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Al vroeg dit jaar ontvangen wij een uitnodiging van onze buren Olga en Carlo uit Lodisio om ‘la festa della donna‘ op 8 maart, oftewel nationale vrouwendag, te vieren met een lunch bij ristorante ‘Da Rosina’. Het is een zeer populair restaurant onder de Italianen en dat betekent dat je, zeker als het een feestdag betreft, ruim van te voren moet reserveren. We voelen ons natuurlijk zeer vereerd en hoe gezellig: onze naaste buren Franca en Giampiero zijn ook van de partij.

In Italy, they really make this day into something special. Friows receive sprigs of Mimosa, the bright yellow flowers, as a token of appreciation and friendship. The choice of precisely these flowers has a practical origin: Mimosa blooms exactly during this period in nature. ln Italy they symbolise strength and solidarity between women. At lunch, Carlo conjures a sprig of Mimosa out for each of his female table guests with a red rose for his wife Olga and a pink rose for Franca and myself. How thoughtful and above all how courteous! Special to be part of this beautiful tradition.

11 March marks exactly six years since we arrived in Italy at Pian del Nasso for a new life. During the journey, there was nobody on the road; the day before, Italy had gone on lockdown because of the Corona virus. Until the border, we were not sure if we could enter Italy, but thanks to a written statement ‘dichiarazione‘ from our estate agent, explaining that we had sold our house in the Netherlands and were on our way to our new home in Italy, we were let through. So many challenges and so much achieved in those six years. Grateful to live in this beautiful place, grateful for the dear new friends, neighbours and guests we have been privileged to receive over the past few years. Many have now also fallen in love with Pian del Nasso; this year too we are facing another great season with many return guests and even bookings for 2027 already. Worth a celebration!

Na de extreme regenval van bijna een jaar geleden is het eindelijk zover en wordt er hier hard gewerkt om overgang van onze rivier bij de Mulino weer te kunnen gebruiken. De rivieren waren groot en breed geworden, maar de rivierbeding was ook ruim een meter lager komen te liggen. Om naar de overkant te komen moest je jezelf in een soortement van ravijn laten zakken, naar de overkant waden en dan aan de overkant omhoog klauteren. Niet te doen dus en met een tractor was al helemaal niet meer mogelijk. Maar vandaag wordt er hard gewerkt op Pian del Nasso om de overkant weer bereikbaar te maken. Hoe heerlijk voor ons en onze gasten om straks ook weer over die velden te kunnen wandelen! ‘Non vedo l’ore!’ oftewel we kunnen niet wachten!

Komend weekend is het Pasen! Dat vieren we dit jaar weer met een uitgebreide lunch bij onze buren. Wij wensen iedereen vanaf Pian del Nasso een heel zonnig Paasweekend toe! Buona Pasqua!

When we open the curtains this morning, we are surprised by a white world. After two years of seeing virtually no snowflake, Pian del Nasso is once again covered by a layer of snow. What a fairytale!

Even in a recent past, the area was covered by metres of snow during the winter months! Only in recent decades has winter snowfall decreased. But at least we have these days nicely in the pocket!

Due to overactive chickens (you don't understand with this cold weather), neighbour Franca feels compelled to make kilos of fresh pasta. Lucky as we are, we also get some of that and, what else, a load of fresh eggs. Well, what do you do then? Make spaghetti then carbonara! And Sander, also according to the Italians, can do that very well! What a crime: living in the Italian countryside.

In mid-February, we visit Traversa 1816 in nearby Spigno Monferrato for a wine tasting. The winery has been owned for generations, since the 19th century, by the family Traversa. Currently, the winery is run by the younger generation, the brothers Sebastiano and Edoardo, run. Traversa is located on a hill with beautiful views over the surrounding vineyards.

Those fields, we are told, consist of a variety of soil types including limestone, clay and sand (or ’terroir diversity’). That diversity is one of the reasons why wines from Piedmont are so appreciated. So during the delicious tasting, we not only taste the different grapes, but also a ’touch’ of the landscape in our glass. Absolutely recommended to wine lovers visiting our region.

Horse lovers are also welcome here. At the adjacent riding school Scuderia Daleramo (also owned by the Traversa family), they can - on request - take guided horseback rides through the vineyards and nature.

