Olive orchards in the moonlight

Summer's here, and in full swing too. Since it was a full moon few days ago, I decided to take a late evening stroll in the orchards (it's quite warm already here in Istria!).

Dusk in the olive grove near Dignano (Vodnjan)

Passing from one orchard to the other, I was thinking about the people who used to work them in the past days, and how were the nights they would spend in the casitas (or kažuni) when late work, or bad weather, kept them in the fields overnight. A small digression here - the casita is a small stone building, usually integrated in the stone walls surrounding the fields of southern Istria (mainly). I suppose there are thousands of them in the area, as almost each field had one...

So, I tried to recreate a semblance of life in them, and these are some preliminary results:

 

A casita close to Peroj, in the moonlight

  I like to think that the olives enjoy some human company, and who knows, maybe the fields, and the stones themseves do too?

 

Did it look like this, two hundred years ago?

It was a nice stroll anyway, and I almost forgot, our olives are working hard on your next oil!

Habemus logo! And other news

As the regular readers of this blog may have noticed, Cadenela got a refreshed look and a new logo! We're still working on a completely new dress but could not resist in sharing a bit of our new looks... To be honest, I could not resist and had to show it off even in the orchards - at least the olives are now properly introduced to the (most probably lost) mountain bikers that wander in the area!

Guess who's the boss out of the two?

But hey, we did not stop there - we're on the way to have the first labelled bottles travel to their new homes and tables! It's quite a small batch so if you're interested do let us know and become one of the first to taste our multi-golden-medal-organic EVOO. It might sound complicated, but it's actually just a very good olive oil (with a lot of artichoke and green pepper tastes developing lately) that gives its best on food with some character (red meat, cheese, prosciutto...). But your mileage may vary, as my daughter likes it best raw, on a slice of bread...

To sum it up,we're quite proud of the work we've done with Katja, and if you have to work on your visual identity we can only recommend her for the effort put in our project! Take a look here , you got all the necessary details to contact her.

Otherwise, we've got a lot of work out there, as the constant rain makes our orchards look more like the Serengeti during the rainy season than anything else - this year is an explosion of every single shade of green one could think of, beautiful to the eye but quite tiresome to the other body parts...

Everywhere...

Will be back soon!

Winter gems

If there was just one thing to appreciate about nature, I'd say it is its (hers?) complete disregard for our needs and wishes. Be it on high sea, in an olive orchard, or climbing a mountain, man is the one who has to adapt, accept and try to get the most out of what is given. It is a humbling experience, but if taken with a skewed approach it can be regarding nonetheless.

The last few weeks have been rainy, windy, cold, or all of them together. In few words, completely useless for any proper activity in the orchard, but at least gave me time to contemplate all of the life and beauty surrounding it.

A small world

Sugar frosted?

Now I'm hungry already...

Endless sky

Remnants of bygone people

White olives?

Everybody heard about green and black olives, but what about the white ones?

Due to the content of my last post I can not honestly say that what I saw this morning surprised me, but it's still an unusual view:

Well, Insha'Allah, hopefully there wont be too many broken/frozen branches. Will take a walk tomorrow and see.