Prima della Festa di Miele c'è Molto Lavoro

October 7, 2006 According to the brochure, the Festa started last night, but you would never know it by looking at Belforte! The only thing that has opened is the Cantina. Something cool happened last night , though, so I decided to write about the Festa in two installments.
On Wednesday, the stands began to appear. They are set up on the street in front of and to the side of the church. The street in front of the church is closed off to traffic. The one way street that runs along side of the church and up past The Music Bar has become a two way street. Makes for a lot of congestion even in a small town like Belforte!

Every day a little more is added and the excitement in the town increases. Everywhere you go, people remind you that the Festa is on Sunday. We always tell them that last year we left Belforte the day before (Saturday) the Festa happened. We are as excited as the town and can't wait to see if it is as grand as the brochure proclaims it to be!

To top off the confusion of streets being blocked and stands being built, the town decided to pave the roads! They started with the road in front of our house and did one side in the morning and the other side in the afternoon! This is the road that goes to Piandimeleto (or Piandi as Paola calls it!) and they went from just on the other side of our street to the main intersection. The next day they started at that intersection and went up toward the bank. Again they did both sides in one day. The traffic was such a nightmare that we saw something we never thought we would see in Belforte--a traffic light!!!

One morning as we were headed out for our walk I stopped to take pictures. Il Sindaco (the mayor) saw us and came over. He thanked me for the peanut butter that I had left for him and told me that he liked it! I told him I had also brought 6 jars for me! (These are the small 18 oz jars, so don't think that peanut butter is the only thing I am eating--AND they were ON SALE!) That is il sindaco with Larry.

Now to the exciting part! Yesterday, late afternoon, Larry and I were going to walk down to Carlo's store to see if he sold USB cables (he doesn't) and just before we opened the door, Felice rang the bell. He was all excited and asked us to go with him. I couldn't understand exactly where or why we were going, but it had something to do with "castagne" (chestnuts). I thought he wanted us to go have some or see them or something. It turns out, he wanted us to come help get them ready for the Festa! His biggest concern was that if we help, we get to eat for free! He must have told us that 4 or 5 times! So we went into a room in the basement of the church and started cutting chestnuts before they are roasted. Some of the men had devised a way to cut them using a vice and a straight-edge razor blade. It made them easy to cut and the 3 of us worked for about 2 1/2 hours on them. Despite the bottle of Vino Santo that the priest gave us, I think we finished 3 1/2 bags. It is very easy because you just push the chestnut down on the razor blade and it puts a hairline slit in it. Apparently, that keeps it from blowing up when it is roasted. I told Felice that if any blew up they weren't mine they were Larry's! We left around 7:15 to go home to eat with plans to come back "dopo la cena." When walking home I took a picture of the beautiful moon that was out. I know that you have beautiful views of the moon whereever you are right now, but over here--bellissima!

We headed back around 8:20 and the door to the room appeared to be locked so we wandered around town. When we came back toward the church, Larry saw Felice and told him the door was locked. Felice rang the door of the parish and bothered Don Franco to unlock the door! So he came out and walked over to the double doors and just pushed them open! That was a little embarassing!

After about a half hour, the mayor's brother came in to help. There were no more vices so he used a box cutter to cut the chestnuts. He told us that they expect between three and four thousand people! That is more than 5 times the size of Belforte! A few minutes later, more men came in to help. Several of them brought knives and the ones who had nothing to use came around and collected the finished nuts or opened new bags. It was so much fun even though I didn't understand everything that was being said. At first, I felt maybe we should leave as clearly the men wanted to sit down and work and we were using 2 of the 3 vices, but we decided to stay. The men engaged us in conversation and tried to joke around with us. More wine was passed around and it didn't take long for all the chestnuts to be finished. Larry only cut himself twice and I didn't cut myself at all! We asked if we could take photos and several of the men tried to be in each picture we took! When Don Franco came in again, I got a picture of him and Larry. Then he asked if we would then put them on the computer and wanted to see all of the photos we had already taken!
The only bad part was when I saw these little, tiny pink worms! They are less than an inch long. This picture isn't very clear, but we found several of these while cutting the chestnuts. In fact, one of the men told me it was a good thing they weren't cooking them today (Friday) because you can't eat meat on Friday! So then I asked if that was true in Italy because in the US you can eat meat on Fridays except during lent. I think he said it was the same here--hope so, as we had pork chops for dinner!