Read Online The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club by Marlena de Blasi - Free Book Online
Authors: Marlena de Blasi
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guiding the olives into the basket strapped around my waist. As we finish a tree, climb down the homemade wooden ladders to dump our baskets into the sacks waiting below, we spar over which of the remaining trees âbelongsâ to whom.
Each year I wonder if it will be the last one when we pick by hand in this ancient way, since almost every farmer â save those who tend a grove only for the family table â now uses machines that shake the trees until the fruit falls into nets spread on the ground below them, a violent method which bruises the fruit and risks the purity of the oil. The word thatâs been buzzing about during our work these past days is that Ninucciaâs cousins are selling this grove to a consortium. If thatâs so, the fruit from future harvests of these eight hundred trees will be tossed together with that from groves all over the region and from other regions as well, the mass shipped to a central location to be pressed in a stainless-steel factory and then passed off as prestigious extra-virgin oil. Traditional life is vanishing.
At least this harvest â these olives â are being poured into endless fifty-kilo sacks and loaded onto the beds of old trucks and carted to a stone barn situated just outside the village of Castelpietro. Stacked up by the mill door, the sacks will be carried inside by local boys who, all in good time, hurl the fruit into the crusher to be pummelled and split between great slabs of travertine by the force of a velvet-eyed she-ass harnessed by a rope: a ritual perhaps 4000 years old in these Umbrian hills. Elders of the family will stand guard over the process, all the while crooning to and praising the fat little beast as she plods her circuit. They stop her course often, petting her while she rests and eats and drinks. Miranda is right. The
raccolta
deserves to be celebrated.
With her usual ease Miranda had arranged for our use of the mill for a Thursday night. Next Thursday night to be exact. Three days hence. She had also spoken with Ninuccia. This morning, while I was layering on my clothes and preparing to get to work, Ninuccia came to me, started in naming dishes her family had always cooked for the harvest, rattled off what there was waiting to be picked from her garden, what herbs and vegetables were already strung and set to dry in her attic.
âOf course itâs yours to decide ⦠the menu, I mean. But listen, when weâve finished with the harvesting this morning letâs go to the mill and talk a bit. Iâll tell Gilda and Paolina to come, too, and we can make a lunch of wine and bread and oil. Also, I left a pot of beans there on my way here this morning, nourishment for my cousins, the old ones who stay at the mill all day long.â
âIâll telephone Miranda.â
âIf I know her, sheâll be there before us. But surely, call her.
Va bene?
â
â
Va benissimo.
â
â¢
It is nearly one oâclock when we four climb down from the last trees and â chilled and starving and triumphant â make our way up onto the bed of an old blue truck to collapse among the sacks of olives. Laughing and shouting and wishing we had wine to warm us, we are a quartet of Cleopatras being carted ceremonially through the grove to the mill by a handsome young charioteer called Gianmario.
One of the cousins is toasting bread in the hearth, smearing it with the new oil, thick as honey and green as jade. Jugs of wine and a collection of tumblers are set out on a long wooden table where Ninucciaâs beans wait in a deep, black-speckled terracotta pot. Half-dried figs threaded on butcherâs twine hang from iron hooks on the stone wall behind the table and Gilda takes down a string, pulls the still plump fruit free and begins slicing it thickly, pressing the pieces onto the hot oiled bread and offering the trenchers to the old cousins, to us. To the she-ass. It is the first time Iâd ever
Each year I wonder if it will be the last one when we pick by hand in this ancient way, since almost every farmer â save those who tend a grove only for the family table â now uses machines that shake the trees until the fruit falls into nets spread on the ground below them, a violent method which bruises the fruit and risks the purity of the oil. The word thatâs been buzzing about during our work these past days is that Ninucciaâs cousins are selling this grove to a consortium. If thatâs so, the fruit from future harvests of these eight hundred trees will be tossed together with that from groves all over the region and from other regions as well, the mass shipped to a central location to be pressed in a stainless-steel factory and then passed off as prestigious extra-virgin oil. Traditional life is vanishing.
At least this harvest â these olives â are being poured into endless fifty-kilo sacks and loaded onto the beds of old trucks and carted to a stone barn situated just outside the village of Castelpietro. Stacked up by the mill door, the sacks will be carried inside by local boys who, all in good time, hurl the fruit into the crusher to be pummelled and split between great slabs of travertine by the force of a velvet-eyed she-ass harnessed by a rope: a ritual perhaps 4000 years old in these Umbrian hills. Elders of the family will stand guard over the process, all the while crooning to and praising the fat little beast as she plods her circuit. They stop her course often, petting her while she rests and eats and drinks. Miranda is right. The
raccolta
deserves to be celebrated.
With her usual ease Miranda had arranged for our use of the mill for a Thursday night. Next Thursday night to be exact. Three days hence. She had also spoken with Ninuccia. This morning, while I was layering on my clothes and preparing to get to work, Ninuccia came to me, started in naming dishes her family had always cooked for the harvest, rattled off what there was waiting to be picked from her garden, what herbs and vegetables were already strung and set to dry in her attic.
âOf course itâs yours to decide ⦠the menu, I mean. But listen, when weâve finished with the harvesting this morning letâs go to the mill and talk a bit. Iâll tell Gilda and Paolina to come, too, and we can make a lunch of wine and bread and oil. Also, I left a pot of beans there on my way here this morning, nourishment for my cousins, the old ones who stay at the mill all day long.â
âIâll telephone Miranda.â
âIf I know her, sheâll be there before us. But surely, call her.
Va bene?
â
â
Va benissimo.
â
â¢
It is nearly one oâclock when we four climb down from the last trees and â chilled and starving and triumphant â make our way up onto the bed of an old blue truck to collapse among the sacks of olives. Laughing and shouting and wishing we had wine to warm us, we are a quartet of Cleopatras being carted ceremonially through the grove to the mill by a handsome young charioteer called Gianmario.
One of the cousins is toasting bread in the hearth, smearing it with the new oil, thick as honey and green as jade. Jugs of wine and a collection of tumblers are set out on a long wooden table where Ninucciaâs beans wait in a deep, black-speckled terracotta pot. Half-dried figs threaded on butcherâs twine hang from iron hooks on the stone wall behind the table and Gilda takes down a string, pulls the still plump fruit free and begins slicing it thickly, pressing the pieces onto the hot oiled bread and offering the trenchers to the old cousins, to us. To the she-ass. It is the first time Iâd ever
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