Our wedding season has taken off and we found ourselves going from 1st gear to 5th gear over night leaving me with no time to sit and write a blog post. We have a little catch up time at the moment but it all goes mad again towards the end of next month.
One quick story in the meantime: last week, for the first time in 2 years, I successfully managed to deposit cash into my own bank account with no problems and without having to speak to anybody! What a triumph! When we first bought our house, the estate agency set a bank account up on our behalf so that a mortgage could be arranged. Since they always use a particular bank, it ended up not being our local one but instead, a different branch of the same bank - a large nationwide one. Go back quite a few years in the UK when you had to go and sit with your Bank Manager to get anything done and you'll start to get the picture. Putting cash into my account meant standing in the 'non-client' queue and them having endless computer trouble since not only was it not my branch but I also had a 'foreigners' account. One time, the computer blocked as I got to the front of the queue and I ended up leaving the cash on the cashier's desk with a signed form for her to input when the machine started to work again - only in Italy!
A couple of months ago, we took the bull by the horns and sat with our local bank manager for 2 1/4 hours and ended up closing our old bank account and opening a new account at the local branch. At the same time, due to our resident status, we could also open an account for Italians :-) Obviously a transfer from the branch down the road was not possible and everything had to be done from scratch! Anyway, this now meant that I should have been able to deposit money at the machine and not have to stand in the 'clients' queue. Unfortunately however, my card would never work and I ended up back in the queue and confusing the cashier as to why I didn't just use the machine. Anyway, last week I had a brain-wave and used Andy's card instead. It worked :-) It has taken me 2 years to put cash into our account in less than half an hour! Drink to that!
PS Saw our very first viper today - scary stuff!
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Fruit & Veg
We're working hard on our 'orto' at the moment; we've actually turned our hand to a bit of landscape gardening in an attempt to make it look half decent as well as being as productive as possible. Our aim is to produce as much as possible of the fruit and vegetable that we eat (swaps and barters inc.) This means that as well as putting time and energy into getting our polytunnel exactly right and improving our soil, reading books like 'How to Store Your Garden Produce: The key to self-sufficiency' is what we're getting up to.
Trial and error is also playing a big part as, even though we've still not got a watering system for when we're not here, we're having a dabble with a variety of veg to start getting the hang of things. So far, so good :-) Is it that we're naturals or could it be that 3 weeks of 35 degrees heat and regular watering is doing the trick!?
We've picked 400 grams of strawberries so far and there are still several to come. Last May, we bought 3 small plants and just kept putting the runners into the soil. Now we have 22 plants and last year, they continued fruiting into November. We'll continue to 'plant' the runners again this year and intend to put them into the ground asap.
Our mini orto/trial area! Onions, rocket, parsnips, tomatoes, mint, sage, rosemary, pineapple sage, thyme and lemon thyme - all doing very well:
This tree is amazing! Andy has worked hard on all of the fruit trees, pruning and de-anting. This plum tree seems much happier than last year and is FULL of delicious, juicy plums:
We've got 7 or 8 cherry trees and most of them have got a good track record. We made our first batch of cherry jam last night in fact:
We have wild asparagus growing in our garden - is that just not the coolest thing ever!?
Apples:
Walnuts:
Almonds:
The quince are doing well too and the apricots are swelling nicely. We've also recently planted a couple of butternut squash; the seeds came straight out of a squash from the supermarket and were an inch high in less than a week! Finally, Andy chillies are all doing well :-)
Trial and error is also playing a big part as, even though we've still not got a watering system for when we're not here, we're having a dabble with a variety of veg to start getting the hang of things. So far, so good :-) Is it that we're naturals or could it be that 3 weeks of 35 degrees heat and regular watering is doing the trick!?
We've picked 400 grams of strawberries so far and there are still several to come. Last May, we bought 3 small plants and just kept putting the runners into the soil. Now we have 22 plants and last year, they continued fruiting into November. We'll continue to 'plant' the runners again this year and intend to put them into the ground asap.
