Umbria with Mike and Gail, November 2 - 10, 2012

Mike & Gail's home in Umbria

Our overnight ferry ride was very relaxing. The ship was virtually empty of passengers and I believe Jeff and I were the only Americans on board. We arrived in Ancona, Italy about 8:00 PM and were so happy to see Mike and Gail waiting for us. We had about a 2 hour ride to their farmhouse which is situated  on top of a hill overlooking the Tiber River. The name of their street is “Via Casa Sparse”, The Street of Few Houses.  Gail describes the place as 18th century HUD housing.  I think not! It is one of the most beautiful homes I have ever been in. Mike told us it was hard to explain Italy, a beautiful country that has many Italy’s inside of it. He is so right. This is our Italian experience in Umbria and at the Via Casa Sparse.

View from our room the first morning

Sometimes the clouds were above us, sometimes below

When we woke up early Saturday morning, we were greeted with an amazing view (from our bedroom window) of the mountains with the valley in a soft feathery mist.  We knew we were in for a very special week!!! After Mike’s delicious cappuccino (double espresso for Jeff), we went to explore their beautiful hilltop home. The farmhouse started life as a guard tower to protect a fort at the top of the hill (hence the amazing views from every window of the house!). In subsequent years, additions were built and it was designed for the families to live upstairs and the animals downstairs.

Mike and Gail have a wide variety of fruit trees, flowers, and herbs growing around their home. They also have 40 olive trees, some over 100 years old. Surrounding their property are many commercial olive groves and the homes and farms of their Italian friends and neighbors, of who we were fortunate to meet.

Morning market in Umbertide

 We went into Umbertide to shop in the local outdoor markets. There were numerous stalls of fresh meats and cheeses, gorgeous produce, breads and pastries. There were areas were you could buy any number of different live foul, rabbits and other small animals to take home and butcher. 

Mike selecting our morning pastries

 

We stopped at a local vineyard to see the old wine press and the giant oak barrels of wine.

Mornings were spent exploring the many small scenic villages on hilltops and along the Tiber River and afternoons were spent harvesting olives.  We also stopped at one of Mike and Gail’s favorite spots, “Les Trois Freres” (where everybody knows your name) a restaurant/bar/coffee shop and the place to hear all the latest news and gossip and conveniently just down the hill from their farmhouse.  The place is full of local characters so Mike and Gail fit perfectly and Mike’s exploits have become legend there. One gentleman in particular that we met was Romeo, a real ladies man with a “world-champion comb-over” as Gail describes.  He only had eyes for Gail and she tells me is quite a good dancer.

Jeff & Gail enjoying what Perugia is known for, some great chocolate

One very rainy day we spent in Perugia, the chocolate capital of Italy.

Singing in the rain

Perugia roof tops

Overlooking Perugia

Everyone smiles while picking olives

2 migrant workers off the boat from Greece

It is hard to pick one highlight of the week besides hanging out with Mike and Gail and special evening’s fireside with a nice glass of wine, so I will pick four!!! 

When we had planned our trip, we took note of the olive harvest season, “la raccolta delle olive” to time our visit to Umbria so we could help pick olives. Even though it had been a very dry year, there were olives to pick and Mike and Gail’s orchard produced 7 large crates each weighing between 20-25 kilos (50-60 lbs.). We donned our olive picking garb (thanks to Gail) and headed out the back door looking very much like migrant farmers. We are now officially Gofreddo and Betta and we were joined by the neighbors, the Corsici family, Pino, Santi, Mirella and Vincenza (all in their 60’s and 70’s).  First we would drape the ground with a fine mesh net to collect the olives that we would strip off the branches and let fall. Jeff, being one of the younger folks, took to climbing the trees to reach the olives at the top. We picked for about 4 straight hours with much good-natured bantering amongst the Italians (which now includes Mike and Gail as they are more Italian than American). Even though we did not speak the language, there are enough similarities to Spanish and Portuguese that we could get the gist of the conversation. The first afternoon was Tuesday, Nov. 6th and so the conversation drifted to the election; it was clear that the Italians liked Obama. On Wed. when we finished the olive harvest at Mike and Gail’s they were all wearing smiles and chattering about how Obama had clearly defeated Romney.  It was interesting talking politics with the Italians.

Everyone helps pool the olives into the center of the net

The leaves are then removed as the olive press does not like them

Then the olives are placed in the box

Beth and Gail with the harvest

Pino giving Gail some pointers in the art of olive picking

Santi showing us the Corsici farm

Thursday we went down the hill to the Corcisi’s farm and began helping with their harvest.  It was a beautiful farm and had been in their family for many generations. They had a fine garden; a large pig named Ruby and grew or raised all their own food, butchered their own animals and made their own wine from their grapes. I think the only food items they bought were salt, spices, flour and sugar. Pino, a man with sparkling eyes declared that Jeff and I were hard workers and “brave persona”, “good people” and thus we were all invited down for dinner that evening to share a meal with the Corsisci family (a real honor). At the end of our third olive picking day, we were “good tired” with the olives loaded on the back of the tractor, we were ready for a few glasses of their homemade red wine, which Jeff enjoyed immensely!  

