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[fwl22]

A Storm and a Flood, pt. 3

Final part from 8 November, 2023

The rain poured down for another 4 hours without a break. The power remained off. Eventually the frantoio closed up and the clients drove back to their homes. My wife texted around 8:15 that her train was coming to Bologna. Around 8:25 she was sitting in the station at Bologna with the train being held up and the first news of flooding and landslides began to come in. Trenitalia announced the train would be at least 40 minutes late to Prato. I started to prepare something for my own dinner. In the kitchen, in the candlelight, I saw outside as the storm, unbelievably, intensified, as thunder and lightning announced that more rain was falling. At 9:00, Francesca was told that the line from Bologna to Prato was closed, and the passengers were put on trains to Florence. She would eventually arrive to Prato from Florence around 11:00. In the interim, the wall in the lower corner of the forested area past the Limonaia collapsed due to the intense rain and the fact that all the drainage coming off the slope above the wooded area ran directly down to that point. With no drainage holes the water pushed and the wall gave away in a six or eight foot section that fell down near the big pine trees about three meters below. At this point everyone’s phones and devices were running out of battery, and word of the flooding in and around Prato was circulating with videos and texts. Francesca arrived in Prato and began to walk, but the rain was still falling and the streets were flooded. I drove down from the Villa to the Castellina area below the Villa al Palco to meet her and bring her home. The Via di Canneto was inundated and had extra debris strewn about where the water had been draining down the hill, but there were no losses or collapsed areas. The condition was nothing I had not seen before, but the fact that the rain continued to fall was exceptional. We kept noting to ourselves that we were lucky to be living well up on the high side of the river.

Friday morning gave us a chance to observe the situation. There was still no power, but the rain had stopped. Under grey skies, large areas of Prato and Campi Bisenzio were flooded and relief crews were already working to remove debris. There were reports of 3 deaths. Videos showed scenes that we have become used to seeing in the aftermath of floods with cars floating down roadways being pushed by enormous quantities of muddy water. Only this time the roads and neighborhoods were familiar places. Figline and Villa Fiorita were hit by water overflowing from poorly maintained and ill sized channels and sewers. Monica’s bunny and the other rabbits I had seen at the kennel yesterday were drowned when the area was flooded. Addio Bambi.

At Canneto, the water had pushed large amounts of debris down the roads and trails and had gouged large crevices and gaps in the ground. We set to work to dig out the mud and clear the drains and drainage channels with shovels and backhoe. It was eye opening to see the amount of large stones, fist sized and larger that had rolled down or had been dislodged. In the afternoon I set out to gather branches and sticks that had fallen from the trees in the piazzale. The work continued on Saturday, and Francesca helped to make the breakfast for guests on Saturday and Sunday while the power remained off. Our gas range top was a lifesaver, allowing us continue to cook despite having no electricity. In another bit of good luck/planning, the nieces had purchased a relatively small generator to back up their business, and it was sufficient to run a roomful of freezers so that no one lost all their food. It also allowed us to set up a charging station for everyone to keep their phones and devices working.

Finally on the Monday after the frantoio rented a large generator in order to put things back to work. First they had to clean all of the rotting olives out of the machinery and then get the facility back in action. The generator was big enough to power the whole house, so we have light and power again. It is nice to have some hot water, but we will have to wait to turn the heating on. My other sister in law's parents home is built on top of the garage, and the garage was flooded. The Civil Protection services came to pump the water out, but those of you with experience with floods know that the damage was done.

Looking out from the loggia, the fields of olive trees by the river are flooded and Cosimo Rucellai's stone walls are protecting some of those trees again. The Bisenzio river is still flowing near flood level. Many low-lying pockets of suburbs between Prato and Pistoia have remained without power and water for days. What changes the experience of this event will bring are impossible to know. While the Civil Protection and police have responded admirably, the most reliable aid usually came from neighbors helping neighbors. The clearing of debris will go on for a long time. The news reports you may have seen or heard were not exaggerated in this case. We were very fortunate to come away relatively unscathed. Perhaps the next source of amusement will be to see how many years it takes for the collapsed wall to be repaired. 

[fwl22]

A Storm and a Flood, pt. 2

Continued, 8 November, 2023

So, given that the power was down, I decided to take advantage of the moment and run to the garden to get the salad to surprise my wife. I put on my hiking boots and realized immediately that I should have gotten my Wellingtons because outside in the piazzale things were already flooding. The walkway above the swimming pool had a large puddle and the water was running off down to the gravel, and the pool deck was already filling on the wall side, and with no drain it was going to build and then go under the door into the in-law's garden. The drain on the upper side of the piazza where the older brother in law normally parks was blocked with debris and the water was, as happens often enough, running like a river down the whole of the piazzale under the tress to the small wall at the lower end. I waded through the puddles with my plastic bag and knife for collecting the goods, grateful that it wasn’t raining to hard, in addition to all the water on the ground. Through the gate and down the road by the parking area, the water was draining well and the channel next to the Appassitoio was flowing strong with water.

Turning left again at the end of the Appassitoio's lower corner, I was confronted by the water that was draining off of the piazzale under the trees and pouring like waterfalls from the drainage openings and splattering on the road below the house. The streetlights were already on in the falling light, and looking up I could see the rain drops falling and catching the light. It was just a bit more than a drizzle, but the sky remained dark, and the storm clouds were swirling in the wind.

The road was flooded, but was draining quickly enough, and cars were parked as usual during the olive oil season by the clients of the frantoio. A group of men were milling around the doors waiting for the power to come back on so that the work could go on. In the meantime the olives sitting in the intake bin and the already ground up olives in the mixing and separating chambers were going nowhere. I went down the stairs to the garden, and in the still fading light I cut a couple of heads of lettuce from the mud, put them in my bag and retreated back the way I came. The ground was wet and spongey, but I managed to get back to the road without taking too much earth with me. As I walked back to the house, the rain began to fall again.

