There is no Halloween as we know it in Italy.  There are no carved pumpkins grinning from doorways or demented looking witches and demons on display.  Montepulciano boasts one shop which had a few masks and a couple of rubber spiders.  Despite this, however, in recent years some shopkeepers have gotten into the swing of providing candy to small clusters of trick o’treaters.  And there was much anticipation this year for Bonnie’s gang of five to show them how it’s done.  I was a little concerned beforehand because Caterina had told me that some of the less enthusiastic shop owners had sent kids away last year, so  I went around early in the day yesterday to shops where I’ve made acquaintances and covertly inquired whether they would be handing out candy in the evening.

Bonnie found costumes for the kids in Chiusi and organized some festivities with some of their classmates for last night.  I helped with the kids during the day and then took Natalie to a birthday party for one of her schoolmates.  Natalie went in costume and as I walked up the street with her in her orange witch ensemble, reactions were much the same as when I would dress up Cinder each year in New York:  disbelief coupled with amusement.  It didn’t seem to bother her that none of the other kids at the party were costumed.

While Halloween might not be high on the priority list here, hard on it’s heels comes All Saints Day, or the Day of the Dead.  This is today and is a national holiday.  It’s said to be the day when the souls of loved ones come back to the earth to visit.  Antonella’s shop has a special bread named for the day, pane della morte, which she’s been selling all month.  It sounds macabre but is basically a tasty raisin nut bread.

With the start of November also comes the annual harvesting of the olives.  And yes, it looks like I’ll be giving this a try as well.  My friends here have joked that it will be easier for me than the vendemmia since I’m tall and can easily reach the tree branches.  Speriamo!

My decided lack of artistic talent is on display in my sugar cookies for the kids

Natalie puts the finishing touches on her costume

Cinder is relieved that someone else has to wear the silly costume this year

Antonella with the pane della morte

Today Cinder and I are celebrating six months here in Italy.  I now feel settled, have some great friends, and am miraculously surviving with almost no income.  It’s almost November and tonight we turn the clocks back.  It’s been cold and rainy the last few days and I had to put the heat on a couple of times.  I am also still without a proper jacket.  Why oh why did I leave my LLBean barn jacket behind?!   With highs barely reaching the 50s, it takes forever for the laundry to dry on the line , but even longer if you try to dry things inside.  I washed Cinder’s blanket two days ago and it’s still damp.  She’s not overly concerned as she is content to burrow under my duvet when she feels a chill.

With the shortening days, and the stores stocking their winter goods, it feels like the start of the holiday season.  And, of course, inspires me to bake…a lot.  I will definitely miss seeing my friends this year, baking everyone’s favorite cookies, and preparing for my annual Holiday party.  I certainly don’t have the funds to attempt anything like that for my new friends here.  While I’m looking forward to spending my first holidays in Italy, it will also be a little strange–especially since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, which is my favorite!  Bonnie and I are going to cook dinner together for the kids and when she goes to the States in a couple of weeks, she is charged with bringing back the pumpkin and evaporated milk for the pumpkin pie.

As much as I love the simplicity and peacefulness of life here, I’m definitely still an outsider and am always conscious of how small a town I live in.  My friend Anna says it’s the favorite past time here to talk about everybody, and I have felt this keenly this week.  Obviously the word is out that I’ve been on a few dates because when I went to the butcher the other day and asked for vitello for osso bucco, Silvano smiled knowingly when I said four pieces.  These things are a little hard to adjust too, but I just try to remind myself that they are talking about everyone in the same way.  I always end conversations with Antonella, Caterina or Angela with “Fra noi” which means this is between us, but then I’ll see their husbands the next day and realize they know everything we’ve just talked about.  It’s also strange that everyone knows who I am and will say hello to me by name.  I find this is especially disconcerting when it’s a person I’ve never met, or maybe was introduced to once.  But the small town intimacy also can work in your favor because once you’ve been accepted into the group, your friends become loyal and are willing to share things about their lives.  They also constantly try to help on the work front, which is REALLY appreciated.

My Italian is better now–still a struggle with people who speak quickly, but I can follow a conversation pretty well and only make about a thousand mistakes a day.  This week brings Halloween and I’m making cookies for Bonnie’s kids who are upset that it’s not celebrated here.  Also planning an evening out with the girls, which should be fun.  Oh and a handsome friend of Antonella’s invited me for coffee yesterday and we had a really nice time.  Of course, I wisely said nothing to anyone–let them talk about someone else this week!!!!

