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30/04: The Arrival
So now, with the arrival of Aunt Tara and Grandma little project tables are set up around the house, with scrap booking supplies and fabric swatches. Instead of the “puffer puffs” (anything small round and natural) that Lizzie has clung to and collected these last two months, she now carries with her little rag dolls that the girls design and Grandma dutifully stitches and stuffs. They do retain a little bit of our natural surroundings however, as Lizzie’s favorite is named Fossilrock. Now the deck on the sunny south side of the mill turns into a stage as Tara recites The Jabberwocky, as the girls act it out with limited props such as buckets and sticks. Zoe lay prostrate on the wood, as the slain Jabberwock with boot wings, tongue lolling.
Yesterday we drove to Cagli, a small city that sits surrounded by high peeks, to the Salumi Festival. Everywhere in the old town small booths were set up with samples of proscuitto and salami, little cups dangled from many peoples necks, as they had paid a fee to move along the passages and sample the many varieties of wine from the area. I was enchanted by one bottle, not for the wine, but for the beautiful Poppy label that reminds me so much of all the fields near here – smattered and stained with red.
We entered one big cathedral, and studied the angels in the old frescos by Santi, trying to figure out which one was the portrait of his son, Raphael. Mt favorite bit of artwork was a little bit of an even earlier fresco, a Madonna and child, that had been, at one time, frescoed over, but the later worker couldn’t bring himself to mar the face of the mother and child, and so the little chisel marks made in the plaster to help hold another layer were left to the periphery.
Like usual, the girls rejected the pork products; “Salami is nothing to celebrate” declared Zoe, but found solidarity with Grandma and Aunt Tara, and solace in gelato.
30/04: Monterchi
April 25th is Liberation day, and like memorial day in the U.S. soldiers from the war gather in the piazzas, squares, and, monuments all over Italy to remember the dead. Central Italy was not given over easily, but instead modern armies entrenched themselves in the medieval hilltop towns, and held fast as shrapnel and fire ricocheted off the walls. Monterchi stands alone among fields, not far from Arezzo, and close the its grander sister of Anghiari. It is a fortress town, and as I made my way up to the center I found it hard to find the entrance, instead circling the enormous wall until I came to the great arched city gate. All along the massive wall narrow slits are built into the stone, just large enough for an eye, or a gun barrel to peer out. Above the piazza in this city, on the highest point is a monument to fallen soldiers. It is here that today, a group of eight or nine ancient men gathered, some in uniform, one with an enormous black plume in his hat, and listened in reverence as the local priest remembered the dead.
At Monertchi, in a small church on the edge of town, is where Pierra Della Francesca painted one of his most beloved, if not famous, frescos – the Madonna del Parto. She now has an entire museum dedicated to her, and stands in a darkened room behind glass.
Under demand of Napoleon, many Italian cities were forced to move cemeteries outside the city walls. It was at this time that the little church with the fresco was modified, and some walls removed. Not long after this the fresco was rediscovered; a rarity, showing a pregnant Madonna, serene and somber, her dress of blue splitting from the swell of her belly. Pierra dela Francesca is famous for his innovative use of perspective and he died just before the renaissance, on the same day that Columbus first set foot in the new world. This fresco, the Madonna, has been painted over, re-discovered, removed, moved and returned. She survived a great earthquake in the 1800s that heavily damaged the city, and watched over the great siege of WWII. Standing and staring down, with her hand perched on her belly, life and death continues on around her.
On this warm spring day the memorial ends, the church bells ring, and the group of old men make their way slowly down the hill and out of the city walls. All around the city fields of wild poppies are disappearing under the plow, and are being re-planted with useful crops.