Back in the kitchen, as I began to wash the salad, the skies opened up and it started to pour again. There was only a bit of wind it seemed, as the weight of the rain seemed to drive down with not a lot of water hitting the windows. Given that the lights had been off before, I lit a few more candles. I love the glow of the candlelight, and I had two candles in cups in the bathroom as well as the four in the kitchen. Working by candlelight gives me a nice feeling, and even though I was sure I couldn’t properly see if I was getting all the dirt off the lettuce, I performed the ritual according to Giovanna’s rule of three thorough rinses and then a double spin in the salad spinner.

By this point it was night outside, and as I sat to work at the computer I noticed how I could hear the rain, falling hard on the ground. And as is my particular habit, I concentrated on what I was writing and reading and didn’t think much more about it, letting the sound of rain act as a replacement for the hum of the frantoio. Ignoring the storm outside, there was a comfy sense of home and hearth on the inside of the house.

In the big, old house, time passes like this, and one is lulled to a peace that comes from sitting behind the heavy stone walls that have stood for 500 years. An hour later, my wife's oldest brother stopped in the kitchen with a flashlight and saw me by candlelight. He invited me to come up to his house and gave me an extra headlamp to use. He mentioned that he couldn’t remember having seen it rain this hard for this long in his entire life (He’d be 68 in a couple of weeks). In fact, outside it continued to pour with a ceaseless abandon. Downstairs I put some towels and rags against the metal door to front garden where, at this point, around 7:30 - 8:00 pm, water was coming around the door, top and bottom, and trying to run down the stairs into the back hallway. At the other end of the connecting corridor between the former tower and the 15th century house, on the angle of the L, where there is a small atrium skylight with a window on the landing of the stairs going up, the water was beginning to run down the wall around the window, and more extreme, the water was soaking through the wall and sweating out through the plaster and whitewash. I put more towels on the ground there to keep the puddles from getting too big.

I was calm about all of this. I had seen the rain push through cracks around windows and doors many times at Canneto, and especially during the intense summer thunderstorms that would thrash the southern facade of the building. And I had seen the water running down the corridor behind the work rooms on the ground floor of the 14th century house, moving gently down the mud floor. It was really coming down, but I just had to try to keep things dry on the inside.

Meanwhile, there were paying guests in the house. My sister in law had set out lit candles in the entry hall, the living room, and in the hall and stairways leading up to the guest rooms. We probably weren't going to get the power back tonight. Thank goodness it wasn’t actually cold outside.

My first visit to the Villa Rucellai di Canneto in April of 1997 was all the things that most people experience on their first visit. Coming from spring in southern California, however, I was greeted by winter in Tuscany. There was fresh snow on the ground and the skies were grey. My fiancé and I stayed in the tower room of the 14th century house which was still, nominally, her apartment. The house seemed empty and cold, but the spaces were so unfamiliar and old that the inexperienced couldn’t help but find the atmosphere to be “magical”. Over the years I found that the overall dark and the irregularity of the electrical power in the old building was such that my mother-in-law had flashlights and candles ready in strategic places all around. During this storm I was reminded of Giovanna’s presence, and the omniscient sense that the building itself would continue to be there long after we were all gone.

[fwl22]

A Storm and a Flood, pt. 1

8 November, 2023

I was writing to our friend in Los Angeles last Thursday afternoon, responding to a message she had sent inquiring about the state of affairs in Tuscany and Italy, in general, given reports of bad weather and flooding. Some of you may recall that this past summer the Emilia Romagna region was hit with unseasonable late spring and summer rain that flooded vast areas of the flat, low lying areas and washed out roads and homes in the more mountainous areas. Francesca had to work around the problems this created for some train lines going southeast from Bologna to the Adriatic coast where she had to work.

In the last few weeks there has been a number of storms that have brought rain on the northern part of Tuscany where Prato sits nestled up against the Calvana hills (calva means bald in Italian, so it signifies that these hills have no trees on top) and close to the Apennine range that runs northwest to southeast across the country. Autumn rain is pretty usual, and as the olive picking season begins in mid to late October, the concern is always for getting the fruit picked before a big storm, or waiting after a storm to allow things to dry. This year we had a couple of short intense storms that brought rain on us, and it so happened that twice during these downpours the power went out for a bit. The first time it took the electric company several hours to restore the service. They had to drive out to the village to open up the old switch box to set things right.

Through my kids I was aware that a large storm was on the way this last weekend, but here in Prato there was little warning or announcement that anything unusual was expected. So we all went about our business as usual. We were lucky that our friend and contractor had sealed the skylight window above the stairs in the Paolo and Giovanna’s house so that the rain wouldn’t drip down inside anymore, and I had cleared the rain gutters on the upper corner where I could reach to make sure there would be as little overflow as possible. Our friend Monica, who I met in Los Angeles almost 35 years ago and now lives in the Val d’Elsa, came to Prato on Thursday morning to drop off her pet bunny rabbit at the kennel in Prato where she always does when she is going off on a trip. I picked her up at the train station and we ran out to the Villa Fiorita area near Figline on the other side of the Bisenzio from Villa Rucellai, dropped off Bambi the bunny, and then we had lunch in the big kitchen.

