Balcony in Sicily

Oh thats nice Terry... it grows wilderness

looks fab

What are the temps in Sicilia these days? that's a great picture ...someone kept that vine alive with precious water!! Is it a dry as it looks?

It was much hotter than Rome - about 28/29°C. The area is very dry as you will see from some photos I will post later on. It is also very neglected - the towns are becoming more and more "ghostlike" with the eldery dying off and not being replaced and the young escaping to where there is work. History seems to repeat itself, as this is what my father did, from this very town, almost 60 years ago - very sad.

that is sad terry, is there no work in Sicily?

No I'm afraid not, Irish - there is such a contrast from the oppulent touristy areas like Agrigento and Taormina and then total nothingness just "round the corner". Most people in these inland towns are living off their pensions, thus keeping commerce alive to a certain extent, but real work is scarse and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the youngsters - - -

sounds like the west of Ireland a few yrs back, when most young folk had to leave in order to find employment. glad to say thats not the case these days.

I find it difficult but I'd like to believe that a similar thing will happen there too, as the land is so beautiful and has so much natural agricultural, historical, cultural and touristic potential - - - -

Oh tourism brings a certain degree of prosperiety..but have grown up in a tourist town I can tell you that it has many drawbacks for the local population... jobs are seasonal, usually minimum wage, the local gov. is so grateful for investment that they give tax incentives that give work for a few years but when the time runs out the industry sells off and the jobs are lost until someone else gets a subsidy...it's a vicious circle.
there is so much sun in Sicilia, perhaps a natural growth industry would be solar power generation and storage... I read recently where a consortium of Italian businessmen have constructed a huge hydroelectric dam in Iceland of all places...imagine that?! with all the thermal energy there...like carrying coals to Newcastle... why don't they look to Sicilia?

The real problem down there, Lori, is the "corruption" over the people that is so rife and part of the very stones the towns are built of. They are powerful and strong. Projects of improvement are stifled and and progress is crushed even before it starts to breathe its first breath of life, thus thwarting any form of industry. The potential of all that sunshine and natural agricultural/cultural/touristic wealth and yet not being "allowed" to exploit it, is criminal for the local population....

I was told that my father's town used to have a population of 40,000 - there are apparently only 7,000 there now .... that about sums it all ...

40,000 people down to 7,000? thats shocking

You're not kidding Marguerite - I took a photo from a real etstate window as proof ! villa with 3 rooms, 2 bathrooms, terrace and garage - excellent condtion - €28,000.

omg Terry , that is for nothing. new car over here would cost a lot more than that.

I can imagine that the powers that keep things as they are would actively discourage the settlement of outsiders...?

I suppose so Lori, unless you keep yourself to youself and don't impinge on the "system"..... There again, I reckon if we were retire there with an OAP income and a bit of land to grow our veg and fruit we wouldn't need to be bothered or feel threatened by "the powers" !!!

hmmm.... artist colony?

it's a bit of a puzzle trying to work out exactly where the plant actually is! lovely picture, thanks for sharing.

The trouble is with negelected villages etc, where young people have to leave to find work, is that they get "discovered" by people who just have to have a second home, and then prices get pushed up until the young people have to leave because they can't afford to live locally any more, even if there was work there.

That is so true Fran as that's exactly what's also happening in the little medieval village where I now live permanently in the Sabine Hills. Houses were so cheap in the late 80's when hubby and I bought our little piece of Paradise as a second home to escape from the summer bustle of Rome - yet prices have escalated far beyond the economical means of the locals - very sad as the place is slowly slowly losing its magic of centuries-old traditions and folklore .....

lol I should have got in when I first read about it - mind you, that was only last week!

It's the pattern all over; people have to go to cities to get work, the home village starts to die, is "rescued" by outsiders who change the character completely and even more young people are driven out cos of rising house prises. It seems to be a natural law, sadly: don't know if it just goes on and on or if there's an answer to it.

I suppose Fran the only answer is that whoever buys up the property tries to keep it as much in character as possible - I admit that's what hubby tried to do when we bought our derelict little place in 1986 and made it into a home again. It was built in 1557 so you can appreciate that shiny ceramic tiles and new age furniture wouldn't really look the part! I think he did a wonderful job and you can actually feel the gratitude of the spirits of all those generations that have passed through the doors during the centuries.

