Wood to Burn

There is a lot of wood here. In fact that hill behind called "Monte Formica" (Mount Ant) is covered in trees. They are sweet chestnut trees and I have climbed to the top. Once you are in the wood you see nothing but trees; no views; no ground flora; just tree after tree after tree. Before rice, maize and potatoes came to this region the sweet chestnut was an important source of nourishment. After they did, the hill dwellers traded their chestnuts for the other foods. The trees that produced the nuts were not this uniform coppice that we walk through today. Instead they were large pollarded specimens, often along field boundaries and roadsides. Some still exist but are moribund and the practice of exploiting them is is in disuse.