Our mini orto/trial area! Onions, rocket, parsnips, tomatoes, mint, sage, rosemary, pineapple sage, thyme and lemon thyme - all doing very well:
This tree is amazing! Andy has worked hard on all of the fruit trees, pruning and de-anting. This plum tree seems much happier than last year and is FULL of delicious, juicy plums:
We've got 7 or 8 cherry trees and most of them have got a good track record. We made our first batch of cherry jam last night in fact:
We have wild asparagus growing in our garden - is that just not the coolest thing ever!?
Apples:
Walnuts:
Almonds:
The quince are doing well too and the apricots are swelling nicely. We've also recently planted a couple of butternut squash; the seeds came straight out of a squash from the supermarket and were an inch high in less than a week! Finally, Andy chillies are all doing well :-)
Monday, June 1, 2009
Festa!
Up until last Thursday we've been enjoying a heat-wave; temperatures of 36 degrees and no rain at all. Things have cooled a little and we've had rain on and off for the last day or so which was much needed. I've got loads to blog about but with enjoying the sun, hosting Ben & Adele and photographing weddings, I've not found the time until now.
Spring and early summer is 'festa' time! All of the local towns and villages find an excuse to throw a party whether it's for strawberries, frogs or fennel (all legitimate!) We enjoyed a great night out at the convent near to our rental house with Paulo and Roberta, with a fabulous firework display to end the evening. We also had a great time with all of the neighbours at our own house as a festa was thrown in the church gardens. Wines, sandwiches and cakes are all free and there was a local singing group playing - very quaint.
Here is the scene at our local festa. I even made a cake - what a good wife I'm making!
Adele and Ben were so lucky - they had a great holiday and perfect weather. It was more than hot enough to go to our local river and have a swim and a sun-bathe. We also had a pizza oven night and invited a couple of other English locals. I've stolen this photograph from Adele's - thank you!
Spring and early summer is 'festa' time! All of the local towns and villages find an excuse to throw a party whether it's for strawberries, frogs or fennel (all legitimate!) We enjoyed a great night out at the convent near to our rental house with Paulo and Roberta, with a fabulous firework display to end the evening. We also had a great time with all of the neighbours at our own house as a festa was thrown in the church gardens. Wines, sandwiches and cakes are all free and there was a local singing group playing - very quaint.
Here is the scene at our local festa. I even made a cake - what a good wife I'm making!
Adele and Ben were so lucky - they had a great holiday and perfect weather. It was more than hot enough to go to our local river and have a swim and a sun-bathe. We also had a pizza oven night and invited a couple of other English locals. I've stolen this photograph from Adele's - thank you!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Andy's bird boxes in use
Going back a few posts, I talked about Andy's bird boxes that he made out of two old planks of wood. Well, just to prove that they are being put to good use:
We can get pretty close to the boxes and, over the last day or two, we've regularly seen the babies pop their heads out of the hole. We reckon it will be a matter of days now before they fledge. We sit and watch the parents working hard hour after hour. They appear, every minute at times, with a caterpillar hanging out of their mouths. They drop it off and leave the nest with a mouthful of poo!
Here's one of the baby blue tits checking out the drop!
Finally, we hear it's very rainy in the UK at the moment. Just to cheer you all up, we haven't had a drop for weeks and are suffering in 30 degrees heat everyday. Poor us ;-)
We can get pretty close to the boxes and, over the last day or two, we've regularly seen the babies pop their heads out of the hole. We reckon it will be a matter of days now before they fledge. We sit and watch the parents working hard hour after hour. They appear, every minute at times, with a caterpillar hanging out of their mouths. They drop it off and leave the nest with a mouthful of poo!
Here's one of the baby blue tits checking out the drop!
