It seems our farmer
doesn’t have to do a lot other than watch his crops grow and arrange for the
harvesting to be carried out at the appropriate time of year. All the produce is then sent to cooperatives
for centralised food production. The
sweet chestnuts are from the Amiato chestnut tree and are used for making
flour. The grapes are used to make the local
Montecucco wines – I’ve never heard of them but am doing my best to try them
all 😉
We were looking for
butterflies on Saturday and saw an old Fiat parked under a tree and then we
heard rustling in the tree. It was our
farmer in an apple tree collecting the fruit.
We have noticed many ladders in the orchards and they all look handmade
and incredibly unsafe, but he seemed quite at home at the top of it.
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| Apple picking in one of our butterfly meadows |
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| Young walnut and sweet chestnut trees in another one of the meadows |
When we went through Pescina
when we arrived a few days ago we found it strange that, even though it is a
small village, it has three restaurants and three or four apartment blocks, all
of which are shuttered up. What we have
now realised is that the place must be packed in the winter and the apartments
are ski apartments. We have also noticed
that there are chalets hidden in the woods and that they look like traditional
Alpine ski chalets rather than Tuscan houses.
It must be a great weekend getaway for people who live in places like
Rome (I hesitate to say Romans) who own a second home here as they can have a
weekend skiing in the winter or just lazing around in the summer.
Admittedly it won’t be
like having a chalet in the Alps but it’s a lot closer to the mountains than if
you live in places like Paris or Milan.
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| Some of the butterflies we saw on Saturday, clockwise from top left: pale clouded yellow, Queen of Spain fritillary, common blue, Glanville fritillary |
Even though the house is
rustic, there are a lot of what we call modern arty pictures around that we
don’t quite understand.
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| Whenever we see this type of art we always think we could do it ourselves |
Everywhere we have stayed
whilst we have been away we have been in the range of bells and barking dogs. All the way through France it seemed every village
church sounds the hour every hour from seven in the morning until ten at
night. We thought it was funny in Bélâbre
as the clock was running seven minutes late, so we had an extra few minutes of
silence in the mornings.
Howling dogs have been
another phenomenon, we seem to have heard them every night wherever we have
stayed. Fortunately, they don’t disturb
Buddy or encourage him to join in.
Sometimes it’s just the odd one or two dogs communicating and sometimes
it sounds like a whole pack of hunting dogs.
We haven’t escaped it here
in Pescina, but being so high up from the village, we have to strain to hear
the bells from Seggiano and have only heard the occasional dog. We are still hearing cicadas even though
summer is nearing its end. At least they
are not as loud as they are in the height of summer and their noise is now a
muted, peaceful and pleasing sound.
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| Looking down on Seggiano from where we can just here the church bell – ironically, a hill town |
As we are living on the
slopes of Monte Amiato we thought we would visit the summit, so that’s what we
did on Sunday afternoon. Despite
extensive searches (physically and electronically) we couldn’t find any paths
so ended up doing the same as all the other tourists and driving practically to
the top. Yes, we could have walked up
the road, but it wouldn’t have been much fun and as its narrow and full of
hairpins it would have been dangerous. The
only sign of trails we could find were all reserved for mountain bikers.
Whilst researching for
footpaths I did find that this area is one of the parts of Italy inhabited by wolves,
but we haven’t come across any signs of them yet. I have seen porcupines in this area before
but no such luck so far. Mind you, we wouldn’t
want Buddy to come face to face or face to bottom with a porcupine ☹
A green/blue piste runs
down from the summit to a large car park and made for an easy walk up.
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| The piste is paved to help people walk up to the summit in the summer |
There are two chair lifts
and 12 drag lifts so it’s hardly a resort that will set the ski world
alight. Both chair lifts were in use and
disgorging a constant stream of mountain bikers at the top.
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| Mountain bikers alighting from one of the chair lifts |
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| The summit marker which isn’t at the highest point… |
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| …this was the highest point |
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| Looking towards Rome but we were above the clouds so couldn’t see much |
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| The piste map – not much competition for the likes of Les Trois Vallées 😉 |
Dotted around the grounds
of the house are many demijohns which are traditionally used for wine and olive
oil. I mention these because I came across an American website the other day selling
‘genuine’ European artefacts where demijohns, without baskets, were advertised
at $255 each!
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| Our Sunday evening view – the clouds looked like tree covered hills at first glance |
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