NOTES ON TUSCANY
This is where I sit in the morning drinking coffee, reading, contemplating the meaning of life and watching the town of Monte San Savino come to life. It's just like being in a painting that is changing. There is a chill in the the fresh crisp air with a hint of smoke from the fire I just started in the wood stove. With the town shrouded in fog or in the dawn sun I watch the lights begin to disappear as the sun rises over the hills. The mountains in the distance are a blurry blue or gray back drop.
It is so quiet, except for the birds, that when a big leaf falls from the top of the black walnut tree you can hear it come crashing down through the branches hitting the other leaves and it will often land on the ground with a thump. I thought it was an animal at first and then one day I watched one falling and realized it was the leaf making all that noise.
The tree was almost full of leaves when we arrived.
Italy does not wake up early so it is pretty light when I begin to hear sounds of life. The small road in front of Villa Ceppeto has a hairpin turn right at the property line so I hear a car sounding its horn as a warning in the turn as it's making it's way down the hill. In the distance I see a few head lights of cars driving up the road that circles around the hill up to the center of town. Soon I hear the Ape, a scooter with three wheels and a truck body, putt putting across the field below and to the side of the Villa Ceppeto, heading off to town or the field.
The blind turn.
Vespa with a truck body.
As the day gets into to full swing you begin to hear the voices in all the olive orchards around as people begin the day of harvesting their olives. I hear the 96 year old lady up the road about 300 yards talking to her chickens. She has conversations with them on and off all day and when we are in the orchard, Daniel or Manuela will interpret for me. We get a big laugh out of her serious discussions with chickens and the rooster in particular and all agree that we hope we can talk to chickens when we are 96.
When Spotty arrives, I know in about 45 minutes we will be heading out to start pulling olives off the trees.
From up here in my little quiet private world it is a great place for a few hours every morning. Then I get up, grab my gloves and march off to the olives.
The other day the neighbor across the road was asking from his orchard to Manuela in the garden if she had pressed any olives and how much oil did she get. This was all being interpreted for me by Daniel. "She is lying", he says. "The man wants to know how many kilo
s of oil we got and she is saying 17 kg and we only got 14.5 kg per 100 kg of olives." Daniel, who is Swiss, says "All the Italians are like this." "They lie to each other about the grape harvest or the olive harvest." "The problem is sometimes they forget what they lied and a just make up a new one." We both chuckled and went back to work.
Tuscany is being put to bed for the winter. All the grapes are in and crushed and starting to ferment through the winter. In a few weeks the olives will all be pressed into oil and stored away. Hopefully enough to last until next fall. The fields are plowed and the winter cover crops are being planted.
So, it is time for us to move on. We fly to Paris on Saturday to close the circle on the Poor Mans Orient Express.