It was a gray day, and it was drizzling in the morning, but it was not particularly cold. As we finished our coffee after lunch Monica suggested we go for a walk, but we found that the rain was getting stronger, and while it wasn’t enough to keep us from a quick turn among the olive trees, the wet weather from the previous week had made the ground a bit muddy, so we didn’t go. I took Monica back to the train station and she caught her ride back to Firenze Rifredi where she would change for a train for Empoli and home to Castelfiorentino. It was already a sign of things to come (although not totally clear because trains around here can often run late due to work along the rails) that at 2:30, Monica caught the train that had been expected at 2:00. The train she expected to catch at 2:45 was going to be 50 minutes late. My wife was expected to arrive at 9:00 that evening coming from Lugano by way of Milan, so I sent her a message to let her know that many of the trains were delayed and to be ready for a long journey. As I drove back to Canneto, I went to the market to get milk and bread for the weekend, and the rain began to fall more steadily. Since the clocks had fallen back only recently, I was still getting to how dark it got seemingly so early in the day. The day before was the feast of All Saints, and I had been outside at the cemetery of Canneto with my wife’s cousin and my brother in law. By 5:30 things were pretty dark outside and the street lights had been on for 20 minutes or so. Only after the sun went down did we begin to feel a faint bit of cold, and it was more due to the wetness of everything than the air temperature. So I was very happy to be inside the house as the rain began to fall more steadily. My wife sent me a text to let me know that she would really love to have a salad fresh from the garden when she arrived, but I told her that it was raining and I was reluctant to go out. In fact, at that moment it was suddenly really coming down, a downpour similar to what we had had a week before, and looking out the window it appeared like a fog. Then the power went out.

It is important to note that the frantoio (the olive oil mill) was hard at work making olive oil. As different people’s loads of olive paste enter the large separator centrifuge, the machine is paused and when it begins to spin again, you can feel the vibration through the building and the lights in the big kitchen will make a reflexive dimming as an electric load goes toward the work. When the frantoio is working there is a constant hum from the machinery that you can feel and hear, and when the power goes off, there is sudden silence. The white noise drops out and all the other sound comes up.

After I lit a few candles, I noticed in the twilight outside that the rain had slowed and almost stopped. The downpour was slowing, but the accumulated water was flowing across the piazzale like a river flowing. The urge came decisively that it was the only moment to go to the garden to get some salad for my wife. The lull in the storm was only going to last so long.

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Wisteria blooming at the end of April, 2010. From the piazzale, looking at the 14th century Casa Signorile (country house) with the door to the cantina. (Photo copyright Frank W. Long)

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From the piazzale, looking south, Villa Rucellai di Canneto with geese in the fountain basin on a summer day in 2005. On the left the chapel and terrace added to the 14th century country house with tower, the ramped terrace leading to the stairs and entrance to the ingresso and through to the front garden. Behind the large Linden tree is the part of the house enlarged from the original medieval tower. (photo copyright Frank W. Long)

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16th Century facade of the Villa Rucellai di Canneto with the front garden by the light of a summer sunset in 2005, looking north from the roof of the Limonaia. To the lower left the fattoria building can be seen behind the arch of the Loggia. At the upper right the tower (ex columbarium) of the 14th century country house. (Photo copyright Frank W. Long)

[fwl22]

Spring Letter, 2005

On the wall of the 14th century house, above the pool, the wisteria (wisteria floribunda) is blossoming.  There are actually three ancient plants nesting in the terrace between the stone pavers, planted, perhaps in the early 1930s after completion of the works to renew the house by Giangiulio (pronounced jahn julio) and Teresa. Inevitably the flowering of these wisteria is a week or so behind their city neighbors, living as they do on a west facing wall with three stories of house above it and closed in on the south by the extension of the old tower and the fattoria.  It sees the sun only for a few hours each day, and this spring the sun has been playing hide and seek with us.

Just as the summer tailed luxuriously into autumn and the autumn stayed with us to Christmas, the winter is not wanting to leave us with the spring. The wind remains cold and strong at times, and the rain falls in big drops instead of soft drizzle. When the sun pops out we still can’t feel the warmth that we crave.

But the trees and flowers and the birds are leaving no doubt that they think it is spring. it is not freezing anymore, and thus it is time to get to work.  The pear, plum, cherry and apricot trees are going wild with snowy white and pink blossoms and the wild flowers cover the ground in their annual display of color.  The tulips have come up and the wisteria are opening now.  In a few weeks the iris will erupt in all their purple and periwinkle.

With the spring comes the atmosphere of paradise that so often comes out in comments from the guests of the B&B.  The roses beginning to leaf, soon to flower, the lemons, hauled back out of hibernation from the limonaia, full of fruit and blossoms, the olives newly trimmed and the fruit trees covered in tiny white flowers, filling the air with perfume.  It reminds me of the feeling I had while working in Florence, every day arriving on the train with hundreds of tourists coming to the city for an enjoyable day while I had to go be shut up in a small office and help others plan their vacations. One has to literally stop and take it in or else it is lost to the list of tasks.

We have been at work in the garden, trimming trees and taking out invaders.  The bushes, so long left to their own devices, have been severely and brusquely cut.  The lemon trees were out in the garden before Easter and we have been cleaning up a year’s worth (at least a winter’s worth) of dead leaves in the forest glen. We have been cutting and trimming the taller trees to open up the façade of the limonaia to the southern sun so next winter the lemon trees will get a bit more warmth while inside.

On the other side of the building, the courtyard, or piazzale, needs a clean up. A photograph from 1895 shows the courtyard of the villa with no large trees.  Only the cypress and the newly planted Linden (tilia cordata) and Ilex (Quercus ilex), staked and already growing stand near the round fountain basin.  Planted in the 1890s, they are giant trees shading the piazzale today.  Laurel was grown in hedges to create a maze, and by the time the trees grew to full size, the maze was well established and filled the courtyard until the 1970s.  Huge cypress grow very close all over the hillside above and around the house, and one can only imagine that eventually they will fall.  More and more the old trees’ roots are pushing up paving stones and terraces. All of them shed leaves, twigs, and branches in winter storms and spring winds.

A terrible storm a week ago pushed over countless trees in Prato and a few here at Canneto.  Luckily we had finished a large job of trimming prior to the high winds.  Still there is so much debris to collect.  Abramo laments that one can’t find mules anymore to get to the places deep in the forest where the paths don’t go to collect and cut and trim.