Cold temps and a plethora of free fruit inspire an apple pie

Babysitting the kids yesterday

A quiet Saturday morning in Montepulciano

Caterina and Antonella patiently pose for the pazza Americana

Silvano's wife Alba alla Macelleria

Gabriella taking her first cigarette break of the morning

I debated whether to mention my date on the blog, but since I put it out there myself, I feel I should follow up…or rather I know I will hear about it if I don’t!   It was, in short, a great evening.  When a man tells you he wants to cook dinner for you, it’s hard to say no.  Especially a sexy Italian man who gives you free fruit!   So I baked an apple walnut cake as my contribution, and then enjoyed having someone cook for me.  He made pasta alla vongole and calamari fritti.  Both were delicious.  He told me during the course of the evening that I never had to pay for produce again so I think he had a good time too!  Okay, enough said.

(PS  sorry…no pictures)

I was so caught up in my own little world of tissues, tea with honey, and feeling miserable this past week that I’d forgotten I hadn’t posted anything since the harvest began last Monday.  Then I received two emails from friends wanting to know what had happened to me.  So thanks for being concerned and don’t worry, I have officially survived my first harvest and my first cold, il raffreddore, here in Italy.

I worked the harvest for four days.  I should probably have posted an update to the cheery piece I wrote after day one.  Because when I woke up on day two, I wanted to die.  Everything hurt.  The harvesting went from a delightful experience to a  “please let me survive this.”  The young whippersnappers who were working beside me also seemed to be in some discomfort, but this didn’t make me feel much better.  Being tall is not an asset to the grape picking process!!!  By day four I was surviving by sucking down Advil and picturing the money at the end of the day.  Rain was forecast for the following day so work was suspended over the weekend…this coincided nicely with my nasty cold.

So I didn’t go to the harvest this week and then found out from Angela at the bar that Saverio was not pleased with this and I may have jeopardized my cooking school opportunity.  ARGH!   Apparently if you sign up to work the vendemmia, you work the WHOLE thing.  Oops.  (In my defense, I had let his daughter know when she paid me on Thursday that I thought it would be my last day.)  I left an apologetic note for Saverio and am now about to make some groveling banana bread, but honestly I couldn’t even move for two days with the cold.  There was no way I could have hauled buckets around and cut grapes all day.  I guess I will chalk this up to a learning experience.  I sure I will make many more mistakes over the coming months, but it is a bit of a bummer.

Anyway, my cold is gone and the harvest is over.  The summer like temperatures of last week have given way to rain and foggy mornings.   Now it’s time to make the wine.  (Or for those of us who don’t know how to make it… to drink it!) My neighbor has been hard at work in his cantina with the grapes that he harvested.  I watched him putting them through the stem separator thingy and now they are fermenting.  There are two other apartments nearby with their own cantinas, so with the windows open all you smell is fermenting grapes.

I have four students for English lessons on the schedule this week and the babysitting jobs are still coming in so I’m staying afloat.  Bonnie has friends visiting, so last night I actually babysat for seven kids!!!

Oh and I have a date.  My fruit guy has asked me out three times and I’ve been on the fence since Marinella tells me he has a wife tucked away in Sicily.  But hey, it’s just dinner, right?   I can’t deny I enjoy getting all of my produce at ridiculously cheap prices.  Caterina and Antonella told me to keep flirting with him and asked if they could give me lists of what they wanted!  Peaches for everyone!!!

By day four the grapes were losing their appeal!!!!

A foggy autumn morning hides my view

My superstar English student Mariastella

When friends in New York used to ask me what I was going to do for work when I moved to Italy, I would jokingly include “harvesting grapes” in my list of possible job options.   Little did I know that after five months of surviving with little to no income, I would actually be pulling out my old sneakers and trying to figure out what one wears to go cut grapes off the vines.   Saverio (the lawyer with the agriturismo/cooking school/vineyard) said he would be happy to have me on his “squadra.”  I had no idea what to expect other than the one word that seemed to exist in everyone’s tales of prior years:  “faticosa.”  Okay, so it was tiring.   I could handle tiring.  But was it difficult?  Was there skill involved?  My Italian professor Alberto seemed convinced I was going to cut off a finger, so I resolved to pay close attention to what I was doing.

