Life on a Tuscan Farm

This Monday, the olive harvest arrived about two weeks early, like pretty much all the other harvests this year. Due to a season-long drought in our region and a few other key factors, our harvest was extremely small. We hope that the pruning from this past spring and better weather next year will mean a more abundant harvest in 2008.

Among our 700+ olive trees on the property, we have three main varietals: Frantoio, Pendolino and Leccino. Combining all the olives at the olive mill/ press, we make a spicy Estate blend perfect for drizzling on bruschetta or a hearty Tuscan soup. A presto!

On Friday, under the guidance of expert truffle hunter Gianni, the interns got a chance to hunt truffles. Using two adorable dogs, Gianni took us over fences and under brush on the hunt for the most expensive and illusive mushroom on the planet. The fall is bianco pregiato season, so we were looking for an underground mushroom that only trained dogs can sniff out that costs between 2000 and 6000 Euro a kilo. We found three small truffles (very small because of the lack of rain in the entire region) and all three together weighed in at about 20 ounces. Lucky for us, his family, including his nonna then hosted us for a lunch during which we ate the delicious tartufi on bruschetta straight out of the wood fired oven. A presto!

Just a quick note to share a few websites that we have come across for people looking to find a green job. “Green job” could mean that your work focuses on renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, or recycling or it could mean that the office/factory/building that you work in was built with the environment in mind and might have low flow faucets, use recycled materials, use less energy or have organic, local food in the cafeteria etc. There are several websites created to help you find a green job including: Monstertrak.com/greencareers/, Greenjobs.com, and Idealist.org.

Other sites that aren’t about jobs but that can bring you up to speed on the environment, sustainability and farming are: Orionmagazine.org; PlanetArk.org, NewFarm.org, and Ecoliteracy.org.

A presto!