Getting Nettled

It’s not what you think. But yes, it's a drug.

You can’t quite see them, but I am holding thousands of tiny hypodermic syringes poised to protect one of my favorite foods from, well, foragers like me. Among many other things, Urtica, stinging nettles, make excellent ravioli and delicious soup. Favoring the spring at the bottom of our property, rains and cooler weather bring it out in the spring and autumn, free for the taking. I just have to be careful when I pick it.

Whenever I see stinging nettles I also make sure to note where this plant grows. We call it curly dock in the States. The two are almost always found near each other. Which is handy if you happen to get an unasked-for injection. The oxalic acid in it neutralizes nettle venom.

Ever since I learned this trick camping as a Boy Scout, I've tried to "be prepared" and know where the dock is when nettles come into view. This has come in handy for me around the world. For instance, that time last spring when Sally waded inadvertently into our nettle patch in shorts. She said her legs were on fire. I get a kick out of how rubbing a woman's legs with weeds can cause her to swoon with relief and utter the phrase “my hero.”

Considered a noxious weed by the US Department of Agriculture, stinging nettles are the highest plant food source of iron there is, and they deliver 40% protein, very high for any leafy green. Their taste (after boiling to remove the irritant) is somewhere in the spinach range, but greener, herbier, weedier. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “A weed is just a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Spinach was a weed once, too.

Did I say nettles are a drug? They have anti-arthritic and anti-inflammatory qualities, among others. But above that, they are the reason your Mama said "eat your greens." They are just plain good for you. Isn’t food an excellent drug?

First thing this morning

I couldn't resist. This was my view looking toward the ruined castle of Montelifere from the property this morning. I've only seen such full sun double rainbows in two other places: The back side of Maui, the Grand Canyon.

Those who've read my last post will understand when I say there really is a pot of gold at the end of this one, and it's green.

Green Gold

Giovanni and his family are still picking olives. This is what it's all about. Extra virgin, low acid, herby, grassy, spicey. It's green because of polyphenols, antioxidants you only get by picking early by hand and milling immediately.

The spicy kick you get in the back of the throat is from the polyphenols, too. If a bottle says Tuscan and it doesn't have that kick, you have to wonder where it's from or how old it is. Because of it, one way people around here characterize their new oil is on the "cougher" scale. When I tasted my friend Roberto's new oil, he was pleased. "That's a 3-cougher," he grinned.

Picking early means yields are low, so we only get a liter or two per tree on average, 15-18% of the olive's weight in oil. 400 kilos yields about 60 liters of oil. It's a lot of work and despite prices in the states, there's no money in it at this scale at this end of the pipeline. It's a labor of love. If you're ever lucky enough to get a bottle of our oil, please store it carefully out of heat and light and use it up within 6-months for best taste.

After visiting the Montisi olive festival, I treated myself to the confluence of my four favorite flavors from my favorite season: new oil, new wine (the original beaujolais nouveau), cinta senese proscuito (like Spanish pata negra), and a fresh white truffle (second to none). What could be better on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

Oil!

The kind you catch in nets. Olive oil. Green gold Homer called it. I get excited by it. Most people do around here.

One of the main rationales I had for buying my property is that it came with almost a hundred living oil wells. Few plants give so much and demand so little. Each tree is like a person with it's own shape and demeanor. With their drab green leaves and silvered undersides on twisted trunks and gnarly branches, nothing is prettier in the light and wind. Few things possess more individual character, yet each is a clone-of-a-clone-of-a-clone from a single ancient ancestor.

In 1985, just as the world was discovering the high quality of Tuscan olive oil, a killing frost wiped out most of the olive trees in Tuscany. But a small area around Montalcino and Montisi was spared. My 90-year-old trees, with their perfect southwestern exposure, are survivors of that frost. Old villagers like to remind me of this when they stop by.

A few days ago, just as the olive season was getting underway, Talini, the beloved village miller, had a stroke. He is not expected to regain consciousness. Now, at the time of year his frantoio (oil mill) usually ran until midnight, it is quiet. In a place where fewer young people care to carry on the traditions, another artisan, another living library of knowhow, tales and wisdom is being razed by time and age.

Two autumns ago, just after Sally and I bought the property, Talini gave me the first taste of my own just pressed oil. He got real joy out of my reaction. Now I have oil fever. I owe it partly to him.

Raking Lite

This little rake is about as technical as it olive harvesting gets around here. There is no better way to deliver unbruised fruit to the olive press, the kind that makes Tuscan oil famously flavorful. It is quiet pleasant work. The swish of the gloved fingers and rastrelini (little rakes), the banter, the birdsong.I stopped by to help (from right to left) Giovanni, Arnaldo and Melina Mangiavacchi harvest their olives today. This is what one does here. When you see someone you know up in a tree, you stop and you pick. And you talk. And you tell jokes. And you get introduced to numerous other people who stop by to pick and talk and joke. Tuscan networking at it's finest.