Finally, we hear it's very rainy in the UK at the moment. Just to cheer you all up, we haven't had a drop for weeks and are suffering in 30 degrees heat everyday. Poor us ;-)
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wild Boar
We can often see wild boar from our house but we never seem to have a camera with us when they're around: until now. Our house is opposite a 100km sq. reserve; it's prohibited to enter which means that it's one of the only areas around where the boar are not hunted. The hunting season goes from September until the end of December which means that at the moment, there are a lot of 'mini' boar around. Each litter typically contains 8 - 12 piglets and minutes after these photographs were taken and I had put the camera back in the car, we started to see little ones running through the grass.
Andy has cut Maria's grass for her today and, as he finished, she gave him 4 boar sausages to say thank you. He has had one of them for tea and says that it was very tasty!
Andy has cut Maria's grass for her today and, as he finished, she gave him 4 boar sausages to say thank you. He has had one of them for tea and says that it was very tasty!
The Orto & Apricots
Crikey, things have hotted up - very literally! My legs and Andy's torso are out - not convinced that Umbria is ready for such a sight but let's hope this weather is set to stay!
We're managing to spend a good amount of time at our house each day and are making steady progress. A fair amount of our time is spent in our 'orto' where we are starting the prep. work to eventually put our grand plans in place. Water in our area is a major concern as we are not connected to the mains but have to rely on our 16-metre deep (shallow) well. Eventually we will have to have the well bore deeper or we may even need a new one boring. For now, we (and my dad) are devising a system to use what we do have, to create a drip system for our veg. This involves digging a trench from the well to the end of the orto and putting a hose pipe and electric cable in it. The hose pipe will fill up two cisterns that each hold 1024 litres of water. In time we will set a timer to pump water to them for a couple of minutes per hour. Dad has created a system involving a pump and tubing that will feed a drip-system from the cisterns that will also be set on a timer. Easy!
It has taken a while to site the cisterns as we have turned over all of the soil around them and covered the area with a membrane to keep the weeds down. The cisterns also needed a good clean out as they have previously contained some type of hydraulic oil and then getting them level was no mean feat.
The orto's looking pretty neat atm. The trick is to imagine it with a polytunnel and several raised beds!
A close-up of our recycled cisterns and back-up water supply:
From the cistern-end of the veggie patch you can see you can see just how much digging we still have to do. We are using the little herb area at the far end to try and test a few different veggies and herbs at the moment but I'm desperate to get more bedding space:
A close-up of what will be the herb area but for now is the entire veggie patch. You can see onions and sage on the bottom level, rocket and parsnips on the middle level, tomatoes and mint on the top level and different varieties of rosemary and thyme along the back. Today I have extended the area a little along the back left and planted another 7 plum-tomato plants:
We're both getting quite excited about making cherry jam again; it's been so delicious over the last couple of years. We have about a trillion cherries well on their way :-) By the time Ben and Adele arrive at the end of the month they'll be ready to eat - be prepared to go home with stained-red fingers folks!
Now then, apricots! Big news in Umbria when apricots appear since they are very rare. The trees blossom in March and if a frost follows their blossom (which it generally does) the fruits perish. The confusing thing is that after our apricot tree had blossomed in March we had heavy frosts and 2 days of snow but, low and behold, and much to the shock of the locals, we have apricots!!! How exciting. Andy reckons it's because he traumatized the tree into action by pruning it back so hard :)
Finally, swapping-season is in full flow as we have swapped sage cuttings for eggs and fresh loaves for lettuces. We've also been given some wild asparagus recently that grows a couple of miles away in the forest. I've asked our neighbours to disclose this secret location to me and have been promised that they'll take us next time they go :-)
We're managing to spend a good amount of time at our house each day and are making steady progress. A fair amount of our time is spent in our 'orto' where we are starting the prep. work to eventually put our grand plans in place. Water in our area is a major concern as we are not connected to the mains but have to rely on our 16-metre deep (shallow) well. Eventually we will have to have the well bore deeper or we may even need a new one boring. For now, we (and my dad) are devising a system to use what we do have, to create a drip system for our veg. This involves digging a trench from the well to the end of the orto and putting a hose pipe and electric cable in it. The hose pipe will fill up two cisterns that each hold 1024 litres of water. In time we will set a timer to pump water to them for a couple of minutes per hour. Dad has created a system involving a pump and tubing that will feed a drip-system from the cisterns that will also be set on a timer. Easy!
