Mulberry Tree

This large mulberry tree was already large when my husband was a little boy. He fondly remembers climbing up into it while playing hide and seek with his cousins, while building a sling-shot, while day-dreaming. He was happy to see it is doing well on the farm in San Ferdinando di Puglia.

The mulberry (called "gelso" in Italian) is a common tree around here. It produces a tasty yellow or purple fruit: the mulberry, of course. We have one in our yard here in Molfetta. The fruit ripens in the summer and you have to pick it when the moment is just right. Too early and the berries are dry and tasteless, too late and they get bruised or eaten by insects.

Stones

Perla the Dog seems patiently happy to wait for us (in a typically canine fashion) to enter into the ex-oil mill of the farm at San Ferdinando di Puglia.

The stones that the pavement and base of the wall are made of are called "chianche" locally. They are large square, or rectangular, blocks of local stone, usually 30-50 cm deep. They are quite solid and will last for an extremely long time. They were used in the past to pave streets and sidewalks. When I lived in Molfetta's old town, my walls and floors were made of this stone. It was rather cold and unforgiving for little boys still unsteady on their feet!

Stone is one of the most abundant raw materials throughout the region of Apulia. As a result, it has always been the primary building material. You won't see any wooden houses around here. We're short on trees, except for olives and they're more important for their fruit than their wood, but there is stone everywhere, both above and underground.


Just trivia, but in Molfetta a boring person is called a "chiancone," or "big block of stone."

Farmhouse

This is a partial view of the farmhouse in San Ferdinando di Puglia where my husband spent his childhood summers. He climbed trees, rode his bicycles, tortured lizards and played with a multitude of cousins, but also was expected to do his share of chores.

One chore he remembers fondly was the cleaning of the almonds. This is a job that has several steps to it. First you have to gather the almonds from the trees. Then you have to remove their furry green outer covering. Next, you have to crack the hard shell that contains the fruit. Finally, you have to remove the hard shell and seperate the shells from the almonds.

The children were paid something equivalent to 10 cents per kilo of clean almonds. The job was done sitting together around a large table with the nuts in their shells in the center. Each child tried to accumulate the largest possible pile of clean almonds, to earn more money at the end of the day. The fun was in trying to distract the others and steal a few of their clean almonds while they weren't looking!

Days Gone By

Being all together at the holidays typically leads to the telling of the old stories...of good times past, family quarrels, achievements, adversity overcome. The children love hearing about the lives of their parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents.

Many of these stories, both happy and sad, revolve around a large farming property that used to belong to the family. My children's great-grandfather borrowed a sum of money from his two unmarried sisters and invested in a large piece of malaria-infested swampland near San Ferdinando di Puglia. He had heard that Mussolini would be starting large land reclamation projects in southern Italy. His risk paid off and the property became a fertile and productive farm.

Yesterday, my husband took our sons and their cousin to visit the farm. The current owners welcomed them with open arms, gave them a tour of every square inch of the property, both inside and out, and sent them away loaded down with a large crate of fruit from the garden.