Olives waiting to be carted off to the press From the outset, I must admit that the title of this blog post is perhaps specious … no one really “makes” olive oil by themselves, not unless you are the owner of a very large piece of machinery, or you […]
Yearly Archives: 2012
52 posts
[portfolio_slideshow autoplay=true navpos=disabled] Nothing about agriculture in the Cinque Terre is easy. This land is not made for easy. After a day in the fields, the thing that most hurts is the soles of your feet from trying desperately to keep yourself steady on the hill all the time. Last […]
My wife is researching the barefoot movement for an article, and all this talk of bare feet brought to mind a comment that I friend of mine here in Levanto made. Talking with one of the older, wiser women from the area, she told him how when she was a […]
Here’s how it went down: I was out walking my father-in-law’s dog, Rocco, who’s spending a month with us taking the airs of the Mediterranean. I’ve gotten into the habit of taking one of my daughters with me when I do this walk, sometime after dinner, but last night we […]
[portfolio_slideshow autoplay=true navpos=disabled] In case anyone was wondering what the olive harvest looks like in Levanto and the Cinque Terre, here it is: lots of rain, lots of wind, lots of shaking of branches, and a whole lot of olives!
It is a foul and nasty night out there, just as it’s been a foul and nasty day, but that only serves to remind me that only a week ago, that’s right, on October 23, I took my last swim in the Mediterranean for the year 2012. My first dip […]
You won’t find it on a map, but Porto Pidocchio is as real a place as it gets in Levanto. A wonderful space along the edge of the beach, a sort of open-sided piazza on the water, Porto Pidocchio is the favorite local spot once the summer has come and […]
Daniele Moggia, an activist from Vernazza who was there during the floods of October 2012 and who has been a driving force in rebuilding the town and educating people about the fragility of the local environment, has just written a post about the most recent cry, after the small rock […]
It has been a long hot summer here in Levanto and the Cinque Terre, which I suppose most people would find encouraging after the epic destructive floods and landslides of last October. But be careful what you wish for, as your grandmother told you. Long hot summers mean dry grasses […]
The Cinque Terre and the surrounding lands, in particular my beloved Levanto, are obviously major summer tourist attractions, something that causes the number of residents in Levanto, for example, to swell from 6,000 in the winter to more than 20,000 in the summer, and that’s not counting the day-trippers. What […]