Canneto means literally the place where the cane stalks grow.  Like so many place names in Italy, there are many cannetos (and Pratos – prato meaning meadow), and this one along the Bisenzio river is just about out of cane.  My wife’s older brother has had Ivo strengthen and improve the grape vine structures and thus there is less need for the actual, supple wisps of cane stalks used traditionally to tie the vines to the wires of the structure. There is hope that this practice will help the vines to grow stronger and produce more fruit.

My wife and I have also been hard at work inside the house, painting and working to spruce up a bit.  Like this, the slumber of the house is shaken off.  Each of us have to reassess how we are going to live here, how we want to be, how we can tolerate each other and move forward as a group, a business, and a family.  Without their mother Giovanna, it is not easy.  I think it bears saying that some people are not replaceable.  That would be to admit that ultimately we shall persevere and find new ways of doing things, but it is hard to imagine that it shall ever have the efficiency Giovanna maintained.  It can also be said that having one owner is always better than having four.  It is impossible to find someone who can fill the shoes of the mother and the owner of the house.  It was she who was able, when no one else could make a decision, to tell people exactly what to do and they would do it. 

Italy is in some ways burdened by it history.  While Germany has a history it must overcome, Italy which doesn’t even have a strong sense of being a nation, has to overcome the permeating sense that so many great things have dotted the past that it is almost impossible to accomplish anything of equal value today.  This is a country in the throes of a decisive battle between the modern life as lived in the big cities of the west and the embrace of the “old ways” and the slow life which calls for the kind of respect of environment and pace and quality of life that is too often put off and brushed aside by the rush to achieve. That is, in the rush to be as much of a consumer society as the neighbors.

Living in an old house, one is very much aware of the ramifications of each choice in each process.  Following the choice to live in this building comes the awareness that there is no simple project.  Board and bat, wallboard and stucco, peg and groove are all phrases for easy work.  While we were in Los Angeles in September (2004), back here in Canneto, the muratore (literally mason, but more appropriately contractor) and the electrician tore the kitchen apart to install a stove, a gas range top, three new lights and accompanying switches and plugs.  It is all in stone and brick.  Then the muratore was back in the winter when the old lead pipe burst in the wall and he had to break a hole in the wall and through the floor.  The new pipe went in and the old pipe remains right next to it.  No sense in taking the whole wall apart to remove what has been there for over 100 years. It was a cold room while we had an indoor/outdoor kitchen for three weeks in the dead of winter.

My wife’s worries are much greater of course, and much more difficult to comprehend.  This is due in large part to the connection of her expectation that her brothers and their families would welcome our presence here. Being an optimist she was quite convinced that everyone would be so happy that we would come to Canneto to help run the B&B, to help her father Paolo and take part in family life. The natural conclusion was that the other families would be interested in helping us to be comfortable and happy that we would be taking steps to administrate the future of the house, the division of spaces, the establishment of rules for using the spaces, and generally agreeing to how the house would be left to the next generation.

Not surprisingly, no one was particularly thrilled that we would move back to Canneto from Los Angeles, and in fact it was not too difficult to see how our presence was seen as an annoyance at best, and a threat at worst. How many years will it take for the balance to return to the community?  No one really cares that we are here to help Paolo or help run the B&B – no one really cared about the work Giovanna did.  And certainly no one is interested in giving up any space to help us be more comfortable.  And all of this is taking a long time for Francesca to process.

Fortunately there is too much to do to allow oneself to dwell on that which we can’t really control. We have two small people to raise, and we have Paolo to assist in the absence of his wife of 50 years. Paolo, for his part, has no interest or intention to touch Giovanna’s things that remain exactly as they were when she died in March of 2002. It is one of those great reminders to focus on what you can actually do and leave behind what you can’t change. The building itself is a reminder that I am just a fleeting shadow, and this place which has been here for centuries will still be here long after I am gone.

So just soak of the atmosphere of living in an historical place.  When we talk of updating a bathroom we are not only faced with the logistical challenges of working with the aging plumbing and electrical systems (read: having to either redo everything or modify something very old) and the architectural realities of maneuvering in stone and brick, but also in trying to not allow our ideas to demand larger modifications of the house (ie, doorways, windows, skylights, new walls, etc.).  The idea is to maintain or at most adapt the existing building to meet our basic, minimum needs. 

In preserving the place mostly as it is, and in thinking long and hard before making large changes in the use of spaces (such as changing the carpenter’s wood shop into a bedroom), trying to consider all of the impacts of such works and how the changes would fit into the ultimate use of the house – and thus calling into question what is that ultimate use, i.e. residence and hotel, residence only, condominium, divided houses in a single structure?.  And these are actions that no one is interested in taking.  No one in very enthusiastic in having to get approval for work they want to do from everyone else, and no one is interested in spending hours meeting with the brothers and sister to talk and talk about what needs to be done.

The reality that exists is that doing nothing is the best course.  For the casual guest, the people who come and pay to stay at the house, the magic still exists  For them, especially with the various seasons, there is a sense of timelessness that is quite overwhelming.  For them, the enormous amount of dust and haphazard quality of furnishings and furniture can be overlooked and accepted as part of the funkiness of the place.  And the brothers and my wife, I think, know this intuitively.  For all of their own dissatisfaction they understand that the house exists as its own entity and serves its purpose quite well.

At the same time it is evident to the observer that this place was so much more at a different time and place.  The 100 acres of today were probably at one time 300 or 400 acres of land with olive trees, grazing sheep, grain growing under the trees and ten families owing their livelihoods to the farm work.  It was a quiet valley with the lazy river flowing by and the city of Prato a full 4 km away, just beyond the fields that fell away below the house.  It is quite easy to imagine how a previous generation would have seen this place as a very different kind of paradise.