This takes us to our second highlight- eating with the Italians and Italian food in general. Gail and Mike are excellent cooks and we had many a tasty meal in their beautiful farm kitchen. Gail’s risotto stands out in my mind, delicious!!!! The dinner with the Italian farmers, was memorable for many reasons; first that we were invited to their home and second for the meal itself. In our honor, they cooked a goose for the main course and the goose sauce was to die for. Mirella and Vincenza made several large flat round breads that they cooked on a huge iron skillet and it was perfect for sopping up the goose sauce. The goose was followed by wild boar (they hunt too) in fennel and black olives and prosciutto made from last year’s pig named for Italian’s former leader Burlusconi (because he was such a pig).  All of this food was accompanied by lots of fantastic red wine that they made from their grapes and lively conversation. Vincenza’s son Marco and his son, Ciprian, also joined us for the dinner. It was a fantastic evening and one that we will never forget. 

Home dinner with Angelo, Marco, Davide,& Chiara

Our other special dinner was at the home of Chiara and Marco, friends of Mike and Gail’s that we had first met in the Keys many years ago. We were very fond of them; they have had two children, a boy Davide and a girl Cecilia who was a real charmer at just under two. Marco’s very handsome younger brother Angelo and his father were also at the dinner along with the four of us.  Again, it was another amazing four course traditional Italian meal with lots of wine, grappa and great conversation, (Chiara speaks English so conversation was easier to follow).  Marco and Chiara own a fantastic restaurant, “Locanda di Nonna Gelsa” (“The Inn of My Grandmother Gelsa”) where we had dined the second day of our visit. Chiara runs the restaurant in the front and Marco is the chef in the kitchen.  In Italy, the main meal is eaten around 1:00 PM and “supper” is a light meal in the evening.

Not quite 2 year old Cecilia hands us our menus

Nonna Gelsa

Mike and Gail with Dominico and Pina

We also met Chiara’s parents, Domenico and Pina, who used to run the restaurant and now live upstairs and help with the children. Everyone was so warm and welcoming that we felt like part of the family. Clearly Mike is the long lost son who has returned to his homeland and into the welcoming arms of his Italian ancestors!!! 

The other memory that stands out and begs for inclusion in the blog is our visit to a local frantoia (olive mill) in a small hilltop village of Piccione right out of a postcard. We were invited into the press rooms and shown the entire process from olive to oil. This mill still uses the two giant rock wheels to mash the olives before they are spread on the fiber mats and put between metal wheels and set into the press. After seeing the entire process and having picked olives for several days, we have a new respect for the oil and its cost. The owner insisted we taste the new extra virgin oil (after seeing what is used for subsequent presses, I will never eat anything but the top line extra virgin oil) and so his 77 year old mother came out and prepared the most tasty bruschetta for us. She lightly grilled some fresh bread, generously drizzled the oil on both sides, adding salt and then rubbing fresh garlic on one side. It tasted like heaven!!!! Then she insisted we taste their new red wine; so at 9:30 in the morning we were drinking wine and having the best bruschetta of our lives. On top of that, she insisted we take a bottle of the wine as a gift and her son came out and gave the four of us two bottles of the new oil. This was one of many warm and generous acts of hospitality that we encountered while in Italy. What a wonderful country.

Olive presses squeezing the juice out of the mash

Olive Mama preparing bruschetta

Beth thanking Olive Mama for her kindness and generosity

Filling our 3 liter can for shipping home

Enjoying lunch at L'Antica Osteria

Gail, Beth, Maurizio, & Mike

Antipasto at lunch

Other events come to mind, like sharing a glass of red wine fireside with Maurizio, another Italian neighbor and good friend of Mike and Gail’s and going to an evening “festa” in Montone, a beautiful walled city on top of a hill. We went back in the daytime for another great Italian meal at Ristorante L’Antica Osteria, (authentic Umbrian cuisine specializing in truffles and porcini mushroom. The restaurant’s owner is a professional truffle hunter.. We visited Preggio, another stunning walled hilltop village that time has forgotten (no tourists or tourist shops).  Italy is full of beautiful villages that look much as they did hundreds of years ago, many abandoned fortifications and ruins. It was such a special week filled with so many great memories and experiences. However nothing topped Mike and Gail’s warm hospitality and their beautiful farmhouse in the Umber valley above the famous Tiber River.  Thank you dear friends for one of the best weeks ever!!!!! 

Enjoying and afternoon in Preggio

Don't then make a cute couple

And for those of you who actually read this long blog, ask me about “duty free olives” and “lima beans of the dead” when we get back. Great stories!

And now we begin our train adventure to Venice, Florence and Cinque Terra.