Walk the land

I went over to Pratovecchio to walk the boundaries of the land of the house. There was me, Stefano, Valentina and the owner. The land is really varied - steep west-facing mixed woodland of oak, ash (ornello) and pine that was planted when there were payments to do so. A summit of scrubby pines and an east facing slope of coppiced oak with even a few mountain ash and heather. Then a beautiful meadow. Even a wallow where the wild boar and deer mix it up.

The west facing wood has reclaimed old cultivated patches. The east facing wood was never much more than a place to grow firewood and let nature take its course.

It seemed a lot of land walking round and through its overgrown wildness. AS R said, better to have too much than too little. Stefano blazed a few trees as markers and Valentina made sense of it on the large-scale map.

Later R and I went for a lunch together. He was born and raised here and keeps coming back. He knows everyone and everything. Later I walked the steep and slippery boundaries again, trying to fix where Stefano had pointed - he looked after the land for ten years and says the meadow can't be beat for fertility and moisture in the summer.

There are other people's lives we are walking into. I think I would rather it this way rather than to just turn up on a piece of land with no history, no parents, no people who care for it and its future.

In Tuscany many of the land boundaries are marked by ditches, edges, terraces, little escarpments. If these move through weathering, erosion, slippage the boundary is deemed to move too. The only fixed points of reference move too.

And so conflict and feud are avoided, side-stepped where once land hunger was overpowering as an overpeopled country sought to feed its many mouths with all the unfairness and inequality that landownership brings.

We have taken a step towards entering that history, of becoming part of something so much bigger than ourselves.

By the time I had arrived Stefano had already found some funghi - prugnoli - that come up after spring rain. Even better than porcini - seppes - according to Valentina. Stefano said they were a bit dry but he stowed them carefully in his Fiat Panda 4x4 before getting his billhook with the blade spray painted red - so he can find it in the undergrowth of the woods when he puts it down.

They say round here, and all Italy I imagine, 'la terra e' bassa'. Literally 'the ground is low' and us humans must bend down to reach it. Again, and again, And again.

Later the bad weather came in and I scuttled up over the Consuma at 1050m because freezing rain and snow were forecast. The wine growers are holding their collective breaths tonight. A frost will kill this years vintage.

I was stuck behind a Bulgarian lorry from Plovdiv. There was no chance of overtaking but there is a junction where a cafe has two entrances. As the lorry cranked round the junction and into the hill I slipped through the cafe car park and pulled out in front of him.

Furbizia. It's catching.