Harvest 2013

The harvest this year has been what I would call "miserable". Last year we had an abundance of plums, figs, pears and olives. I made 30 kgs of plum jam and also some fig jam (in addition to eating as much fresh figs as we could possibly stomache for about 3 months). I made canned pears and the olive trees gave us 1600 kgs of olives that we made into 220 llitres of olive oil.

I was of course hoping for the same numbers this year, but no... Mother Nature does as she pleases... So I ended up with 5 kgs of plum jam and I have eaten 2 (?!) pears. The figs did as well as last year - if not even better - so I have 30 kgs of fig jam in the freezer at the moment. Figs & apples, figs & walnuts, figs & cinnamon and figs,apples, walnuts & cinnamon. Yummie! And this will keep me going until next year, I think.

But the really big disappointment this year is that we're not getting any olive oil. Not even one litre of oil. We have 85 olive trees - and this is what they've produced this year......

Not nearly enough to make any oil. From 100 kgs you'll get 12-20 litres of oil and what we have here would probably give us 7-8 litres... But in addition to it being really embarrassing showing up at the mill with two small bags of olives they wont even consider pressing it before you have at least 200-300 kgs.

So, change of plans. I'm now going to brine the olives. So yesterday I picked out the best olives which I've put in a small container with water to cover them. Today I'm buying salt to make the brine were they will sit for 40 days. Then rinse well and put in new brine for another 10 days. And finally I can put them in a glass jar and fill up with brine and olive oil. And then we can eat as much olives as we want for the next year to come. I think I will try putting different flavouring to the olives - such as orange (peel), garlic, rosmary, oregano and chili. I'm really looking forward to trying the end result!

The reason why this year turned out like this is partly because we have been pruning the olive trees earlier this year. And some we can blame on the weather, I think. We've had lots and lots of rain this year so it's not just our harvest that turned out this way. And finally we have the "mosca" which is the tiny larva of a fly that eats into the flesh of the olive and destroys it. Before I didn't understand why people where hanging plastic bottles with some sticky liquid in it in their olive trees. Now I know. It's to attract the mosca to the bottle instead of the olives! I know what I have to do next year....

But anyway, now I just have to sit back and wait for the New Year when I can finally taste my brined olives. Can't wait!

Terremoto! (Earthquake)

Saturday evening turned out a bit different than what we had expected. At 1020 pm there was an earthquake here in the region of Lazio in the province of Frosinone, which is where I live. I was at home watching tv when suddenly I felt the ground shaking. It didn't last more than a minute, but I have to admit that it was pretty scary when it happened. The magnitude was 4.8 on the Richter scale and that is more than enough for me.... Just hoping that this is it for now - but still, I will probably be sleeping with my clothes on and "one eye open".... Just to be sure....

Update on 2012

I'm still here - in case anyone was wondering. I haven't left Italy, but I've had a loooong break ....... For several reasons. Partly because of us moving house last year. Secondly, because now that we've got a fairly large garden there's quite a lot to do. We have fruit trees such as plums, pears, peaches, figs and nespole. And apart from stuffing myself with figs (figs are one of my favourites so I felt like a kid in a candy store....) for three whole months I made jam from all the different fruits and I also made canned fruit for desserts. It was a lot of work all through the hot summer months, but the work pays off. Now I have enough jam and canned fruit to last me all year long...

And then we have olive trees.  85 of them ..... And most of them are really old  and they haven't been pruned for a long time so it looks more like a jungle than an olive grove. Which turned harvesting in to a bit of a nightmare. Luckily I didn't know that beforehand.... But now I understand why olive oil is fairly expensive. (Learning it the hard way, though....)

From 100 kilos of olives you get between 12 -18 litres of oil and as I just said, it's hard work. At least the way we had to do it. Because of the state of the threes we couldn't use the eletric, "vibrating" tool (a type of rake...) that just "shakes" the olives from the three. We had to use manual ones. In fact, the easiest way was to "comb" the branches with our hands - which of course totally destroys your hands. (Also learning the hard way...)

The threes were so difficult to harvest that it took two people (a friend of my husband and me...) more than a month to finish - and then we had been working around ten hours a day.

Anyway, we now have more than 200 litres of liquid "gold" - looking good and tasting even better. The taste is a mix between green apples and grass. And I can tell you that after you've tasted real, homemade olive oil you will never again touch the store bought oil (if you can avoid it, that is...)

So, what are we going to do with well over 200 litres of oil? Well, in addition to giving some to my in-laws we "paid" our helper with olive oil. Here they appreciate the oil more than the money.  And I don't think it will be much of a problem finishing off the rest of the oil. The average Italian uses about 25 litres of olive oil for cooking every year. And although I'm not Italian I can assure you that I'm using as much as anyone else living in this country. In addition to this I've come up with some other ways to make use of this fantastic oil. And I'll tell you how in another posting.

Last year wasn't made just of "jam and olive oil" even though it was - and will continue to be - a large part of my "new life" here in the Italian countryside. I'll be back soon with more updates. So stay tuned ;-))

A room with a view

Just wanted to let you know that I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth. I'm just too busy moving house. We have left the city and are now living up in the hills in the countryside. And this is (a part of) what I can see from my window.....

Surrounded by olive trees....

At the moment I'm working inside and outside the house all day - and driving back and forth with all our belongings -  and with all that work and the fresh air, very often I fall asleep around 9 o'clock in the evening so I don't have neither the time nor the energy to blog. I haven't commented on any blogs either - I'm reading them, but lack the energy to comment. Will make it up to you later, though....

I'll be back with updates when my body has adjusted to the new life in the countryside....