena, as you must,
and you will find the breed enshrined in a glorious fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Hall of the Nine, the council chamber where the nine city councillors of the day would meet.

wall depicting allegory of good government

The fresco dates back to
1340 and on two large walls, depicts the Allegory and Effects of Good Government, a concept refreshing still today and surprising for its solid, secular awareness almost 700 years ago. It is interesting that the Judge is surrounded by female figures: Peace, reclining on her bench; Justice on her throne with Virtue at her feet; Wisdom floating above her head as well as many others.

Apes in Tuscany

Apes

What does an ape have to do with Tuscany, you might ask. Not much, on the surface. But a recent story in the news about the discovery of this wonderful 'new' ape in the Congo, the Cercopithecus lomamiensis, prompts a look at some of Tuscany's recent and ancient local history.

If you drive to Radda along the valley road from Le Ripe, about halfway along you will see a sign indicating the 'Fonte di Selvolina' which is the spring of Selvolina, an ancient spring where locals would come to fill their bottles or barrels with good water and where travellers could refresh themselves and their beasts of burden. The spring today emerges in a rather battered stone trough right by the side of the road.

One day not so long ago, passersby were amazed to see a monkey perched on the trough. A small, thirsty monkey who had found a welcome place to have a drink. It was thought the monkey had escaped from some private zoo. I don't know whether the monkey was caught or whether it survived for a while in the Chianti hills, living off berries and grapes; certainly it has no natural predators in this area, if you don't count humans.

But the story does not finish there. It appears that in the ancient past, in prehistoric times, apes did roam through western Tuscany, when this land was a tropical island. The remains of a curious primate, the Oreopithecus Bambolii (named after Montebamboli, one of the sites where it was found) have led scientists to infer that this ape may have walked on two legs at times, and was capable of manual dexterity like humans. All of which is rather extraordinary and thought-provoking. 

For more information, have a look at these links.

http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy/science/tuscan-swamp-ape-last-survivor-tropical-europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreopithecus

Sky Show

Today was a day of moving skies, 

the wind whipping white and grey clouds 

across an elusive blue. 

The photo was taken just before sunset, 

a magical time of day when our hill is already shadowed, 

but the hills opposite are lit up, golden.

On a day like this you really should just 

stay outside and watch the show.

Selva Oscura

from Gustave Doré's Inferno

  Dark Woods

 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

  Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough 

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring... (trans. Pinsky)

Not exactly a jolly post, but not without a point either. Dante Alighieri, who wrote these immortal lines, lived and breathed the air of this land in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. At Le Ripe we have such a 'dark wood' on our property, where we do not like to roam: it is north-facing, dank and the trees have been abandoned to themselves to grow tall and fall in storms. Yet it is a fragment of wilderness where porcupines, deer, boar and all the other creatures find refuge.

Dante is using the dark wood as a metaphor for a difficult moment in his life and these lines are the opening to his masterpiece La Divina Commedia. I studied Dante's Commedia many years ago; amongst other things it introduced me to the marvels of medieval Tuscany, echoes of which linger in our hills to this day.

All this was brought to mind by a delightful entry in our Visitors' Book, which I quote in part:

Midway through the potholes on the steep way
Where the straight path is lost in darkling woods
We longed to see the lights of Le Ripe
Promising cheer and warmth and other goods
Books, talk, food and suites....  

The Best Minestrone

Panzano market produce

Minestrone

Panzano Sunday market has few stalls, but the cheese stall and the fruit and veg are excellent. We don't go every Sunday, but when we do, we aim for early. In summer by 10 not only is the place seething with tourists, but the best produce has long gone. We usually treat ourselves to a fine coffee at the corner cafe', then launch ourselves on the stalls. 
Last Sunday we bought fresh 
mozzarella which is 