Saverio told me to be at Angela’s bar bright and early this morning and I was ready when the San Gallo truck rolled up to take me and the rest of the squad to the fields.  Much to my surprise, there were not wizened old men working the harvest, but lots of young men and woman, some students, some professionals, but all anxious for a little extra income.

I noted right away that everyone had brought their own cutting tool.  They are called forbici…basically big clippers.  Saverio provided me with one, then I was handed a bucket and told to start cutting.  There was no direction on which grape bunches shouldn’t be cut.  For example some had green on them in places and others were dried out like raisins.  I finally asked Mohammad who was on the vine next to me for assistance.  He told me which to discard.  “Butta alla terra,” he said for the ones with green on them.  I obligingly snipped and tossed away the ugly grapes.  The work wasn’t hard but you did have to pay attention so as not to snip yourself along with the grapes.  I began to get a sense for the way the fruit weaved it’s way over the vine and worked out a rhythm.  If we’d had some music, it would have been even better.  The only gross thing was the constant arrival of spiders and other insects who were residing in the mature vines and weren’t happy about the disruption.

We finished the first field in an hour or so, and then had to wait for the tractor to come back so we could start a new load.  We repeated the process in two more fields and by 1:00 it was time for lunch.  The rest of my squadra is heading back now for the afternoon cutting, but I have a student for English, so I will go back again in the morning.  I had an opportunity to chat with some of the other people and found that two sisters had come down from Florence to participate.  There were also two guests of the agriturismo who were helping out just for the fun of it.  “Are you getting paid for this?” the American from Maine asked me.  “God, I hope so,” I replied.  But honestly, even without money, I can see the allure.  Blue skies, acres and acres of gorgeous vineyards, grapes so ripe they burst on your fingers if you apply too much pressure, and the satisfaction of being part of something that has been going on for hundreds of years.  The wine will taste that much sweeter this year.  I look forward to another day and another bucket to fill!

Saverio arrives to whisk me away for a day of grape harvesting

The harvesting begins

My first grapes to cut

Mohammad teaches me which grapes to discard

Our first load of grapes

Getting the hang of it

Our "squadra" takes a break while waiting for more buckets to fill

Bel lavoro!

When my phone rang last week and my friend Nan said she was going to be in Italy and could she stop by, I was elated.  Well, first I was startled because my phone hardly ever rings, but then I was elated!  Nan’s visit coincided with my fifth month anniversary here and I was excited to see one of my New York friends and have the opportunity to show her my town.

I met Nan at the dog park a few years ago and we’d bonded over a mutual love of Italy.  She’d lived here for over twenty years before moving back to New York.  She had a wealth of information on living in Italy and I spent more than a few hours in the park torturing her with my questions.  She had even been willing to speak Italian with me.  And if you’d heard my Italian back then, you’d know how laborious that was.  Definitely a good friend.  When I came to Italy a couple of years ago for a scouting mission, Nan offered me and my friend Bob the use of her apartment in Rome.

Nan usually comes to Italy for a few weeks each fall and on this trip she brought her friend Susan, also an alum of the Upper West Side, but now living in North Carolina.  The two of them together were a lot of fun.  They’d spent the week at Nan’s house in Barbarona before settling in at my friend Laura’s agriturismo for a couple of nights.  Aside from the fact that neither of them has any sense of direction and proceeded to get lost more than a few times, we finally connected on Friday evening.  I took them on a tour of the town, showing them all of my favorite spots and introducing them to my new Italian friends.  They met Bonnie’s kids too because they were coming out of their apartment, spotted me and began shouting my name.  I have reached minor celebrity status with the kids, which is fun!

Nan and Susan treated me to dinner and we shared a lovely bottle of wine and caught up on our lives.  I left them to their sightseeing around the Tuscan countryside yesterday, but saw them again this morning to say goodbye.  Cinder was also thrilled to spend a little time with Nan–she gave her a huge welcome on Friday and spent the whole time at Angela’s bar this morning with her head on Nan’s lap.

They wished me good luck with the grape picking which I am attempting tomorrow and I promised to tell them all about it…if I survive.  I was sad to see them drive away, and more than a little concerned that they would get lost on the way back to Nan’s house.  The good thing is I know I will see them again, probably next year.

Nan and Susan in the Piazza Grande

Kisses from Cinder

Susan and Nan pause in front of my favorite shop where they sell homemade copper pots

Nan supports a local muscian playing his flute

Nan and Susan at Angela's bar