June 9

We’ve been having too good a time to get around to blogging but today is a lazy catch-up day after a busy week so there are 4 blogs coming up.

Every weekend in June, our local town of Colle Val d’Elsa has a Sagra on Saturday and Sunday evenings– There doesn’t seem to be an exact translation for Sagra but it involves a lot of local food and wine in a piazza set up with trestle tables. A friend from another village told us that their Sagra served 600 meals for each of 4 meals over last weekend –the local ladies cooked cakes and pasta sauces for days beforehand and then on the day, the men barbequed steaks. The pasta sauce is interesting – the recipe begins with “First hunt your wild boar” – it’s delicious. The monies raised by the Sagras seem to be used to fund a wide range of community activities throughout the following year. The one at Colle last Saturday night was excellent if a bit chilly – the tables covered the piazza and spilled out onto the belvedere of the city walls overlooking the valley below. We ate white bean soup, the aforementioned pasta, rabbit stew, stuffed zucchini flowers with panne cotta to finish. I’m trying to think of ways we could have a Sagra in Kookaburra Ridge.

We are always interested in the use of small public spaces in Europe – piazzas in Italy, a place in France and village green in England. They are wonderful spaces for people to meet informally or for events and make a huge contribution to fostering a sense of community. A leaflet from the local tourist office describes the piazza as ‘a place of meeting, exchange, introductions, gatherings, a place where you stop, stay awhile or interrupt a journey. The street is quite different. The street is there for walking down and is chiefly linked with those who live there. The street belongs to the few but the piazza belongs to everybody.”

This morning in Colle was market day – over a hundred stalls crowded the piazzas and surrounding lanes in this small town but hundreds of people had come into town from the surrounding countryside to buy and sell, to meet with friends, drink coffee. It’s a great atmosphere and an excellent source of local fruit and veges, cheese and sausages, olives and artichokes. Hope we can eat it all before next Friday so we can go and buy more yummy stuff.