Change is inevitable and I would imagine that for my wife’s grandfather, Giangiulio, especially, the change came quite rapidly and repeatedly in his lifetime.  And each change brought new complications that had to be dealt with and each generation has had to face the changes and challenges. It is difficult to imagine for a guest here what the place was like before the first World War. Today, from the loggia, the view takes in the railroad line that passes close by under the house and enters a short tunnel that lies under the eastern flank of the village. The scene is dominated by the sound of traffic on the Via Bologna on the far side of the valley, with the fields of the olive orchard below stretching out to the river bed that lies below the road.

In the early 1930s the Italian government completed the railroad up the Bisenzio valley, making good on plans first developed in the 1880s. Known as the Direttissima, this line from Florence, via Prato, to Bologna, was a key part of improving the country’s north south rail connection, finally creating a fast, direct link through the Apennine mountains. It is a notable piece of construction and engineering, featuring an 18 km tunnel under the mountains. Cosimo had made several trips to Rome, beginning most likely with the establishment of a governmental commission to study the proposal in 1908, attempting to persuade the state to use the next valley toward Florence in the Mugello for the railway (where the autostrada and the high speed train line now runs), but the effort was futile.  Giangiulio also worked to stop the construction when he became proprietor of Canneto in the mid 1920s, working with his father, but by the late 1920’s the work was in progress.  

Cosimo and Giangiulio’s opposition to the plan is evident today. The railroad climbs up the valley, passing below the house, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to understand the noise and the smoke that came with a powerful steam driven train of the epoch. What is more difficult to imagine is that the eminent domain of the government split the Rucellai property. All of the fields and a good sized farm with a dairy that were on the other side of the railroad line were a part of the estate. 

In the flat area below the Villa on this side of the river one can see rows of olive trees with stone walls circling the trunks in an area where the level of the field is lower than the adjoining plots.  These walls were built at the direction of Cosimo when the state was building the roadbed for the railway.  The construction crews simply came and took away the soil around these trees and the farmers built the walls as protection to keep the trees intact.  Even though the walls are falling apart today, the plan worked to save the trees. The family legend is that he never went back after the railroad was built, but the truth is that he died suddenly when on a visit to Naples in 1930. Up until his death, he and Edith were in negotiation to purchase land on the hillside on the other side of the Bisenzio river and the Via Bologna, across from Canneto, in order to maintain the land and the vista as it was at the time, but from the words of his daughter, the railroad killed the magic for her father.  When Cosimo died, Edith withdrew from the negotiations and the Canneto estate passed to Giangiulio. 

When Giangiulio died in 1969, his and Teresa’s children divided the property, selling off small pieces and giving family homes to the farming families that had worked the land of the estate for generations.  Following World War II the kinds of “sharecropping” contracts – the standard agreements of mezzadria that dated from the middle ages – that divided responsibilities between land owner and farmer were outlawed.  Existing contracts would continue to be valid until nullified by the parties.   It was thus at Giangiulio’s death that these contracts became void at Canneto and his son Niccolò made agreements with the families for transfer of title on the houses.  Sadly, the economics of the times meant that there would be no new agreements for working the land, and the farm activities faded away, leaving only the less labor intensive work of olives and grapes.

Today many of these old case coloniche have been developed into wonderfully comfortable “villettas” in the countryside.  The city of Prato, following an amazingly smart trend at work in Tuscany in the late 1960s, had designated the area on the Canneto side of the valley a no build zone, and a wildlife refuge “no hunting” zone, and only houses that were already on the land can be lived in.  No new buildings or remodeling is allowed without great bureaucratic work involved.

These no build laws were thought to be a passing fancy in the early 1970s.  There were those who purchased the large tract of land along the river in the flat area below the Villa on the other side of the railway line, and they seemed sure that eventually the city would have to allow for building in the area to keep up with housing demands for Prato.  But as time has passed, the city has made more moves to keep the open “green” land and the locals have continued to harvest the olives and the houses remain in the hands of the aging tenants and former farmers. My wife took me to visit the farmhouse of the dairy a few years back just after we were married. We entered into the large kitchen which still centered on the focolare or fireplace that still served as cooking fire as well as the source of heat for the room. The smell of wood smoke from generations imbued every surface. I was amazed at the gracious welcome we received as unannounced visitors, and the warm conversation over coffee and cake we enjoyed. My wife went to elementary school with the family’s son, and he has moved to the city. How much longer will this old place remain a home?

Thankfully there are plenty of dead leaves to rake up and pieces of wood to gather for kindling. While the days grow longer, it is still too chilly to sit outside to watch the sunset. The spring rains are cold for now, but there is comfort knowing that not only is the fireplace warm, but also that the wisteria will bloom, followed by the iris, and the olives will also bloom, and the fruit will grow, and life will go on.

[fwl22]

Autumn Letter, 2004

Outside the rain falls in sheets, waving in the wind like sails over a blustery ocean, like mist moving over a mountain pass.  It is cold just to look at the steel gray sky and the dark shadows in the forest.  The season seeps into the house through the cracks and spaces around the windows and doors.  We go on fire watch to keep the embers glowing in the salone upstairs.  It’s for the guests we say, but since there are no guests these dark autumn days it is clear that we just want to keep the house warm.

The weather moved through the year like a giant descending stairs.  Summer lingered into October before we dropped off into a mild fall and now we plunge unceremoniously into winter.  Three weeks ago we were in shirt sleeves in the garden and today the winter coats are out and buttoned up against the unrelenting rain. 

The olive oil production is in full swing.  The frantoio has been in motion day and night as the freshly picked olives have to go into the mill as soon as possible.  The 24 hour work will continue for almost another 3 weeks.  There is a good chance that after a break for Christmas the work will continue into the new year.  The olives this year are small but the oil production is normal by weight, and the olives are plentiful, so output is high.  My brother in law Giovanni has had to purchase a number of extra containers to hold the oil.

