So I’ve been working with them and with some local farms to define the schedule of their brief visit. It takes a lot of work to find the best way to fit their schedule (they only have 4 hours) and choose what to include and what to exclude. When a destination is your home, you want for people to see everything and possibly appreciate it as much as you do, but of course, I do understand that this is not possible.

My task is to plan a visit to a lavender farm, to an olive oil producer’s farm and to arrange for activities that can exemplify what the locals do with lavender and how olive oil is produced. It is a cool thing, but it is also a great responsibility because I am not sure what sort of expectations they come with…

Olive groves are not a problem: the Upper Maremma is famous for its olive oil and in my village area in particular, olive groves are the main source of income. The local olive press is renowned and appreciated and there are several excellent producers which make and sell excellent quality olive oil.

Lavender, though, for some reason is something that people expect to find everywhere in Tuscany, but the way lavender is used here is nothing like what you would find in Provence, in France. People use it in their gardens, as a decorative plant, but very few farms grow lavender extensively these days. For this reason, when our guests ask us where they can find a lavender farm to visit we always try to explain that there are a few local producers but they will not see the large fields they might have imagined. Who knows what these Canadian documentarists expect to find…

Anyway, today we went to talk with the local producers to see the fields and decide what we will do. They were very nice and helpful. The fields will be in blossom when the Canadians arrive so they should be very pretty. They will be shown how lavender body cream, oil, soap and other products are made. These farmers still use the same instruments that people used many years ago, when lavender was used to scent laundry and for personal hygiene. That’s because lavender is not in high demand and for this reason the products are still handcrafted for the most part.

I guess this is the main reason to visit a lavender farm in Tuscany: a perfect opportunity to see how small, local farms process lavender in the same way as our ancestors did centuries ago. And of course, because it is the perfect excuse to spend a few hours in the beautiful countryside!

Then all of a sudden the sky beyond the hilltop where Civitella Marittima, our village, sits went dark. Thunder could be heard in the distance. It didn’t take long for the storm to arrive from Monte Amiata. The countryside suddenly went silent. No cheerful birds, no grumpy cows, no happy hens. Just lowering clouds quickly gathering over the village and over our house, and the rumble of thunder. The rain came “wrapped up” in a whirlwind, with more thunder and lightning. The storm didn’t last more than 20 minutes and left us with a brighter, dazzling sun. All of a sudden the air was cool and clear; a thin, smoke-like steam covered the roads; a distinctive smell of wet straw and earth filled the air.

It was sunset already and while the western sky glimmered over the vineyard colouring  the vines in an intense pink, to the east, a beautiful red full moon was raising in a bright blue sky over the silver olive trees.

Just another perfect summer day in the Maremma.

(Please, click on the symbol on the bottom right-hand corner to see the photos full-screen. If you don’t have Flash, you can see the photos here)

This year the olive harvest in the area is apparently not very good. My father’s olive trees, though, are loaded with olives, so my family has been picking for three weeks already. I must confess that I don’t really enjoy picking olives: I much prefer picking grapes. So I devote my time to the tasting part! This year the new olive oil is delicious: bright green, slightly spicy.

These days, olive oil is not as spicy as it used to be when I was a child. Back then, a certain amount of leaves would end up in the press with the olives which contributed to the sharp flavour.  These days, thanks to the modern equipment used, leaves and olives are carefully separated by machines before being pressed.

I remember the distinct smell of freshly pressed olives and the feeling of walking on slippery stones in the old olive presses. There were seven in my village: even the locale occupied by the excellent restaurant La Locanda nel Cassero used to house one of the olive presses.

The village economy was strictly tied to the cultivation of olive trees. Wine was not a big business then. Olive oil still represent a significant part of the villagers’ income and the new, modern cooperative olive press produces and sells an excellent product that is often awarded prestigious prizes.

Every year, the village celebrates the olive harvest with a festival dedicated to the new olive oil. This year the festival was held on the weekend of November 14-15. It was really nice, with bonfires lit in old bins where chestnuts are roasted, and bruschetta served from several small stalls. La Locanda nel Cassero organized an olive oil tasting with a presentation given by Carlo Barbieri of Podere Vignali, a lovely agriturismo in a nearby village. My father’s olive grove was featured in a photo slideshow! It was nice to see his large trees being praised by the “connosseurs”!

