So, an update for those who have been following the barganews vegetable garden story. Miserable weather has once again drenched this area leaving the soil heavy and almost unworkable. This has also meant that the grass in the bottom field appears to be visibly growing at an almost cartoon like rate. This field has to be ready to be ploughed sometime this week but it will first have to have the grass cut. The potatoes in the top field are already starting to sprout green shoots and so it looks like they are none the worse for being underwater for at least a week this month. The 500 onions planted in haste at the beginning of this month all seem to have taken but the wiggly lines bear witness to the speed at which they were planted. The “tut tut” sound emanating from old hands passing by the garden can be heard a kilometer away in Barga Vecchia.
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Which brings us quite neatly to this week’s main story. The two fields are just outside the city. A kilometer as the crow flies but the couple if you follow the winding road. Continuing on with the vaguely “green” or ecological theme to this project, going down in the car each day to the fields somehow doesn’t feel quite right. So how about a bit of re cycling ?
15 years ago I found a small moped in a rubbish tip in the nearby town of Gallicano – a 50 cc F B Minarelli to be precise. The moped was from the late 50’s/ early 60’s and although, scuffed and obviously well used it still had petrol in the tank and after a couple of kicks it burst into life. I got on it and rode around Gallicano looking for the owner as I was half convinced that it might have been stolen and then dumped …. after all, who would dump a still usable moped?
In the end I did find the original owner and yes he no longer wanted it and so I rode it away quite happily with his blessing.
It has been sitting in my studio ever since gathering dust and waiting for renovations to start.Those renovations, of course, just never happened so this morning it was pulled back out into the light of day, dustier and grimier than ever.
I pushed it down to the petrol station in Barga Giardino to pump up the by now very flat tires and put some petrol into the tank. After only a couple of tries, would you believe that it started ?
The brakes are so so … the clutch seems to have stuck .. but it is running and so I tried it out running down to the fields.
Going down was ok, coming back up was slightly more laborious as the tiny engine, now 40 or 50 years old struggled up the hill but transport has been sorted. All systems are go.
Motori Minarelli S.p.A was an Italian company founded in the 1950s that produced small engines.
The origin of Motori Minarelli dates back to 1951, when Vittorio Minarelli and Franco Morini founded a company named Fabbrica Bolognese Motori (F.B.M.). The company’s first products were complete motorcycles, among which was the original Gabbiano (125 cc) with a 2-stroke horizontal single-cylinder engine and the 200 cc 4-stroke Vampir, with 4 speeds and able to reach 110 km/h. In 1954 the company began to produce 48 cc moped engines in addition to motorcycles.
In 1956 F.B.M. gave up its motorcycle production and focussed full-time on the production of 2-stroke moped and motorcycle engines. The two partners split up in the same year and Vittorio Minarelli founded F.B. Minarelli in a 2.000 sqm area where, with twenty mechanics, the daily output of up to 70 engines between agricultural and road destinations was reached. The engines left Bologna to Italy, Europe and Latin America. – source Wikipedia
Why not a Barganews rice paddy? Bring in some water buffalo to work it, and you can even open a sideline in mozzarella.
On a more serious note (although the rice suggestion was semi-serious — you couldn’t find better land for it), many thanks to Doggy for this running chronicle of life on the farm. It’s important that dreams of agricultural self-sufficiency be measured not only for their rewards, both nutritional and psychological, but also for the back-breaking work and occasional setbacks that inevitably accompany them. “Orto” is not only a chronicle of Doggy’s onions and spuds, it is a window into the world of our ancestors, where every meal on the table was a testament to hours of toil under the hot sun (or pouring rain).