The grapes this year were beautiful, and the wine also has a lovely color.  We harvested the first Sunday in October and people are drinking the vino novello this week.  The young wine is a traditional thing here, a process probably related somehow to the Beaujolais noveau.  But here at Canneto there is no forced fermentation, just a regular fermentation in a warmer climate, thus the process goes a bit faster than in more northern climes.  And the wine is not a true novello but rather just “new”.  While most wine has an alcohol level of 12.5% to 14% by volume, at Canneto the level is usually around 11% or 12% maximum.  This results, as one guest so aptly put it, in the “reedy” taste – a distinctive thinness and light aroma.  

Last year, when the weather was so hot and dry, the grape harvest was very small, but those grapes were full of natural sugars, and the concentration of the juice produced the best wine ever made at Canneto, with an alcohol level of 13% and slightly higher.  In the end there was probably less than 700 liters of 2003 vintage wine produced, while in 2004 the amount is more than 2000 liters.

There is a wonderful verb in Italian intendere, which in its intransitive form means to be knowledgeable or to be an expert.  So most everyone begins their comments on wine or olive oil here with Non mi intendo…. or I’m not an expert….  Speaking to the straniero (foreigner) though, brings out a lot of the experience and local knowledge of the men and women who grew up on and have worked the land.

So it was on a Sunday a week or so ago that our babysitter Bruna had me pick some mushrooms that were growing under the olive trees.  There were only 3 or 4, but she prepared them for my dinner.  “It would be shame to leave them,” she said, and Paolo and I shared the freshness and the taste of the musty earth (sautéed in delicious olive oil, of course).

The truth is that Canneto has always been a place known for making olive oil while the wine has historically been pretty awful.  Part of this has to do with the geography – Canneto sits on the northeastern slope of the Val Bisenzio and thus get very little morning sun.  The afternoon sun, then, seems more filtered and less direct than the morning light.  Nothing is irrigated here.  If it is a wet year then the vines are over watered, if it is dry they suffer.  (Last year (2003) was so dry that many of the large vineyards and farms had to water their crops to save the plants and the harvest.)

By asking, one discovers that Canneto became the property of Paolo Rucellai, the second son of the first Rucellai owner, Giovanni.  Giovanni’s mother brought the property to the family as part of her wedding dowry in 1759.  Paolo was a gentleman farmer and a bachelor uncle.  Canneto was then a working farm with at least three tenant families.  When Paolo was not hanging out at the seaside, at the palazzo in Florence, he would be with his fattore or foreman dealing with the business of running the large estate.  The villa here, as was the villa in Campi Bisenzio at the time, was not a place to live for long periods of time, and certainly not hospitable in the winter.  It was a summer residence or even a spring and autumn residence, and a kind of hunting lodge.  

When he reached the age when he no longer wanted to take care of the place Paolo announced to the family that he would sell the place.  The property was his retirement fund.  Paolo’s younger brother Cosimo and his wife, Editta, had come to love Canneto, and they arranged to buy the estate with annual installments beginning in 1906.  Paolo, seen in photographs from the time appears as either the slightly unrefined farmer uncle, or a kind of druid old man, in bathrobe with a long beard while at the beach at Forte dei Marmi.

Cosimo and Editta, or Edith as she was christened in Newport, Rhode Island in 1861, began to spend time here in the first decade of the 20th century.  After assuming ownership Edith began to transform the Villa into a more hospitable residence and its gardens into a more modern style, probably something between Edwardian and Tuscan.  

One has to remember that this was a very progressive period, although we don’t commonly think of it as such.  Edith Bronson was the daughter of very wealthy American parents who had spent all of her youth traveling between the US and Europe, settling with her mother in Venice where she really grew up.  Her father died in a sanitarium in France from tuberculosis and other malaties and is recalled as a loving, but somewhat sickly figure that remained at the edges of his wife and daughter’s life.  His family was an important one from New York and his father was a congressman, a US senator, and finally the postmaster general of the state for 25 years.  A Civil War officer, he kept his life and his title of Colonel.  Edith’s mother was Katherine DeKay Bronson, also from an old New York family with close ties back to the old country in Holland.  The Bronson’s had a house at Castle Hill in Newport, Rhode Island and had sold it long before the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers had built their mansions.  A painting of that house in Newport is on the wall in the dining room at Canneto as part of the wall paintings commissioned by Edith.  Katherine De Kay was a Victorian woman, definitely a powerful and well educated woman, and she is perhaps best remembered for having been one of Robert Browning’s closest acquaintances in the years after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  She rented a palazzo in Venice where she was part of the expatriate artist social scene of the city, hosting parties and guests with famous names – writers, composers, painters, poets, singers, and the generally famous people who would make the Grand Tour.  As the daughter of an outgoing, social woman, Edith was considered quiet and reserved.

Cosimo Rucellai for his part was the son of Giovanni, the eldest son of the original Rucellai owner of Canneto.  Cosimo was the primary assistant to the admiral in command of the Venetian naval base and met Edith through the intermingling of the high society of Venice with the high society of the American and English society in Venice.  Edith was fluent not only in Italian, French, German and a little Dutch, but she also spoke and wrote in the Venetian dialect which she had learned along with her mother.  The elders on either side of the couple were skeptical of the match, and letters of Henry James to Katherine De Kay reveal the period as the couple convinced everyone that they were in love.  

After the marriage, Cosimo was awarded command of a ship in the Adriatic.  He was first stationed in Taranto in Puglia, and then at Ancona.  Edith stayed, first in Venice and then in Ancona with their daughter, Nannina, born in 1896, and first son Bencivenni, born in 1897. Edith suffered through the mumps in Ancona, and when later she became pregnant with second son Bernardo, they decided to go back to Florence and be together.  Cosimo resigned his commission and turned his attentions to the work of a gentleman farmer. 