24/04: Around the Mill –
We find ourselves, for a while, without a vehicle. And so our world is confined to the valley that is home to the mill. Our view has turned green and sprung to life. During the day the air is filled with the songs of birds, including a cuckoo that calls from somewhere up near the tower, at night the frogs take over and their chorus can be heard over the constant rush of water over the rocks. We walked up the hill to Montoromano, and carried back an arm full of lilacs, and as we made our way down the hill the scent wafted around us, until Tory picked up a different scent. “I think I smell arugula” – and sure enough in the middle of the dirt road leading down the hill were the little wild lettuces, being trodden upon by us. We returned, and picked a shirt full that we mixed with slivers of parmesan, Tuscan salami and balsamic vinegar. It tasted of spring.We are the first to inhabit this mill in quite a long time, but there are plants that have held on here for generations, despite years of neglect. Every day brings a new discovery. And we rush with spade and conviction to divide and transplant our new find. Today Tory found clumps of lilies, just above an old donkey-cart path down to the little mill that I have slowly been reclaiming. We moved some to a bank in front of the mill. Mint is springing up everywhere, and in many different varieties. On a stone outcropping just in front of the mill we cleared away countless brambles so that the irises that are growing there could have a little room to breath, and are rewarded with blooms of white. Between the mills, on the steep slope, grows a very old fig tree. The fruit is growing quickly, and are now the size of quarters. We move succulents; sedums and hen and chicks to the mill stone steps outside the bedroom.
Every day we check the frog eggs in our big olive jar, and in the river, and watch their slow transition into tadpoles. Lizzie and Zoe are now adopting the huge snails that live in the nooks and crannies of the stone walls, and a couple have found a new home in the stone fairy house down by the river. “fairies use snails as pets” Lizzie reminds me, as she squats in her usual way, and peers closely at a snail making its way up the side of the house. Tory is re-reading The English Patient, and I am reminded of a part in the book where a path is lined with oil lamps made from the shells of snails. It seemed far-fetched to me at the time, but now looking back, it seems totally appropriate that little oil lamps could be improvised from the abandoned shells of these enormous snails.
18/04: The golden frog race of Fermignano
Gubbio has its candle race, Siena its great horse race, and Fermignano has its frog race. Each year, for many years, Fermignano celebrates its independence from the Duke of Urbino with a celebration in April. People in Medieval costume take to the streets, trumpets, horses, fire-breathers and fanfare lead up the main event. In the evening on Sunday the race is held – each district sending a representative, dressed in appropriate color and costume, to run with a flat wheelbarrow and a frog perched singularly in the middle. The trick is to get as far as possible before the frog decides to abandon ship, which they do with some regularity.
I noticed that there was a consistent strategy – once the frog jumps, it is in your best interest to push the wheel-barrel as far as possible before retrieving the frog, you could then pick up the frog and walk it several meters before replacing it. There were, of course, a few tragedies. But it was in the interest of the contestants to keep the frogs in good health, as the watchers that ran alongside watched for foul play, and a frog passing the finish line injured or unconscious was disqualified. A vet waited at the end to verify the health of the frogs. Rivalries between city districts remain strong, and the past has seen accusations of drugs and chloroform. In the end the Torre, or “tower” district won, and the big trophy of a man pushing a wheelbarrow was passed on to this years winner. After, everyone retreats to tents for each district where great dinners are being prepared. It is all an excuse to have a little fun, to boast a bit, and to show some regional pride.
“Cruel, No?” asked Riccardo when he heard we had gone. “a few years ago there was a movement to end all these regional festivals that are cruel to animals. End the frog race, even the horse race in Siena. But they will never end them, they are as important to Italians as war is to Americans.”
18/04: Our visit with Isabella
We met Isabella outside Cite de Castello, and she pushed through amorous dogs and opens the big wooden door of San Lorenzo to us. She offers us coffee, and cuts wedges of a big apple tart she made the night before. “Come,” she says, “we will look for eggs.” “The chickens, they are crazy – they lay eggs all over the place.” And so Zoe and Isabella check in nooks and crannies, even pull down the watering cans that line a tall shelf on the barn. A slender chickens squawks and flies out of one. “Scusi!” calls Isabella.Isabella collects trees, antique varieties from isolated farms and monasteries all over Italy. Some of the trees she discovers are varieties thought to have been extinct, but remain hidden away, an apple tree hundreds of years old tucked away in a farmyard in an isolated valley. She told us of a pear, a variety that had once grown all over central Italy “I read about it in old records, and saw it pictured in Frescos, but it had disappeared.” That was until she mentioned the fruit to some sisters at convent. “We have some of those.” They said. And now Isabella does too, a beautiful pear that has a low sugar content, so it does not bruise easy, and can be stored for months like an apple in cool cellars.