Since we moved to Italy, we haven't really celebrated Sander's birthday yet. Time to put him in the spotlight! Thus, a little surprise dinner with our Italian family and friends at Ristorante La Braia. The restaurant run by Fabio & Marina in Cairo Montenotte is one of Sander's favourites.

The unsurpassed Marina specially makes one of her delicious homemade desserts: her famous chocolate cake. Truly to lick your fingers!

On Sander's birthday itself, 25 January, we will do it again with our lovely neighbours who had a cake made especially for Sander and brought it to the restaurant.

In Italy, this is very common; guests bring their own cake because they would like to personalise it or because they prefer a trusted pastry chef ‘’pasticcere' fetch. Sometimes restaurants charge a small fee: the ‘servizio torta‘. That cost then a few euros per person for serving, plates and cutlery. Much more often, however, it is simply considered part of the service! The cake is ‘molto buono’ .

After these calorie-rich months, it is only right that it is time to prepare for the season. The coming months will bring a lot of body work again! Especially thanks to our plans for a new kitchen in the Cascina; which means extra lugging and breaking work.

At least one of us is getting very tired of it!

It is December and high time to stock up on Christmas gifts for family and friends in Italy and in the Netherlands.

A beautiful city to visit, especially around Christmas, is Cuneo. This ancient city at the foot of the Alps is truly fairy-tale decorated during that period.

Another nice little town, a little closer, is Millesimo. A cosy Christmas market is held here every year. Lovely to stroll through the streets, past the stalls and stop in at the local shops.

We are sticking with Millesimo this year. After our extensive, and thankfully more than successful, search, we settle down for lunch at ristorante Pantarei Cucina (after all, you have to combine the useful with the pleasant).

This year, we celebrate Christmas in the Netherlands. Mid December we leave, but not before we told our neighbours Giampiero and Franco of it insured have that we are really on time be back for New Year's Eve or ‘’Capodanno' ! That will be going into the new year with too many kilos again! But how cosy all of you!

We wish everyone Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo!

While the Netherlands is still busy debating and campaigning at the end of September, we are already casting our vote! Voting by Dutch nationals living abroad is very easy. However, you must first register as a voter outside the Netherlands at www.nederlandwereldwijd.nl. You will then automatically receive notification that your postal ballot is on its way. In mid-September, we receive the letter ballot papers by post and then a link by e-mail for printing out the candidate list and ballot paper. The latter has now been completed and is on its way to The Hague by post. It must be received by the letter ballot by 29 October!

At the beginning of October, our season is over and we wave goodbye to our last guests. Very grateful for all the lovely little and big guests we were able to welcome (again) to Pian del Nasso this year.

The scoop though was the wedding couple we had come to spend their honeymoon at Pian del Nasso in July. Never before have so many dog owners found their way to Pian del Nasso. One of the highlights was seeing Bernese Mountain Dog Nuncio again. Last year, he proved ill on arrival and required surgery, which meant he had to spend his entire holiday at Pian del Nasso rehabilitating. How nice that he and his owners were fortunately able to enjoy their holidays to the full this year. And how nice to see Noor and Nuncio running and playing together!

Never before have we received new reservations for the new year so early in the season. When we came here in 2020, we started with nothing. How grateful we are to see that more and more guests, like us, are becoming enchanted by this special place.

The season is over, but the work at Pian del Nasso is not over yet. All houses get their winter treatment: each house is zorgfully cleaned, checked and covered to get through the cold winter season in the best possible way. In addition, according to centuries-old local custom, Sander annually ensures that the original water channels on the property and along the road are clean, so that when it rains, the water can continue to follow the desired route. The latter is also to prevent ‘frane‘ or landslides. The garden is also being prepared to withstand the cold and the pool is being covered up. In addition, bunches of lavender are also lying there waiting to be rustled....

Guessing doesn't get very far with Noor on my lap, but it's cosy. Meanwhile, I think about how much pleasure lavender gives. First it's the bees, bumblebees and butterflies that take advantage of it for months (while guests can enjoy the fine lavender smell in the garden and by the pool in the meantime). And then - after harvesting, drying and ricing - the lavender in the bags provides a wonderful aroma for years to come. Should the lavender scent wane at any point, all you have to do is squeeze the sachet and it will smell like old times again!