Ultimately the family moved into the villa in Campi Bisenzio, at that point a mostly abandoned house on a large farm that Cosimo’s father referred to as “frog infested”.  Cosimo and Edith threw themselves into making the place modern, livable and helping the neighboring contadini, or tenant farmers to improve their lives.  They built a school and a medical clinic and they established a number of workshops for training people in the local arts and crafts, such as basket weaving, tool making and embroidery work.  It is no wonder that the family was instrumental 3 generations later in creating a museum to honor the straw weaving which became so famous – making the original “panama” hat and countless other items in a tight weave – in the neighboring town of Signa.  The Villa was modernized and the family, now with four kids as of 1903, spent most of the year in Campi, just a 40 minute to an hour carriage ride to the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence.

Cosimo studied modern farming methods and worked hard to introduce new ideas to the very traditional contadini at Campi.  With the acquisition of Canneto, he immediately brought his fattore from Campi Bisenzio to help organize the work of the land at Canneto.  This man was an expert in trees and especially fruit trees, and he is responsible for much of the planting of fruit trees on the property.  This man and his son continued to work as fattore for Cosimo’s youngest son (born in 1903) Giangiulio at Canneto and retired here, where his granddaughter still lives, next to the Villa in the village of Canneto.  It is easy to see the signature of their work by comparing the trees at the Villa in Campi Bisenzio to those at Canneto.  The same trees surround both houses.  This is also the reason there are so many pear, cherry, fig, apricot, plum and persimmon trees.

Antonio Mori, the original foreman’s son was not interested in wine or grapes, he was paid to take care of olive trees, and so the small vineyard at Canneto received the minimum care, and the local farmers made the wine in the traditional methods.  My father in law Paolo tells how when he began to come to Canneto in the late 1940s it was well known that one should carry his own wine because the vino locale was undrinkable.

In the late 1970’s Paolo Piqué’s sons Giovanni and Lorenzo began to replant the vineyard, which represents less than an acre of land.  The ancient and sick vines were replaced with two local varietals that tend to do well in the regional climate – Sangiovese, the red or nero grape, and Trebbiano, the white grape.  There is also a small percentage of a vine called Uva fragola, or strawberry grape, a vine that produces both red and white grapes together that have a distinct aroma of strawberry.  The new plantings gained steam after 1985 when a terrible and long freeze destroyed a huge number of vines and olive trees.  Now these 15 to 20 year old vines are beginning to show a great improvement in the quality of the wine produced.

As part of the agricultural association of Prato the farm has access to expert advice and the enologist and vinicultural counselor (my term) upon tasting the 2003 wine (a man who knows the vineyard, this is) recommended to my brothers in law to put the wine away and not drink it.  “This way,” he continued, “if in the future anyone ever wants to know if you can produce good wine here, you can open a bottle of this.”  And, in fact, we put away all of this small production for the family.

Luckily the production for 2004 is normal and the grapes were lovely and healthy.  While we do not thin the fruit in the summer to give room for larger, more robust grapes, Giovanni has been improving the vines and taking better control of the pests (wild boar, deer, hare and pheasants more than bugs) and the quality of the harvest is definitely improving along with the maturity of the plants.  The 2004 wine has aspects that would seem to bode well for improvement over time, a statement in and of itself that seems amazing to make about wine from Canneto.

The fact is that the really awful but large harvest of 2002 (a wet, wet year with lots of ugly grapes) has produced a wine that after 14 months or so is a very mellow and delightful table wine, just perfect for our purposes of drinking everyday with lunch.  I don’t pretend to know anymore than the fact that this was an intolerable wine throughout all of 2003 and most of 2004, but now I actually like it.  Or maybe it has killed my taste buds…  The other fact to note is that Cannetani wine is typically low in alcohol, around 11% by volume.  The 2003 comes in around 12% while the 2002 is about 10.5%.  When you drink a bottle of wine made elsewhere, one must be aware of the consequences.

Tuscany has an area the size of Death Valley National Park, and every little area in Tuscany is full of still very fresh local knowledge of the land, the geography and how nature interacts with weather and season.  Many people have told me this year how traditionally, in the past generation, the time for picking the olives did not begin until the first days of December.  Now the picking can begin as early as the first week of October and the oil making can begin shortly after.  Still the idea is to pick the olives when there is a good mix between the dark, mature olives and the green immature olives in order to produce a well balanced oil.

The terrible freeze of 1985 lasted for three weeks with a low temperature of -22°C during one long overnight that killed hundreds of trees.  The olives all over Tuscany suffered dreadfully, and one can still see where the dead trees have come back to life in the form of three or four new trunks growing out of the “dead” stump.  But many trees were completely lost, and at Canneto hundreds of new trees were planted.  Now there are over 1000 trees on the property, but this is still very small for production standards, and certainly far fewer trees than are encompassed by the confines of what used to make up the estate.

Of the huge estate that Cosimo and Edith purchased almost 100 years ago, only 40 hectares remain, or about 100 acres.  By 1909 they had moved the family to the palazzo in Florence as their principal home, maintaining the villas in Campi and Canneto, and in 1915 bought a house in Forte dei Marmi that they had long rented for the summers.  Cosimo occupied himself with the farms and the farm families and Edith continued in a tireless series of progressive works to create organizations to help pregnant women, educate poor and underprivileged children and provide health care and education to contadini in Canneto and Campi Bisenzio.  Their oldest son died of Spanish fever in 1917 while serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army in the Great War.  The property passed to their youngest son, Giovanni Giulio (Giangiulo) (the middle son, Bernardo or Nado, inherited the title of Count and the Villa in Campi).  Nado also served in the Great War and was wounded on the northern front, and most likely forever scarred by the tremendous suffering and cruelty he had witnessed. Giangiulio married Teresa Higginson of Lennox, Massachusetts in 1925.  They eventually moved to Canneto and completed the work begun by Cosimo and Edith of making the house into a home.

