06. Piazzetta gentile – The crops
In the fields we used to plant wheat, chickpeas, broad beans, and there were olive trees. Even as children, we knew how to survive because we knew the herbs of the fields. We used to eat cardele, scapirui, grixelui, and “tutu chelo che se puxia mangia” — everything that could be eaten.
My mother picked olives — back then they were picked by hand. When I was little, she took me with her to work because she was still nursing me, and so, every now and then, she would stop to breastfeed me.
On the eighth of September, the olives went to auction. My mother had a sharp eye. Days beforehand, she went to the olive groves to inspect the best ones. By eye, she could tell how many there were, and she was never wrong. Then she took them to the oil mills in Vallebona, where they gave her back the oil in leather wineskins.
At that time, there was war and curfew. While she was working in the olive groves, my mother heard that my father was coming home after five years. She was barefoot, covered in olive soot, her legs black — but she ran to meet him, and he saw her coming like that: black, disheveled, and happy.
During wartime, one kilo of flour was exchanged for one liter of oil. Rice was worth a bit less, and meat was rarely eaten. I used to carry 30 kilos of wheat on my bicycle to the mill in Ospedaletti, and then go on to San Biagio — sometimes even with another person on the bike. The road was made of dirt and gravel.
There were many olive trees and vineyards. Harvest time was wonderful — the scent of pressed grapes was everywhere, and the noise of the presses filled the air. Mules carried the buckets. In the fields we also grew watermelons and melons. It was a fertile valley, full of lemons and bitter oranges. A land of perfumes.
From orange blossoms, we produced essences. Vallebona was famous for it. More than a thousand quintals of orange blossoms were harvested. The alleys smelled of them. The scent was so intense that when I first smelled it, I said: “I’m never leaving this place.”
Flowers brought prosperity. We grew tuberose with its delicate perfume, broom (ginestra), which fetched more money at market than tuberose, and three or four types of mimosa. In those years, olive trees and vineyards were sacrificed because broom was more profitable. Then came synthetic essences, and even orange blossoms disappeared.
After that, the fields filled with carnations and roses. My wife and I would leave Vallebona at midnight with roses and daisies to go to the Sanremo market and be among the first. If you arrived late, there was no room left. The bus had a trailer for the flower baskets. We’d come back around nine in the morning and go straight to the fields to harvest before the heat. We slept very little — three or four hours at most.
I have always worked the land. I have dug entire fields, built so many dry stone walls — many, many of them. I worked very hard.