raw minestrone

superlative, as good as you can get in Naples, crusty bread which was still hot and loads of fruit and vegetables. The peaches and nectarines we bought are not featured in these photos, but they are still very good; and now grapes and figs are in season. We prefer uva Italia which is a moscato (muscat) variety, and although we have figs on our own trees, we buy some...just in case. The second photo is a portrait of a raw minestrone. Fifteen vegetables went into its making, including cannellini beans. Minestrone is really an excuse for ribollita, the hearty Tuscan soup based on the day-before's minestrone (ribollita just means 'reboiled'), with local bread stirred into it, served with olive oil, pepper and parmesan. A one-pot meal if ever there was one. To make a true ribollita the two essential ingredients are cannellini beans and cavolo nero, or Tuscan black kale. I try to make enough to last at least two meals. If it were just for me, I could live on ribollita...

Rain at last

Relief

Rain! At last, after two months of drought, we were regaled with a substantial rainfall this morning, complete with marvellous rumbles of thunder.

Everyone in the valley, probably in the whole of Tuscany, is relieved. The forecasts promise more and today after it cleared I pulled out my first weeds of the rainy season. 
I have had my eye on them for weeks; but it is pointless weeding a dry garden.

The animals in the woods will be relieved too: maybe the predatory deer and marauding wild boar will be distracted by puddles and newly-succulent greenery...we live in hope!

Southern Bounty

part of the tomato plantation 2012

Pomodori

No, this is not Le Ripe, this is my sister in law's farm in southern Italy. We visited them last week and witnessed the incredibly labour-intensive job of making bottled tomato passata with their wonderful Rio Grande tomatoes. Here are just a glimpse of their organic tomato plantation and one moment of the 'procedura' as they call the entire process once the tomatoes have been harvested.

 

cooking the washed, selected tomatoes

First the tomatoes are washed, chopped both for quicker cooking and to check that they are sound inside (this does not happen in industrial processes) and set to cook in enormous saucepans. They boil at least two hours until they have reduced and softened. Salt is added at the end. This is for taste and to help preserve the sauce. Then the hot pulp is poured through a small machine which mashes the tomatoes, discarding the seeds and skins. This is the only mechanized aspect. The 'passata' - so-called because it has been 'passed' through the filter and become a rich red sauce - is immediately bottled with some leaves of basil. The bottles are piled in large saucepans filled with water and boil for about two hours; they are then left to cool overnight.

This year my sister in law, who is a real hero, will make 3000 half-kilo bottles of passata sauce with a handful of helpers. If anyone is interested in buying this wonderful, fresh, natural, organic tomato sauce they can have a look at this blog which also shows images of the 'procedura'.

The best use for the passata sauce (which can of course be adapted to countless recipes) is to simply pour it over a dish of freshly-cooked 'al dente' pasta, add some good olive oil and maybe parmesan and fresh basil. 

fruit of earth and sun

It is fruit of the earth and the sun, 

the best of the best!

If you would like to find out more about my sister in law's produce, have a look at their site.

Threshing Floor

the aia in 2003

similar view in 2012

 
 Comparisons

The first photo is how we saw the 'aia' (threshing floor) and dry stone wall next to the fienile or barn at Le Ripe. The wall was masked by creepers and ivy, the aia hidden beneath earth and perhaps 50 years' growth of grass and weeds.

The second photo is a recent view of the restored 'aia' and the old dry stone wall. The 'aia' has been enlarged but we found a portion of its paving stones beneath the brambles and earth. The farmers used to fill the gaps between the paving stones with broken crockery, pottery, any other refuse (which was very little: you didn't waste anything in those days) and manure mixed with straw, which compacted and dried very nicely. What effect it had on the threshed wheat is anyone's guess. The engineer who oversaw our works at Le Ripe wanted to demolish the wall, so that the main house would be more visible. "Over my dead body," was my reply. There are many other dry stone walls on the property, mostly crumbling or covered with earth after decades of neglect. We would love to restore them gradually; the irony is that it is hard to find a builder willing to do the job. Perhaps because it takes longer, because it's a dying skill, or because they really believe that cement lasts longer, as they claim. My response is that the Egyptian pyramids are dry stone and they seem to have lasted pretty well.

