Where I Am From 2

Sweet chestnuts were an important staple for the peasants who lived high up in the mountains of Tuscany. They were one of the few crops that would grow on the steep sided mountains.

People would come from all over to harvest chestnuts. They would have to give half of what was gathered to the landlord in lieu of rent. Their pay would be as much flour as they could carry home on their backs.

It was from a tiny Tuscan hamlet, to escape a life that offered no more than simply keeping body and soul together, that, my then 16 year old Grandfather, Giovanni, and one of his brothers went to Scotland around the turn of the centuary. There they worked hard and over time set up a small ice cream business.

On a return visit to his village, Capraia, he met a young woman who had traveled over the mountains with her uncle from her home to harvest chestnuts. After a week she was supposed to return home with her uncle but she persuaded him to go back and tell her Father that she would return the following week. What she didn't want her Father to know was that the reason why she wanted to stay was that she had met young Giovanni.

Later that year they were married on Christmas Day and Giovanni returned to Scotland to prepare a home for his bride. Some time later she joined him in Scotland with their first born.

I am equally at home with pasta or porridge, potatoes or polenta and the fruit of the grape or the grain.

The tiny church in the hamlet of Capraia clinging to the side of the steep mountains.

The Where I am From idea came from here.