At the moment it is beautiful late summer weather, the leaves are starting to show more and more autumn colours and thanks to the orange blossom, the blossom in the olive willows and herbs in the grass, among other things, it smells wonderful! The butterflies, bees and bumblebees are happy too; with this nectar they can go on for a while. All in all, there is still a lot of fluttering and buzzing around us. We have also been treated to the ‘screams’ of a wild boar for a couple of days now, apparently on the love path (although it sounds more like it is on the warpath). The sound is impressive and, apart from the familiar grunting, I had not heard it myself before. And ‘as we speak’ I can hear a roe deer ‘barking‘ in the distance, which also sounds like music to my ears! Some boff we still get to live in this beautiful place!

It's August and high time to harvest our lavender! The cut lavender spikes are given a place in our ‘pizza house’ to dry. In a few weeks, we can start ricing so that soon, at the start of the new season, we can fill lavender bags for our guests.

This year, for the first time, we have apricots and apples from our self-planted trees. How nice that all that pouring in the hot periods in the first three years after planting was not in vain and is now bearing fruit!

The month of June is lovely with beautiful sunny days and those nice cool nights. Nature is blooming and growing. The fields and roadsides are full of flowers (what wonderful smells) and meanwhile we hear the babbling of our streams, the whistling of all the birds, including the nightingale!, and the croaking of the frogs. How idyllic do you want it to be!

In mid-June, we will celebrate Corine's birthday at one of her favourite restaurants ‘Della Posta’ in Olmo Gentile. We also get visits from friends and family from the Netherlands this month. In short, it's a great month!

But in late June, there is suddenly unusual heat for the time of year across Europe, and unfortunately here too! With that, the growth of our grass comes to a complete halt. Of course, just then we receive a redeeming phone call from the mechanic: our ride-on mower is completely repaired and they are coming to bring it that afternoon! What fantastic timing!

March is the time to get our riding mower out of the barn! What a familiar sound after all those winter months. Unfortunately, the roar ends almost immediately with a huge bang. Stuck on a boulder; thanks, of course, to the rooting of enthusiastic wild boars. The mower still runs, but that's all there is to it; in mowing mode it makes such a huge scraping metallic sound that we realise that repair is the only option. And so we have to stand by and watch as our mainstay is taken away on a trailer right in the most intense growing season of the year! It means piano, piano mowing everything with the hand mower (and that means twice a week!). At least we don't have to go to the gym for a work-out and we definitely get to 10,000 steps. Fortunately, we do now have the tractor to help with mowing the footpaths in the large fields.

On the night of 16-17 April, we face a huge downpour in the Bormida Valley that lasts for several hours. As a result, the rivers in the surrounding villages burst their banks and our streams are suddenly 4x as high and 4x as wide. Of course, during the night we do hear that it is raining hard, but we really have no idea of the quantity and severity. Fortunately, on Pian del Nasso, nothing is going on except that we suddenly have swirling rivers, but f.e. Piana Crixia, Dego and Cairo Montenotte are closed due to flooded roads, tunnels, fallen trees.

In a fall wind about two years ago, one of our favourite trees fell over. It is very large tree that miraculously survived the fall and continues its life lying down, but over the river. This, of course, is not really convenient because in extreme rainfall, there is a chance of debris from the river being left behind with the possibility of flooding. So we basically have to remove the tree. But we have not been able to get that over our hearts yet. With last Thursday's huge rainfall, we realise that we probably won't get away with it, because once the water has subsided a little, we see that a huge wall of wood has formed against the trunk of the tree. Thanks to friend Leo and, again, our tractor, Sander manages to fish all the wood out of the river in a couple of days, so that at least there will be no flooding in the next rainstorm.

Anyone who has been to Pian del Nasso knows that very little traffic passes here. In winter and pre-season, it is completely sporadic. It can comfortably take hours before anything motorised passes by again. Add to this the phenomenon of rare fire salamander plus the rarely visible emerald lizard And then we do seriously wonder “how then?!” when we find a flattened fire salamander and emerald lizard on the road several times in the morning! Who knows may say! Then again, in the situation below, we need little imagination to be able to imagine it (the nudibranch survived, by the way, because, of course, we brought it safely to the other side).