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Another month passes as we head toward Winter my least favourite time of the year, we have had an improvement in the weather for a while, at one stage it went directly from Summer to Winter. But at least for now we have some more reasonable Autumn temperatures to enjoy the spectacular colours around us, I was able to sit outside this morning on the 1st November and have breakfast. Today is one our national holidays Ogisssanti (All Saints Day) so nothing will open today, the locals seem to be making up for it by playing at being “Rambo” all around us the guns are going off as they all try to catch something it is all supposed to about wild boar but some lucky hunter will most probably take home something the size of a small bird. As you may gather I am not a fan of hunting but as we chose to make our life here it just has to be accepted that their ways and customs do sometimes come as a bit of of a culture shock especially as outside of this obsession for shooting things they are some of the most gentle people with almost no natural aggression.
Anyway off the soapbox now, also today we will have one of the better sides of holidays as there will be several “Feste’s” to enjoy the one we will go to is in Amandola and includes a couple of other important items of food that are revered here one is Truffles, and the other is Chestnuts, these two things form the basis for for a whole days Festival and shows the more gentle side to the way of life here. Before we can go out though Liz is busy outside clearing some of the finished vegetables, ready for her winter planting of Peas and Beans she still has lettuces and other salad growing, and tomorrow she will pick the first of her cauliflower so the “good life” extends for a good portion of the year.
 The vineyard has come on well for its first year with all the vines making it through the long dry summer Pepe and Dante have delivered me a good size portion of manure to dig in round the vines and through the vegetable areas, it just goes to show that into our third year of learning from the masters they now feel we have learned enough to be trusted to this most skilled of jobs. Maybe they will even let me prune one or two of the older vines myself this time, I get the feeling they wont trust me with the new ones yet though as I may damage them. The established vines have produced some excellent quality wine this is due to the hot dry summer, but it is traded off by not producing much in the way of quantity, most of the wine is consumed as young wine so we will be trying the finished product about the end of this month.
The rest of the last month has been busy with guests and and general work for the houses we look after, and we are about to start on the winter schedule of work in and around the houses arranged for the winter season. It has been nice to write about a month where we have not had anything go wrong and on the whole a pretty satisfying and rewarding period, it’s a hard life! but we will struggle on.
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