Yep, I love it there and could never ever sell the place, unlike a lot of these speculators..... Hardly any of the younger generation is interested in the land, as it's too much like hard work and would rather go to the shops to buy their oil - with all those abandoned trees in the valley crammed with olives....

wow, five hundred years old! that deserves to be treated with respect and kid gloves - formica tops and stainless steel would not fit in at all! but bet some philistine would think it oh-so-trendy-and-cool to gut the interior and redo it in "modern tasteless" style.

I think younger generations lookd down on older ones for not having the amenities that they themselves have; I suppose it was ever thus - "how did you manage before electricity, granddad? You mean you actually had to *make* your own food, Grandma?"

The charm of the old days is magnified by our distance from it! Actually having to live like that all the time would soon send most of us scurrying back to our mod cons. So I can understand why youngers aren't willing to do things the old way these days (if they ever were) even while I awwww! at the thought of the old ways passing through lack of support. And I can dream of it, even knowing full well that I'd not be able to do much even were I in the position to move out there and try.

I read a news report years ago about a charity or rganisation in the UK that go around picking apples from people's trees for them; I just googled some vague key words and found a lot,mostly in the US - isn't there a charity or organisation that could organise volunteers to pick the olives and pass them on to poor people or somthing? Of course, that's assuming that the owners of the land, if any, do'nt object - but the fruit's going to waste for lack of pickers now.

You make some very good points Fran. I chuckled about the "you used to make your own food" - I still do!!! There certainly has to be a very happy medium between old and new. Things like washing machines are to be blessed when I think that my grandmother and mum in her early days when she still lived in Italy used to do their washing in the village fountain - but boy did they come out spanking clean and fresh smelling. Like you say formica tops and stainless steel are fine in a modern scenario (and I admit that many of the locals would "modernise" their old homes in this very way not to be considered old fashioned) but not where the walls are carved out of the rock and the wooden beams have become petrified after being up for centuries.

Regarding the olives Fran - it's not just a matter of picking them but all the hard work and expense involved for them to grow healthily on the trees in the first place - they all keep saying it's not cost effective and so they don't bother and of course a lot them probably lost their loving owners a long long time ago ..

I think the old ways need to become "trendy", or at least fairly well paid, then people might actually want to take them up again - or a "working holiday"-type scheme - *s* people actually pay to work! I Googled "working holiday" and found lots of organisations around the world.

When Billy Connolly did a "world tour" of Ireland, he stopped off at Belfast and remarked on the Harland & Wolff shipyards, once one of the biggest in the world, now derelict. He said that it only takes one generation for knowledge to be lost forever - people learn little tricks while working, but with no one to pass them on to, the konwledge fades. Same thing can happen in any old way: if the new generation isn't there to pass hard-won knowledge on to ...

sigh, the great god Money strikes again: hand-made small-sclae produce can't compete against huge factory farming methods.

Too true my friend, too true. The modern trend in our little town is that there's a place where tourists come to from afar (even from USA) and pay OTT to learn how to make local handmade pasta and etc. . . as if simple old fashioned cooking was a thing of the past - or silly knitting circles etc ....

sadly, "proper" cooking is a dying art in many places, especially "civilised" ones - go the the supermarket, or have it delivered, open a tin or take a packet out of the freezer. And when food is hand-made, it's cakes and desserts and fancy stuff, not honest-to-goodness real meals.

I suppose it's encouraging that people want to learn so much that they travel so far; but real food is a luxury item these days, only those who can afford to travel, or can afford the higher cost of real ingredients, will be able to learn.

That's not perhaps always the case Fran, as most youngsters these days still have grandmothers (mothers might be pushing it) who can cook, if only they could just be bothered to learn. To make our diatribe more Goyish, do you think that the young are as interested in gardening as the "older" generation?

lol big difference between "can" and "will"!

I'm sure young people can be as keen as olders, depends how they're brought up; if there's always a garden, there's more chance of them becoming hooked at an early age - or if they're given opportunities later: communal garden projects, learning to create rather than vandalise - gardening's not "cool" but maybe it'll become so if enough youngers pick it uo