We organize visits to the olive groves and to the olive presses and olive oil tastings.

Nothing yet?

Well, it’s a calendar that is mostly used for agricultural purposes. It is the calendar which tells you what needs to be done in the fields in every season.

The “lunario” is generally used by those who choose organic farming, which is the most common choice around here, where people tend to grow few vegetables, or olive trees and vines for their own use. It was also the best bet to get a decent crop in the old days.

My grandfather knew it by heart and was able to make his own in a quite precise way. Of course when he got it wrong, he blamed it on the fact that the “official almanac” had no clue about what was best for his own land, and that was the topic for some lively discussion with my dad at the table over the Saturday lunch. It generally ended with my dad giving up and following my grandfather’s alternative almanac… just for the sake of family peace!

As you have figured, I grew up in an agricultural environment, as most of the people in my family were farmers. When I was younger, I used to wonder why on earth we had to have the ugliest possible calendars hanging from our walls: no art calendars or pop star calendars… not even the calendars that you get for free from your bank or from the supermarket! No no… I grew up seeing the Barbanera almanac hanging over the radiator behind the kitchen wall, full of marks and notes that my parents used to write down. Stuff like “travaso” (travasare means to decant, to transfer the wine from one container to the other), “ziro” short for “pulire lo ziro”, “clean the olive oil container”. A “ziro” is the traditional terracotta jar where olive oil was stored. Now they are quite rare as it was a hell of a job to clean it, and it was not as convenient as more modern aluminum or glass containers where you have a tap that serves you olive oil… I remember my grandmother in the cellar armed of a ladle, a bottle and a funnel trying not to spill any olive oil (because of course that would ensure a great deal of bad luck!) and then having to juggle with the filled up bottle, the dripping ladle and funnel and the top of the jar that needed to be closed without putting anything on the floor of the cellar, which was made of nothing but soil and would inevitably leave sand and dirt on the greasy bottle… or worse, on the top of the olive oil jar.

So, this month my dad’s lunario says that it’s time to prune the olive trees. And that’s what he’s doing from dawn to sunset, leaving my mum behind to gather the trimmed branches, which we will have to take away over the weekend. In the older times, part of them would go to the village church which used them as “olive benedetto”, the blessed olive tree branches handed out on Palm Sunday (each family would make sure to have a blessed “bundle” of olive tree branches at home, in the fields, in the cellars, in the car, and so on… now we struggle to find a hidden enough place to keep those 2 or three quickly-drying-up-leaves that the priest, or some boy, leaves for you in the mailbox…), the rest would be burnt. Now the burning is forbidden (although I am sure most of you have seen some old guy guarding his personal bonfire leaning on a stick), so we need to take this stuff to a place where it’s used to make some organic fertilizing substance or so. I am not sure what they do with all these branches and I suspect that they burn them in some bigger, and more polluting industrial bonfire machine…

Anyway, that’s our next Saturday afternoon job!

Of course the “lunario” finds much more work for you to do in April. You need to sow the vegetable garden with watermelon and melon seeds, but also with beans, green peas and peas. And of course you need to bring out in the fields those pale, weak, unrecognizable leaves that will soon become proper plants of cucumber, broccoli, celery, and cabbage. Oh and it is that time of the year where you read “travaso” on my mum’s calendar: it means that we will soon have to clean the wine containers, and to put the remaining wine in sealed bottles… not a fun job (unless you are trying to get drunk just by breathing!)

Over the years, after a number of pop star calendars and beautiful sceneries of far and (cooler) places, Barbanera has made its way into our home has well… I mostly use it to decide what to do of my balcony or of my parents’ garden… but still, my mum manages to leave her notes on our calendar as well, so that my poor city-born-and-bred Canadian husband does not forget when it’s time to put on a checkered shirt, some green pants and muddy boots and start the tractor to help my Super-Tuscan family in the fields!

So, what’s going on in your garden?