Indigenous Herbs

Lavender and other fragrances
There was so much lavender this year from our 40 plus bushes that I had to dry it on the floor on top of sheets. Soon I shall thresh it, so to speak. Lavender is happy in these hills although I have not yet found it growing wild.

Many aromatic plants do well here, both because they love the conditions and because they survive the deer who hate anything aromatic.

Some time after arriving at Le Ripe we found nine recognizable, indigenous herbs. Perhaps some were originally planted by the farmers  (the mint and the lemon balm?).

Here's the list:

wormwood (artemisia vulgaris), one of the main components of absinthe and a strange aroma, not to everyone's liking.The locals used to wear it under their clothes against worms;
catmint (nepeta cataria) which when trodden on releases a delicious scent;
thyme, not sure of variety, but it has dark pink flowers and turns red in winter and spreads beautifully;
wild fennel, which grows very tall; uncharacteristically, there was only one specimen which was eventually bulldozed over by the builders, so I collected some seeds elsewhere and planted it in our little herb patch where it is flourishing. I hope it spreads elsewhere;
curry plant (helichrysum italicum) has a lovely spicy smell;
camomile, a very prolific daisy: it was already growing wild in the field but when a farmer brought us a load of manure, so many camomile flowers sprouted in the vegie patch in spring that I used to grumble that instead of manure he had brought me a field of daisies;
lemon balm (melissa officinalis): it took some time to realize what it was, but the lemony fragrance is unmistakeable once you crush the leaves;
origano - seems to grow wild only in the lower meadow but we now have it in the herb patch as well;
peppermint (menta piperita), found growing wild in one place only, so perhaps planted by the farmers originally...

santoreggia/savory

In addition, the herb patch and garden boast sage and rosemary (like the lavender wonderful plants for our conditions, but I have yet to find them growing wild), tarragon (two sorts: the spectacular but tasteless Russian variety and the more modest fragrant one); lemon thyme; santolina which is a hardy, silvery shrub but whose yellow flowers are frankly stinky for a couple of weeks in the year; and savory which resembles thyme but has another fragrance and blooms gloriously in May.  

ps We 'threshed' the lavender in the photo above  and it came to about 7 kilos of dried flower heads! Now we have to decide what to do with it. Perhaps I shall start a cottage industry in lavender bags...

Hedgehoglet

Visitor

This baby hedgehog paid us a visit for a few days.

It was scrabbling around in the bushes outside our front door, probably confused - looking for its ma?

I had heard that you can feed them cat food and had a little tin set by for just such an occasion.

What a delight when the tiny creature, attracted by the smell, approached the tin, and also obligingly let me take photos.

As it ate it made tiny chewing noises, almost slurping.

I was so charmed by this diminutive visitor. Sadly, it did not return, even though I left out more food.

I guess it's better for it not to get too used to free lunches...

But still...

Summer Bloomings

Flower notes
The zinnias are a new entry; I'm very pleased with them: lovely colours, long-lasting and reflowering, plus they love the position on the sunny aia. Next year I hope to plant many more.

The agapanthus came all the way from Australia, brought by my mother in her suitcase, like the family jewels. They were in our garden in Melbourne so it is good to have a little bit of our old garden at Le Ripe. They do quite well here - this is their first year in tubs - but do not flourish as they do through Australia's mild winters. Each year they die back and have to start all over again in the spring, so the incremental growth is slow.

Curious Moth

Sphinx moth

This fascinating diurnal moth had me really puzzled when I was first alerted to it by its loud humming. I was convinced it might be a tiny, rare (rarissimo!) European hummingbird. A little research revealed that it is called called the sphinx, hawk or - hummingbird moth! Its wings are practically invisible as it hovers, indeed Su, the guest who took this photo, has done a miraculous job capturing the wings. This hummingbird moth is feeding from a flower of nepeta grandiflora or catmint but seems to frequent many different blooms. I once found one stuck inside a flower of dipladenia boliviensis. It's a joy to watch it dart amongst the flowers, humming non-stop.