Work in progress !

Freshly picked mushrooms

With winter closing in and the days getting much shorter , i feel i must get a move on and finish all the jobs we had planned for this year . Windows still to be varnished, chimneys to be cleaned and now a new wood burning heater to be fitted . Not too much work , but we will have to knock out the old fire place , plaster the wall behind and then work out how to replace the terra cotta tiles underneath … Enough to be getting on with before it gets really cold .

Luckily our good friend, master builder and mushroom picker extraordinaire Ansano , popped around to have a look at the situation . “ No , problem” he said “it shouldn’t take more than half a day for Nick to break it all down and then when he’s done, I’ll come and fix the rest “ . Now, I was very happy with that, as it was a lot faster than the 2 days Nick was saying he needed for his part of the job ( to be rewarded with a cappuccino in bed on both days ) .

So , with the new wood burning heater under control ( plus a beautiful plate of mushrooms freshly picked by Ansano ), I turned my attention to the up and coming olive picking. This weekend seems to be the only date possible ,but the forecast isn’t looking to promising . Thankfully we have recruited the help of the energetic students from the University of Arizona Orvieto Study Abroad Program plus a few local friends , hopefully everything should be ok.

This week has also seen the last cooking class I’ll be doing this year for the university and as usual it turned out to be extremely good fun . I have really enjoyed meeting all these people and am looking forward to hopefully doing the same next year.