Italy: The Abbey Pharmacy and Shop

This abbey is a 13th century active Cistercian monastery.  A Benedictine monastery was established on the site in the early 11th century and later, following a visit from St. Bernard, it became a daughter house of Clairvaux Abbey. A new abbey church and monastery was built based on the standard pattern of this religious foundation.

Today the monks have founded new monasteries overseas. Their life centres around prayer and work within the monastery and in the community.  The monks teach in the College attached to the Abbey.  There is a pharmacy, print works and shop that sells herbal products, honey, books and various liqueurs.  Some of these products are produced by other monasteries in the region, but the liqueurs are made.

The abbey attracts many visitors to the church, grounds and small museum of antiquities and accommodation for guests is also available and locals come daily to attend services and use the parish rooms, the pharmacy and the post office, which is also housed in the monastery buildings.

The Pharmacy

This is the liqueur work shop where the different types are produced using local ingredients. One of these is called Elixir of San Bernardo and it contains many different herbs. 

Italy: making the most of the land

One of the advantages of living in a house that is built into the side of a hill is that we have a good view of the road (which was once a dirt track when we started the project) and, therefore, able to observe whatever is going on at different times of the year in the surrounding fields.  Everyone has odd pieces of land all over the area that are used to grow crops and are happy for animals to graze and manure the plots. One of the local shepherds can be seen every day with his small flock of sheep who graze in the meadows or on strips of grassland before these are ploughed and crops are cultivated.

Below our terrace and retaining wall is one such small piece of land where sheep graze. The shepherd sits or stands in the shade with his dogs.  It is the custom to offer a coffee or a glass of wine to passing neighbours and my husband stops his work in the garden to have a rest and talk to his friend, the shepherd, before he moves off to nearby pastures.

From the front window of the upstairs kitchen I watch the shepherd move on to a field across the way. It's quite boggy there because the water runs off the hills, but the land makes good pasture. The sheep are kept for the production of pecorino and ricotta cheese and for meat.

Above our house there is more rough land that is not cultivated, but individual horses graze there.

The horses are used for trekking in the mountains.  This lone horse is a regular and sometimes comes and eats the bramble hedge.

The strip of land below the house was ploughed up at the end of October.  The grapes had been gathered from our vines leaving a few table grapes.  Now the bare vines will need pruning.

Italy: Keeping warm, gathering wood

My new header shows the view from one of the kitchen windows on the top floor of our house in Italy. I never get tired of looking at the ever-changing colour of the mountains throughout the day even when the weather is wet. Sometimes the more distant mountains seem to disappear because of the mist.

When it rains in the mountains it rains heavily.  The sound of thunder rolls around the valleys and the lightening flashes across the sky and seems very near even if it's many kilometres away.  We keep a lamp powered by a gas bottle ready in case the electricity cuts out as we haven't got a generator.

We are already thinking about our time in Italy in 2013 and we shall go over in a month or two to  make sure everything is well around the house, do some garden maintenance and visit family.

Rain or shine one of the tasks is to gather and store wood for the open fires and wood-burning stoves.

The  branches from the vines that were pruned in the early months of last year are dried out for kindling and there's a store of wood in the garage ready for use when we need it.