Her father started the farm in the sixties, be bought an old monastery “SanLorenzo” when all the Italians were abandoning the old homes and moving to the urban centers after the war. “Everyone thought he was crazy!” Within the old stone complex remains an old chapel, packed with a clutter of old chairs, paintings, a clotheslines zig-zagging across the space. “My dad was a collector, and nobody wanted this old stuff back then – he passed away a month ago, and now I am trying to organize it all”. She opens the door to the cellar and walks us into what is probably the oldest part of the building the “pieve” of old hermitage, The stone walls are massive and thick. It now holds a wine press, and a wine vat, where once the grapes were stamped with the feet. She gives us a bottle, Wine from the grapes of San Lorenzo.
Outside the sun is warm, and the girls scratch the bellies of the scrappy little dogs that have come seeking the attention of the female mutt in heat. Isabella showed us row after row of rare varieties of pears, apples, cherries even grapes. San Lorenzo sits on a hill, and a long valley opens up below the sloping orchards. The church has a new mission, saving seeds instead of souls.
17/04: The cloister in the garden –
On a rainy market day we met Tina and Til, and their two boys Anselm and Corvin. A week later they walked down our long driveway carrying a Easter cake, and our girls and their boys immediately darted off to explore the caves, water-falls and boulders around the mill. After a nice afternoon, they invited us for dinner at their home – a beautiful old house in a medieval village up the valley near Frontino. The Medieval towns, Tina explained to me, are set high on the hill-tops, for security. The Roman towns are down in the valleys. Theirs was a cluster of tall old houses and a twist of streets, as well a medieval church and an empty Monastery. They bought the house five years ago and are slowly restoring it on their vacations, driving ten hours in a clip from Germany. Perched on the hill, the house sets along with others built into the rock. With the house came a cluster of stone sheds, a bread oven, and a garden that angles dramatically down into the valley below the house and church. “Come,” they said, “we will show you something.”We passed through their garden gate, and down the path, skirting the bottom of the sheds, and a past the tall bell tower of the church, and curved back around to scramble up a wall, and suddenly we were in the cloister of the abandoned monastery, arches and columns surrounded us, and the courtyard opened up over the cliff to the valley below. An ancient broken column sat in the middle of the space surrounded my tall tufts of overgrown grass. “Shhhhh,” said Tina, “be very quiet”, as we crept through an opening, and past a door which led to the street on the other side and into the basement of the old monastery, full of old wine presses, barrels and bottles. We were not quiet enough to escape notice by the little dog chained outside the door, He barked suspiciously as we made our way through shadows punctuated by the streams of light. The evening sun slanted through cracks in the shuddered windows and lit up an ancient part of the monastery, recently used as a stable. Parts of the space were probably late Roman, or early medieval, boasting tightly interlocked stones and massive columns down the center. Tall, thin pointed windows were scattered down one wall covered in ivy. Hay lay scattered along the floor and the entirety lay shrouded in darkness.
Til and Tina recently bought a second house in the same village, this one lay at the end of a line of homes. “now she has a house, and I have a house.” Said Til. They had just closed the deal, and they showed us through the house, furniture left from its last inhabitants. The kids spent the afternoon laughing and running, playing ball in the narrow streets of the village.
As the sun faded we sat on the steps of the church, and watched the light turn golden over the mountains. “every year,” Tina explained, “the women take the painting of the Madonna from the village nearby and bring her here, to spend the night with the Madonna of this church, and on the following morning the men take her back. Until recently the walked her here, but now she rides on the top of a little Fiat, adorned with flowers. I wonder what they do all night together.” It was the kind of question you can pose while drinking wine and watching the sunset.
09/04: Life Aquatic –
Sunday afternoon, and we drove just across the valley up the winding road that looks down on the small cluster of houses and churches that make up Campo, the village that looks so beautiful from our side of the valley. Perched on the hillside, taunting with its’ tower. We found a spot in a field, looking down on the town, and Tory and I sketched, the girls scooped up tadpoles from a puddle by the dirt road. This Easter Sunday was warm and sunny, but now thunderheads loomed and boomed around us. When we returned to the car, the girls had filled their water bottle with tadpoles, and as we drove back to the house they named them with enthusiasm; Algae, Mossy, Piccolo, Tory, Fungus, Norman, Pheobe and (inexplicably) Bob.We spent the ride back to the mill preparing the girls that we would have to find a puddle near the house to put them. Together we found a great place – the river having retreated from flood stage had left standing pools of water among the boulders, and we found one not far from the girl’s finished fairy house. We poured them in and all was well. Tory and I left the girls and walked up to make dinner.