Over 1000 olive trees grow on the various terraces of the 4 or so acres that is the orchard or olivetto.  The orchard is divided into sections that are tended by men with whom the family divides the oil produced from the trees in that section.  The oil is measured by weight.  My chemist wife reminds me that oil is lighter than water, therefore 5 liters of oil is less than 5 kilograms.  If a man harvests 40 quintali (20 metric tons, or 20,000 kilos) of olives, and the olives produce oil at a rate of 13% of their weight, the result is 2600 kilos of oil.  In the wet year of 2002, the family’s 50% take of oil was about 4500 kilos, while in 2003, the result was way less than a fourth of that.

The term extra virgin olive oil refers to oil that has less than 0.5% acidity.  Virgin olive oil refers to oil with less than 1% acidity.  Anything else, by the laws in Italy, is referred to as “olive oil”.  In Italy, after olive oil, there is not a large selection of other oils to be found for cooking or dressing foods.  What in the US is labeled as vegetable oil is referred to as “seed oil”.  Sunflower seeds are the main ingredient in seed oil.  In addition, the designation of “first pressing” or “second pressing” seem to be inventions of marketing people as in the frantoio the olives are ground up and then crushed by the big stone wheels (“pressed”) and then a large centrifuge and many filters extract the oil from the “other stuff”.  The other stuff (sansa) is then taken away where if treated with chemicals can produce more oil for industrial purposes.  The two things that damage and spoil the oil are air and heat.  Thus comes the term “cold press” indicating that very little heat is used to improve the amount of oil extracted.  While the press itself is cold, the temperature in the centrifuge is carefully controlled and regulated by law to give certain distinctions and classifications.  In general, in Italy, there is extra virgin olive oil and then there is everything else.  New oil is used for conditioning food, old oil is used for cooking.  Seed oil is used for deep frying.

After the dry year of 2003 the real recovery was in the fruit trees.  The work of the old fattore still goes on in the form of any number of pear, apricot, plum, cherry, fig and lemon trees.  The pears were plentiful this year, and we had to work hard to clean up after the birds.  After we could pick our fill, the birds came and cleared out the rest.  The plums were small buy many this year, and the apricots were delicious after having not produced any last year.  We canned apricot preserves as well as plum and fig.

There was a lot of attention focused on the elections in the US.  The accepted truth here is that the President of the United States is, in effect, president of everyone, or, at least, is the commander-in-chief of the largest and best outfitted military force in the world.  And, as is the case throughout the world, there is a lot of anger and disillusionment about a man and a government that could have so forcefully and precipitously, with bullying, lying, and bravado, led us into a very ugly war in the name of making the world safer, etc.  Many, many times conversations were begun with, “well, after there is a new president….” and I had to correct that Mr. Bush’s re-election would not be based much on foreign policy.  But the vagaries of politics, or the continuing demolition of politics in the United States aside, the strong public opinion remains that this was a referendum on the war.

To the contrary, the vote was a referendum on the United States and its people.  Typically citizens in other lands recognize that our political leaders seldom reflect who we are entirely.  And in a place like Italy, the locals often are able to get a clear impression of what various foreign people are like by being able to meet them and talk with them.  Tourists in Tuscany, while fewer than ever in the past 20 years, are still many, and it is common for the locals to have impressions based on these kinds of interactions.  In general, Americans are known for kindness, generosity and ingenuity.  On a negative side they are often considered to be ignorant of culture and arrogant of customs and insensitive to local ways.  But the point would be that traditionally the Americans have managed to get rid of leaders who are seen to be bad.

This year, however, the worm has turned, and to be American is no longer viewed as a good thing.  The re-election of the President has only confirmed that Europe cannot trust the American people to do what they (Europe) view as the right thing.  While European journalists have long been pointing out to their readers in very popular journals the corrupt nature of the Bush administration, the American press spends far more time on the dangers of the low-carb diet.  While Europeans seem to be able to vote their popular opinions into action, the Americans do not (Mr. Berlusconi notwithstanding).

Therefore it is not too surprising to see institutions and organizations in Europe that have had the name “American” in their title changing their names or removing the offending word.  The American International School of Florence is now called the International School.  The American Language Institute becomes the Foreign Language Institute.

Of course, more worrisome is the decline of the US dollar.  While this remains something that doesn’t affect many in the US itself, it is a source of great concern for the rest of the world.  You have seen gas prices rise.  But does anyone notice how no one is investing in the US?  It is certainly obvious that the President is not worried about this trend, but the negative effects for many sectors of the US economy, not to mention the economies of South America, Europe and parts of Asia are scary.  

But as somebody said the other day, it always seems that the US government can make the markets move like a puppeteer with his puppets, and when they want the dollar to be stronger, when it no longer serves them that it is weak, they will make it rise.  What can one believe?

In the end we will survive this.  Even if the world markets collapse and depression ensues, we will survive.  It won’t be as much fun, and we’ll finally have to give up those sport utility vehicles (perhaps cars altogether), but we’ll make it.  After all we survived eight years of Ronald Reagan and company followed by 4 years of Bush the father.  The “scandals” of Mr. Clinton didn’t ruin us.  Somewhere in history there was a President Taft and a President Harding.  There was a President Grant, too.

Tommaso only complains that he wants to go outside and ride his bike.  No matter that it might be dark and raining and freezing cold.  No matter that the frantoio is busy and the trucks and cars drive the narrow road churning up the gravel and mud.  The steam collects on the window in front of the big pot of water boiling for the pasta.  Perhaps some soup tonight instead for me.  Then a bath for the kids and we can fall asleep to the sound of men’s voices and olives falling by the bushel into the stainless steel scale, a sound like a hard rain on a tin roof, and wake up to the rumble of the stone wheels grinding the pulp and pits into an oily paste.

Canneto, November, 2004