Tuscan Living

Unbelievably it is August. A year with some challenges but we’re still progressing with Cincina albeit at a much reduced pace. Nick’s health has not been the best so we have not been able to get alot of the physical work progressed as we wanted to. It has been so good to have Jemimah here as she has adapted to country living and taken on alot of the outdoor work.

However as with most things we adjust to our circumstances and move forward, celebrate our successes and replan where needed. Needless to say, this remains a work in progress!

We’re also not immune to the changing climate. Summers are getting hotter with less rainfall, so our philosophy is that we mulch where we can, and use water sparingly. It does mean that some existing trees etc have not survived and we will replace with more drought and heat tolerant plants.

A slip!

While we were in Scandinavia there was heavy rainfall on top of a fairly wet early spring. Before we went, there were signs of slippage of the bank next to the access road. More movement along the previous slip that had been there for more than a year spilling onto the drive. When we arrived home, something looked different and upon closer inspection found a significant area had dropped between 25cm to 75cm.

This map gives an approximation of the extent, and the scar is very visible especially with the grass cut. It looks very similar to an earthquake fault slip!

Had a geologist out but there is no obvious source of water that may have caused this, just a ‘stuff happens’ event. There are other areas of slippage albeit not as dramatic. The front lawn is slowly slipping away and the ground where the sewage system is also moving and crushing the first chamber. This should have been a set of concrete chambers or the polyethylene tanks housed in a concrete bunker. Getting quotes to get that sorted.

The Veg Gardens

Although our daughter has done an amazing job we’ve not been able to spend the amount of time needed. That said we’re getting a decent crop of tomatoes, zucchini and even cucumbers. Jemimah’s beetroot was an all around success though. What this has brought home is that we need a better management system to constrain the weeds and get water to the plants. Using ‘leaky hose’ is a waste of time as you just don’t get enough water to the plants. Will stick with drippers and probably use dripper pipes. Been reluctant to use these as the holes are at 40cm but we can design individual beds based on these.

The house next to our neighbours is being renovated but seems to have stalled leaving excavated wood, brick and stone along the side of the track. This has a pile of floor support timbers about 15 cm square that will be ideal to create defined beds so a winter project with some work-aways to provide muscle power.

Our attempt at growing potatoes under straw does work and you get sizeable potatoes except these are too tempting and easy for the wild life, especially the cinghiale. Our neighbours use a movement detector system that gives off a high pitched sound that scare off the cinghiale. So that will be useful for our next season.

The Lavender

Slightly later than we should of, we’ve been harvesting the lavender. The beds planted last year have done amazingly well with well developed plants even though these have not been watered. What we’ve harvested has been bunched up and look really good with a lovely scent. The plants are now also being cut back quite dramatically to get the growth for next year. What needs to be avoided is having tall woody plants so they get trimmed back to size and shape of a smallish football.

We have 3 sections of lavender – a section of plants on the terraces close to the house by the top veg garden. Two varieties with one having bold colour that looked stunning.

The main section is on the west facing terraces on the western boundary. These can be seen from across the valley and once fully developed, plants will look wonderful. We plan to extend the planting here next year.

A third section was planted on terraces about midway from the house to the western boundary. Need a little more active weed control and to secure the weedmatting better.

Cheryl’s made a trial bottle of lavanda syrup – great with a G&T and sprig of rosemary.

At least this year we’ve proven that lavender grows well here, and tolerates the increasingly hot/dry summers well. Next year will develop each of the 3 planting areas for different uses – for example, harvest early to try and extract essential oil, harvest as bunches to dry for the kitchen etc. It feels like we have come full circle as many years ago (1999) when we returned to NZ from the UK, we had land in Te Horo and always wanted to grow lavender. Now here in Tuscany, we are growing according to organic principles and it somehow seems very appropriate to be growing lavender amongst the olives – just to add colour and beauty to this small Italian garden – It is immensely satisfying.

Our cuttings we took are also doing well. Did two sets. The first are good sizable plants. The second set was done a bit later in the season and not grown as well but these will be OK. We should be able to extend our planting by 90 to 100 of our own plants.

Restoring the Olive Grove

The third tranche of pruning the trees was done in spring. This just leaves one area to do and we will probably keep the trees adjacent to the house as large trees. These provide some degree of privacy and look great where they are. As usual the growth since being pollarded is phenomenal. These should be in production by 2028. By then Cincina should be producing enough oil to be used semi commercially, especially where we join forces with our neighbours.

As we progress with pollarding, our supply of wood keeps growing. Although we built a small wood shelter, we have numerous wood stacks out in the fields and car park at present. Olive wood seems hard enough not to rot readily if kept dry. We’ll probably consolidate this through winter. Our immediate objective is to clear the fields where the trees were pollarded.

Below we have the area from two different perspectives and time frames. That said, even though hotter than ever the fields still have green bits. This looks dramatic as the cut grass is drying. We could probably make hay!

From my perspective we were oblivious to the amount of wood generated by pruning and really over extended ourselves. The lower section on the western slopes has not been mown this year and still needs alot of the wood collecting from around the trees.

A lesson for us that we really needed to better plan how many trees we could realistically prune and process in a season. We have enough wood for probably 3 winters and could probably sell some to the restaurants who prefer to burn olive wood in their pizza ovens!

We’re also experimenting with diferent grove management techniques. To help counter the musca (olive fly) we want to allow their natural predators to thrive. These are spiders and ground arthropods like carabid beetles and staphylinid beetles, plus insects such as ladybirds and lacewings. To encourage these we’re moving away from mown fields to having areas being left fallow where the spacing between the trees allow for this, and then creating corridors of cut olive scrub between the trees. Eventually these will rot down as the grass and meadow plants grow through this. Normally. this would be burnt. We’d rather utilise this as a resource. We’re calling them insect highways.

The house

Out of the 11 windows all but three have been replaced with new hardwood frames and window sashes. This now provides double glazing through out the house plus more thermic sensitive glass; noticeably keeping the heat out when there is blazing sun outside and hopefully keeping the heat in during winter. All four double doors have been upgraded so we have a uniform look and feel to the outside. It also looks smart. Very professionally done.

The windows plus frame came out as single units and with those that are still sound intend to make cold frames. Be rather smart with oak frames & sashes.

With new doors in place we needed to install a cat flap somewhere. Used to be in the kitchen door but given the cost of these was loathed to immedaly start cutting holes in the kitcher door. So the catflap is now in the summer room through the brick/stone wall. Fortunately this was not a 500mm flint wall. Still was an interesting exercise needing three tunnel extensions.

We’ve also installed heat pumps in all the bedrooms and lounge so can get respite form some of the relentless heat outside, especially overnight.

Slowly we’ve getting the walls repaired and painted. All that’s left now is the top of the stairwell and small upstairs workroom. Two of the 3 bedrooms on the top floor have been painted, skirting boards on and curtains. The ‘summer room’ has just been painted too – with a bright feature wall.

Visitors

As ever, we have loved seeing many friends and family throughout the spring and summer – we’re booked until March 2026! Everyone is very welcome and we love exploring a mix of new places and our favourite spots with visitors.

This middle of August has come with the third heat wave of summer. These heatwaves are named like storms are, and are caused when hot air from the Sahara drifts North to Europe. The frequency and strength of these are increasingly by the year. We reached a new record high here of 41.2 (thanks to Nick’s weather system for the data). This summer has had the highest recored temperatures since 2003! Looking forward to the respite of Autumn.