Saturday, September 6, 2008

tooooo much stuff

the container arrived.

i did not know why i was so excited and full of erwartungen, i knew what was in the container, i knew the way we packed everything, you too if you followed this, and still it was like christmas. - this feeling is completely replaced with a huge amount of stuff, everywhere, and no place to put it.
shortly the arrival: the container came to gualdo, we had to lead it down to the beginning of the road (even with the most detailed maps). 4 friendly neighbors were waiting with 2 tractors, 2 trailers and a forca. after 10 hours -yes 10- we were done for that day. the container was unloaded after 5 hours and they had to stop unloading the trailer at the house and feed the life stock. very similar to the situation in iowa.
except NO RAIN!!!!! and the best NO MOLD!!!! everything was bone dry, every living substance cooked and pulverized. so that is a good thing having a container sitting in the full summer blast of south italia for several weeks.

the more difficult part is that i forgot that we had sooooo much stuff. and no outlet like goodwill, garage sales, not even a fleamarket or a church benefit place. we are glad we found - finally- a kinda dump place to get rid of the stuff in the house. you would think that could be a thing we could start: a place where you can bring and find things.

we just heard today we can easil
y get the farmer status, that would be great, lower taxes, cheap health insurance and the possibility to sell whatever we produce on our land.
that is another thing we are slowly realizing : this soil here. they farm this land now for several thousant years, my guess, and get crop out of it, but it is very different from anything i have seen. they plow it after the harvest (hay, sunflower, wheat) so deep that you cannot even walk over it. the soil becomes hard as stones or bricks. no black top soil nor compost, just packed clay. Jon was cutting the lumps with a heavy duty spate to little chunks and got some tomatoes, leeks and lettuce going. but that took him a while.

just the day of the arrival the water pressure went down to nothing, now imagine: the tractors driving for and back the 2.8 km on the dusty road and the the dust stirred up and laying on everything, sweat and exhaustion and no shower? we survived that too. sponge bath......

the water company came the next day and started to dug up the backyard - i am so glad i did not landscape anything there, we have it now newly shaped. they had to dig up more places and many more days and the neigbor further up the road had his basement flooded a
nd the next one 500 lieter brown water in the storage tank. by the way, today i saw a little creek coming out of the road. new water hose break,- seams to be the neverending story.


we are seeing this so helpful neighbors
(we are really blessed to find the same kind of people in our new neigbhorhood, just like we had in woodward) now all the time. at contro parties we come together and chat with our 5 words italian about everything. the italians are very good to explain with their hands and we have a great time. when we invited them, we had to have a pizza party. Jon tested the old pizza oven and was happy with it, after almost all the preparations done and awaiting our new friends, Jon came from behind the oven and said the roof cached fire. i was running for the water hose and all what came out was a tiny pencil thin dripping on my shoes. now that is scary, ok this are not wood houses like in the states, but everything is hold up by wood. Alfredo arrived shortly after and said: no problem, nothing serious in hand/face language and we had our pizzas and wine and chats. the next morning we saw there are still some beams smoking. we took all the tiles down and took care the last pieces of charcoal.

but Jon has his brushcutter and his bmw, what turned on right away
and he let it taste the italian gravel road dust, just to the house.....and now the air at the cellar,- heavy with wine and mortar



life is exciting at the end of the strada bianca.

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