Ah, Internet!

Well, let's see. We have internet now. But first the electrician had to drill a hole through our foot-thick cement second floor for a cable to the receiver antenna. When water started gushing from the hole it took a while to shut it off, calm down, and figure out he hadn't struck the underfloor heating (which would have been a real nightmare). 3 hours of jack-hammering later, with everyone who built the house standing in a circle like engineers trying to figure out why a rocket wouldn't launch, the plumbing was repaired. Now we just have a hole in the ceiling/floor that needs fixing and a big pile of cables and equipment beside the bed.

This is how things go here: one step back, two steps forward. At least we have internet.

So You Want To Be a Contadino, eh?

When I first heard the term contadino applied to me by a smiling local, I took it as a compliment of my willingness to work. Lately I've understood it can be a bit of a class slur.

Never mind I am trying to finish building a house in a foreign land, trying to learn a foreign language and trying to figure out how to make a living during the worst economic crisis in a century.

There are not enough hours in a day for me to be me! And now the garden needs planting before the dry season.

I have 6 months to go. Six months to nurture the grapes on the vines and turn them into wine.Six months to cultivate the olives and turn them into oil. Six months to manage the grain fields in one way or another. Six months to turn the fertile bottom by the spring into a real vegetable garden. And six months to learn all I can from real deal contadino Giovanni Mangiavacchi (even though all he’s doing these days is cutting and stacking next winter's income-producing firewood).

Invasion of the Grape Snatchers

Not only is there still much mowing to do in the vineyard thanks to the grass-nourishing rains, but now the brucchi are hatching and munching as you can see below.

To stop the larvae of the European Grape Moth (Lobesia Botrana), a pest first seen in Napa Valley vineyards only last year, I have to walk the vine rows with a pump sprayer full of Bacillus Thuringiensis spores. This organic remedy is like stomach flu for caterpillars and will stop the ones I can’t see. I hope.

For the ones I can see, there’s the pincer attack. Thumb and forefinger. Pop! This activity is decreasingly disgusting and increasingly satisfying as one goes, I assure you.

Joy of Mesclun

Our first radish! From the first seed I planted in the orto (garden).

For lunch, the first thinnings of the Marvel of Four Seasons and Rosso di Trento lettuces, thrice washed and arranged on a white plate and topped with flakes of Sardinian bluefin tuna and roasted red pepper strips and moistened with a slurry of sour orange juice, dijon mustard and a dab of mayo.

Buon Apetito!

Moka Explosion

This is what happens when your sleepy wife tries to make coffee with a Moka, senz aqua, and the rubber gasket melts and you come along and try to make coffee with water and you wonder why it's taking so long and lift the lid to see what's up . . . just at the right moment.

No worries. The scalds healed quickly and I was wearing the red down vest of the last blog, which protected my chest from most of the blast. Good thing!

Leaves of Grass

It has rained a lot since we got here. The wild oats and mustard are high among the vine rows. If I leave them, they will eventually load with grain and fall over dead, completing and beginning another cycle. But I will not let this happen.

I must cut them down right now because the rain and grass are a bad combination in a vineyard, keeping the young shoots and blossoms damp and promoting the malady here called oidio, mold, that fuzzy grape eating fungus that hit so many clusters in the resurrected vineyard last year because I couldn't manage it on a broken leg.

And so I mow. Tomorrow's blog: "Scythe vs. Weed Eater

Right Now!

In Italy, they are gemma in the singular. I call them gems, the little buds with flower clusters popping up on the vine nodes in the vineyard just today, right now. They are extremely tender and I must be careful as I move among the vines, pruning, setting posts, and tightening trellis wires. They are also susceptible to late frost. Thus starts the winemaking season. 6 months from now, if all goes well, I will harvest and ferment. And it all starts right here in the vineyard, right now, with the budding of the gemme.

Other runaway tasks begging to be done right now? Just like the grapes, the two dozen olive trees that are in the worst shape, need to be pruned because they are going to bloom any minute. The beans and corn need to be planted in the garden before the season turns too hot and the lettuces before it turns too dry. The dozens of cuttings I took yesterday, of lavender, rosemary and honeysuckle, need to be rooted in potting soil or I’ll have start all over. And the wild oats and mustard running riot in the vine rows, garden paths and near the house need to be scythed before they fall over on their own.

This is what I came for! The right nowness of it!

[Photos by Sally. The post is 150 lbs. of concrete cement.]