It has taken a while to site the cisterns as we have turned over all of the soil around them and covered the area with a membrane to keep the weeds down. The cisterns also needed a good clean out as they have previously contained some type of hydraulic oil and then getting them level was no mean feat.
The orto's looking pretty neat atm. The trick is to imagine it with a polytunnel and several raised beds!
A close-up of our recycled cisterns and back-up water supply:
From the cistern-end of the veggie patch you can see you can see just how much digging we still have to do. We are using the little herb area at the far end to try and test a few different veggies and herbs at the moment but I'm desperate to get more bedding space:
A close-up of what will be the herb area but for now is the entire veggie patch. You can see onions and sage on the bottom level, rocket and parsnips on the middle level, tomatoes and mint on the top level and different varieties of rosemary and thyme along the back. Today I have extended the area a little along the back left and planted another 7 plum-tomato plants:
We're both getting quite excited about making cherry jam again; it's been so delicious over the last couple of years. We have about a trillion cherries well on their way :-) By the time Ben and Adele arrive at the end of the month they'll be ready to eat - be prepared to go home with stained-red fingers folks!
Now then, apricots! Big news in Umbria when apricots appear since they are very rare. The trees blossom in March and if a frost follows their blossom (which it generally does) the fruits perish. The confusing thing is that after our apricot tree had blossomed in March we had heavy frosts and 2 days of snow but, low and behold, and much to the shock of the locals, we have apricots!!! How exciting. Andy reckons it's because he traumatized the tree into action by pruning it back so hard :)
Finally, swapping-season is in full flow as we have swapped sage cuttings for eggs and fresh loaves for lettuces. We've also been given some wild asparagus recently that grows a couple of miles away in the forest. I've asked our neighbours to disclose this secret location to me and have been promised that they'll take us next time they go :-)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The Compost Bin
As promised, here is another extract from the Turner Woodwork Workshop Wonders! It was a big step to go from small bird boxes to a large compost bin but I think we've managed it quite well. Having had such great success with our own compost a few weeks ago we decided to make a more permanent, and slightly better looking compost bin; instead of the one that we made from an old rabbit hutch last year.
We managed to get our hands on some old pallets that looked a bit like this:
After lots of bashing, sawing and measuring we ended up with a rough plan and laid the wood out all over the place:
It started to take shape just as most residents from our local village passed by and couldn't understand what we were making a 'cage' for: (composting, like bird boxes, seems to be very a English thing!)
We hammered nails in all over the place, stood it up on each end and rolled it about until we were finally happy to start painting (with a water-based preservative):
It turned out quite a bit bigger than what we had in mind but better to be too big than too small. One thing we're not short of is space so it doesn't really matter. Getting it in the ground level with adequate drainage took a little while but we're happy with it and the left-hand side is already half-full and breaking down as we speak :-)
We managed to get our hands on some old pallets that looked a bit like this:
After lots of bashing, sawing and measuring we ended up with a rough plan and laid the wood out all over the place:
It started to take shape just as most residents from our local village passed by and couldn't understand what we were making a 'cage' for: (composting, like bird boxes, seems to be very a English thing!)
We hammered nails in all over the place, stood it up on each end and rolled it about until we were finally happy to start painting (with a water-based preservative):
It turned out quite a bit bigger than what we had in mind but better to be too big than too small. One thing we're not short of is space so it doesn't really matter. Getting it in the ground level with adequate drainage took a little while but we're happy with it and the left-hand side is already half-full and breaking down as we speak :-)
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