North easterly

This steady stream of cloud churning over the Appenines was moving north easterly round the back of the low pressure system that moved south of Sicily. The shifting light was dramatic.

With snow forecast I stowed the two lemon trees and other plants away, picked the last green tomatoes in the greenhouse that kept going from early summer and chopped logs from two and three years back.

It would be ironic if the forecast snow stops our heating engineer getting up to the house.

I shifted some big chunks of stone in the tracked transporter. I’m hoping to top the left hand steps wall with them. They have one hand-cut face and anything but flat bottoms. I also sprayed out the gaps between the stones where I’d hacked out the old mortar. I’ll have to wait to point them up until the cold blast from the Balkans has passed.

Later we did an impromptu bbq - just chicken and potatoes - and in many layers watched the last light play out on the hills. A big moon rose through the clouds before we retreated inside.

I’ve been reading about the semi-feudal system of mezzadria - a form of mixed agriculture sharecropping that dominated rural upland Tuscany from the 15th century to the 1950s. It had little to commend it and led to a fairly radical revolt against the system and landlords and then a massive exodus from the land particularly after the bitter winter of 1956 that killed 750,000 olive trees in Tuscany.

It must have been so tough to wake each morning knowing your landlord would take half of your wheat, your olives, your vines, your chestnuts and your sheep and cattle.

So much of what is woodland around us was once hard won cultivated land with olive and vine interplanted on terraces for wheat and fodder crops.

The eagle eyed will find a tribute to Tom’s arrival on the steps.