This is particularly important picking and talking because the Festival of the New Olive Oil will be celebrated this weekend in our village of Montisi. Stay tuned!

Raking Light

Yesterday, I learned this is the best kind of light for, well, raking.

After 3 days of intense rain, the weather broke to gorgeous autumn weather and everyone converged on the property to get the water system, roads, excavating, etc. almost almost done. Quasi finito as they say. It was a big, big day.

While I stained the upstairs cement floors with my secret non-acid-wash recipes (to be revealed in another blog): Cesare and two other electricians installed the 3 water system pumps: household, cistern, and waste water purifier (Yes, we will reuse every drop.); Alvaro, the excavator, fixed most of the road damaged by cement and delivery trucks, and sculpted most of the scarpata (the hill of spoil that had to be removed to plant our house in its hillside); and father and son carpenter team, Ierio and Roberto Perugini delivered the persiennes (louvered shutters ubiquitous to this area) which they and the Brandinis will install tomorrow!

But perhaps the biggest event of the day was seeing the Brandini’s tear down the orange security fence. It was a little like ripping open a birthday gift. After one year and one month, the cantiere, the worksite, is now officially open. And just in time for our IKEA kitchen to be delivered and installed on Wednesday.

Which brings me back to that certain cant of light. Because of all the mud I don't want IKEA to track in on my newly stained and sealed floors, I began spreading clean sand around the entrances where sticky fango (mud) would get tracked in from the newly leveled “front yard.” Then I realized that because the clay was soft and pliable and not yet packed and baked hard by the sun, it would be much easier to do whatever grading and leveling I needed to do RIGHT NOW, TODAY! So, as everyone else was finishing their day, I raked the whole thing out. As you can see from the first shot, by bringing everything into relief the contrasting low-angle light of the late day sun really helped me get it level and smooth.

And speaking of relief: I didn’t realize I'd forgotten all about my leg until I was pulling into the drive at Villore, well past sundown. There is no euphoria like that which floods you when chronic pain abates.

I used the banged up rusty rake head I brought over in my suitcase. It's nothing special, I've just had it for 30 years and 3 gardens. Note the nuts, bolts, screws and baling wire needed to attached it to an Italian handle after it broke. Very contadino.

Maybe it's me, or maybe it's Tuscany, but I think just mending a broken rake handle, and then using it, can be a soulful enterprise.

Tomorrow: IKEA!

Calabrone! [Or: Toxic in Tuscany, Part II]

Ammazzacavalli, horse killers, that's what they call them in Tuscany. People not allergic have died from their stings. They are big. And they're just behind vipers on the venom index.

Being built mostly of brick, stone and clay tile, few Tuscan buildings actually burn, so the local fire department is even better known for something else: when you’ve got a calabrone nest in your chimney, that's who you call.

Because it’s steep, Sally calls our property "Stairmaster." Because our olives are near the top, my leg insists I have to wait till next year to make oil. Because of this summer's record heat, Giovanni’s trees yielded half what they ordinarily would, so I gave him our trees to harvest as well. He’ll get a full quota and maybe we’ll get a few liters of oil.

When he went up to our grove for a preliminary check, Giovanni saw them in the boca, the hollow bole of one tree. I knew exactly what boca he was referring to. On my personal pain index, right behind getting "messengered" and "tracked," is calabrone sting.

Once, while picking blackberries in the Pacific Northwest, I bumped face first into an American bald-faced hornet’s nest. I thought I'd been shotgunned in the face. That was nothing next to a single Italian hornet.

Just after buying the property a year ago, I was clearing suckers and weeds from the bases of the trees to prepare for harvest when something the size of a hummingbird slammed into the side of my head and latched onto my ear--the queen matron of the hive I hadn't noticed on the other side of the trunk. In a furious fuzzy frenzy, that honey-colored flying hypodermic repeatedly injected the side of my face with so much venom I couldn't see, I couldn't think. It was like the dentist had administered way too much novacaine, but with the opposite effect. Time became an amber I was stuck in. It seemed to take forever to get down the hill and drive to Villore to press an ice tray against my head.

My ear swelled like some kind of mushroom and rang for 2 days. The side of my head burned intensely for a week. The next weekend I sat 30 feet away from that nest until well past sundown on a half-moon night, waiting for the air traffic to die down. Then I hit that boca with a wasp fogger.

It didn’t work. The next day during harvest we gave the tree a wide berth.

Giovanni insists the answer is to throw gasoline into the hole. But only first thing in the morning on a cold day. I haven't mustered up the courage yet.