The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-11-23
CHESTNUT FARMS OF ITALY
NUT HARVEST OF THE APPEN-
MINES.

MINES.
How the Peasants Gather Chestnuts and
Prepare Them for Food-some Ancient
Mills for Grinding Chestnuts.
The millions of peasants in Italy find
1t hard to get enough from the soil to
feed themselves and to keep the thou
sands of landlords in a greater or less
degree of lazy luxury. On the plains
the country people do manage to have
bread with their wine, or fruit, or veg
etables, but the mountaineers would be
only too glad to work for enough dry
bread.
Italy Is mountainous country, and
at one thousand feet above the sea in
the Apennines the low annual temper
azure does not favor luxurious vegeta-
ton. There grapes and figs cease to
ripen, vegetables grow poor and scarce,
corn is diseased and "nubby," and
grain natures imperfectly. AS one as
cends, the prospect of food grows
worse, and at fifteen hundred feet the
tiny grain plots would seem contempti-
BILE to our western farmers. These lit
tie "beds," rather than fields, are actu-
ally propped UP by solid walls, which
keep the precious soil from washing
down the mountain side. Some of the
terraces are but two or three yards
wide.
The highest point of the Apennines is
~ oil oil
up the mountain for more than half
that hight thousands Of persons are
trying to wrench a living from mother
earth. At an altitude of two thousand
feet I read this inscription on farm
house gate: Highest summer temper
allure twenty-five degrees centigrade,"
which is about seventy seven degrees
Fahrenheit, and this is reached only
ten times or so during the summer.
From two thousand feet up, even wheat
and potatoes refuse to grow. and chest
nut trees furnish the sole hope of food.
In fact, chestnuts are ''the staff Of life"
in the higher Apennines, and one can
walk for miles in chestnut groves. The
trees are planted at proper intervals
and are kept well pruned down. though
they do not naturally attain to a. great
height.
AS write look out upon acres of
them, covering the steep mountain
sides so evenly that the highest tree
scarcely rises two feet above its lowest
neighbor. No underground except
heather is allowed, for it would not
only detract from the nourtshment of
the trees, but interfere with the gath
ering of the chestnuts. Some of the
chestnut orchards belong to small peas
ant farmers, but the bulk of them are
owned by the gentry, who reside in the
towns and rent out their property on
the half-share principle. A peasant
will take one or two or more thousand
trees, keep them in order. gather the
nuts and divide the crop. The division
Is left entirely to the tenant, and
among the Tuscan peasants this home
ly joke is current, 20 master, come on,
and let us halve your half Of the crop!"
Among themselves the strictest honesty
prevails, and although there are no
walls, bitches or other propertyLlines
visible, the humblest peasant would not
pick up chestnut under his neighbours
tree An unwritten law allows a man
to claim what lies ON his ground, no
matter what the source, which leads to
much ingenious trenching and terracing
to revent the chestnuts from rolling
down hill.
Whatever falls into public path or
highway belongs to the public by COM
mon consent, and no one but the mean
est Of peasants will deign to gather any
of his own nuts which have thus
strayed away The biblical custom of
cleaning is still in vogue, and after a
heavy rain the very poor turn out with
bags and baskets, hunting for the
chestnuts which have rolled into the
sheltered hooks and turns Of the noun
tain paths.
Within the groves are many rude
stone huts, where tenants heap the
struggling fall of nuts which they find
in the daily round after the burs begin
to crack open. But the real harvest
home in early November is the signal
or a general stir among the mountain
GERS. Old and young turn out together
to thresh the trees and pick the nuts,
with singing and merry-making.
The sun sets by five o'clock in the af-
ternoon, and everybody troops home
gaily, anticipating a good dinner. The
quality Of a dinner varies with the
point of view, and an Apennine family
asks nothing better than caldron of,
If they chance to be epicures, cabbages
hot potatoes, boiled in sailed water; or
cooked with cheese and olive oil are
highly satisfactory.
Every peasant housewife tries to have
something special for the harvest home,
and schemes beforehand to that pur-
pose. The finger of scorn is pointed at
the mother and wife who fails to do her
duty at this time.
When our pet goat ate UP four scrag-
gy cabbages growing at the doorstep
of a peasant neighbor, I thought to
make ample amends by sending her
-four full, round heads from my own
garden. 20 signora," she said, with a
pathetic air of apology, 'ft is not the
cabbages care for, but when we work
hard in the wind and wet at the chest
nut harvest, it is so good to feel that a
nice, hot cabbage is boiling away at
home for us'
The loft over a PEASANTS kitchen has
a floor made of close Stats on which are
piled the fresh chestnuts, while a fire
is built in the middle of the stone floor
below. Doors and windows are tightly
closed, so that the heat and smoke,
rising through the crevices above will