Then came a pounding on the door, and the urgent cries of Lizzie “there is a hole in the puddle!” I pulled on by boots and ran down quickly to find Zoe holding back the water with her hands. Our little puddle was precariously placed – a little pool of water made in the crack of boulders, and as the girls had arranged rocks around the home of the tadpoles, they pulled out one that was acting as a big plug, and the pool was emptying like a bathroom sink. “I am holding back the water, but I can’t hold it forever!” Zoe earnestly declared with big tears welling up in her eyes. We used clay and stones to repair the damage.
“We only lost one” said Zoe calmly.
Liz gasped, “Which one?”
“It was Bob.”
04/04: Truffle Hound –
We are blessed with staying in one of the best truffle regions of Italy. There are festivals in the fall throughout this area, but in particular the city of San Angelo in Vado turns over it’s October weekends to celebrating the miraculous, tasty, fungi. Outside the walls of the old city stands a bronze statue to a truffle dog. The dog is a distinctive breed, they are lanky, shorthaired, stumpy-tailed and solemn.The majestic bronze in San Angelo doesn’t hold a candle to Roxy, Riccardo’s favorite “truffle hound” and constant companion. Though Roxy is young, she is ill, with a respiratory disease which Riccardo uses as an excuse to baby her, she travels about in the passenger side of his jeep, and sleeps in his bedroom while his other dogs stay in the kennels outside. She comes from good stock, her father was good at hunting – Riccardo claims he could smell the air and go shooting away to nose out truffles in the valleys and on the hillsides.
There are different truffle seasons. The best, and main season is in the fall, when the much-desired big truffles can be found at the base of oaks in the river bottoms. This season, the spring, is time for the less desirable “little white” truffles that grow on the hillsides, among the low brambles and bushes.
The whole exercise of truffles hunting would be pointless without a good hound, the truffles grow just under the surface, are small and far between. A week ago Riccardo brought out Jaepo, Roxy’s son to hunt us up some truffles. But in an effort to gain the affections of the dog, Zoe and Liz fed him cheese. So despite Riccardo’s insistence Jaepo’s attention kept being drawn to the little girls down the hill that were the source of tasty treats. “He is only good at finding fromaggio,” declared Riccardo. He vowed to return with Roxy. A seasoned veteran, and a girl to boot: more serious and less easily distracted. Pigs are good at finding Truffles too, but they are strictly forbidden, they tear up the soil and ruin the hunting. Good stewardship means repairing the spot you dig, so more can grow in a future season.
Yesterday Riccardo brought Roxy. She is russet colored, with deep brown baleful eyes. She has only one love: Riccardo. Though we try to win her favor with treats, she will only tentatively approach us, take our offerings, and then retreat to the side of Riccardo, sometimes placing her paws on his chest: embracing him. Roxy is a serious truffle hunter, she is always smelling – and sometimes will find truffles on the side of the street. With the right word Roxy springs into action, sniffing through the undergrowth until she stops and begins to paw at the dirt. When she surfaces a little truffle she lays flat on the ground – Riccardo advances with his special truffle digging tool and coaxes out the treasure, today they are mostly the size of a bean, with the appearance of a very small potato. After finding a “little white”, she waits patiently for her reward, a bit of kibble from Riccardo’s oil-stained pocket, and she’s off again.
A good year can mean a healthy extra income in a season that lasts from October through December. This makes for rivalries, and though a license allows you to hunt anywhere, good manners dictate sticking to your home turf. If you are sneaky, and roam the scrubby oaks at night in someone else’s area you might find your tires slashed or worse; the ground way be “salted” with hamburger laced with poison and you may lose your best hound.
No such nefarious activity today though. We ended a short hunt with a small palm full of kernels, and one large truffle, about the size of a walnut, that had sadly passed its prime. To best capture the flavor of the truffle they are best cooked grated into eggs.
Tomorrow we will center our dinner around a special dish made with our little gifts from Roxy and Riccardo.
