Dear Art Lover,
Every day
I feel grateful and lucky as hell. The
people in my newly adopted home neighborhood are so kind to me and my mind has
calmed a lot being surrounded by the Nature of the hills of Tuscany. Firenze is a lovely city, full of art and
interesting situations, but it is still a city.
I am a Nature Girl and I love being home. The Italians call a village a paese (pie-eh-seh), which means ‘country.’ Context is everything to understanding
Italian. North of the Comune (City) of Pescia in Tuscany is a
scattered group of ten paese. They are collectively called Valleriana.
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| One paese in Valleriana Tuscany Italy with growing beans of Sorana |
I am sad
that summer is coming to an end, but then, it seems that everything eventually
does; even if not really. Life is a sine
wave, but the time is flying by! I
include some images from walking distance around my home. I am extremely lucky that my landlord
repeatedly offers me anything I want in his campo
(field/farm). Almost everything in these
hills is terraced land.
In Italy,
each region has its crop or products that are famous, at least in the rest of
the country [meaning Italy]. Besides
having many varieties of a tomato, for example, each region of Italia has a unique
environment. This lends a special sapore (flavor) to produce grown in one
region over another. The Italians are
quite sensitive on taste. Before I came
to bella Italia, I did not know that
one should not put a tomato in the refrigerator, as it loses flavor there. I did not pay attention as much to the
specific flavor of a tomato. Oh, that is
not entirely true: I remember now that
the Mexican Roma tomatoes were my favorite when I lived in Texas. The second favorite is cherry tomatoes
because one can pop ‘em inside the mouth for an internal explosion experience! But, I am certainly learning to distinguish
more now!
Valleriana
has many products and fresh foods grown here [including pomodori (tomatoes), but the most well-known might be the white beans of Sorana. That harvest of beans that I helped with will
be featured in the next post. These
images today were taken around the end of August/early September.
I still
do not have a car, although it is getting a driver’s license here that is the
hold-up. The laws have changed on this
as well and it is now very difficult and very expensive to receive a driver’s
license here. No more transferring a
valid American driver’s license for an Italian one. I heard that is because with the immigrant
situation here, many people are arriving in Italy without the ability to drive
or even to read. Some have drinking
habits and drive while drunk. Italy has
made it more difficult to get the license to try to stop irresponsible or
unqualified drivers to be on the roads.
I find this ironic since Italy has also been famous for its crazy
(Italian) drivers! And up on the
sidewalk we go! Haha.
So, the
image of the truck is one way that I am able to buy food that I do not receive
from my landlord’s gardens. Once a week,
these brothers drive their van around Valleriana. Mostly they sell veggies and fruits, but they
also have some sausages, GOOD parmigiano
cheeses, and some food produces in glass jars, such as artichoke hearts. They stop not far from my home, but I must
catch them since deliver time varies depending on how many customers in any given
season.
Enjoy and
go natural!
Peace,
Kelly
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| Faggioli di Sorana; growing beans in Valleriana Tuscany |
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| Happy Christmas trees grow in my favorite patch of tree farm Valleriana |
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| Brothers deliver fresh produce for sale in the hills of Valleriana |
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| Sorana beans netted for protection against animals; Terraced hills of Tuscany |
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| Fig trees - man, do I eat well here! |
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| Olives growing for hopeful harvest in November in Valleriana |
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| Lavender; back: making sandbags for stone carving |
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| Sorana beans co-habit terraced land with olive trees |
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| Never forget the grapes! |
