Bringing in the Sheaves: July 9, 2017

Bringing in the Sheaves:  July 9, 2017

Hopefully, today is the hottest day of the next week. Thanks to the tiny bit of rain we had last week that made it impossible to harvest, the grain harvesting festival happened again today. 

Me and the major waiting for the fun to start.

The Castel di Ieri Squad.

The squad from Castel di Ieri won this year, but next year it will be Castelvecchio I am sure. 

Maybe four or five squads participated. Each squad has three people although one guy started out with just himself. One person harvests using a scythe, one gathers and one makes the sheafs. The man with the scythe wears bamboo stalks over the fingers on his other hand so they don’t get cut off and he carries a wet stone in a cow horn holder on his belt. It was so hot just standing there that I was amazed no one collapsed from heat stroke. But they are an intrepid lot.

CVS Squad

The squad that came in last included the guy who was on his own harvesting for quite a while. I don’t know if people just volunteered to help him or what. Although they had no chance of winning they continued until their row was finished. It is not just speed that counts. It is also how well the field is harvested. And the sheaves have to be bundled and neatly stacked. 

After the harvest and the judging there is the festa. People with pocket knives came around offering people piece of fresh fennel. All the vegetable were harvested this morning. Besides water and wine there were baked beans, a cold dish made with faro, tomatoes and carrots, salad, bread made from Solina wheat, Solina wheat pasta, sheep cheese and proscutto. We were under the trees and there was a little breeze. 

Salad makers

Proscutto cutter

Enjoyers!

The guys in charge of pasta were obviously experts. They added salt to the water, removed some of the water. Added more salt and then olive oil. When the pasta was cooked and they added the sauce there was no straining of water involved. The measurements were perfect. All this was accomplished on a hot plate fired by a bombola or gas canister.



I can now have a three sentence conversation in Italian. One man asked me where we were from, if we had had relatives from here and if not why had we bought a house here? I told him it was our good luck and he really  appreciated that! Today I felt like such a lucky person. It was all so much fun and people were so nice and the food so good, the views so spectacular and the event was seeped in tradition and the history of the region. I asked a friend of mine if she had done this as a child and she said that she had. It is recent history and it is important to keep the memories alive even if for only a day a year.