Woodstove Revival in Umbria

Pino makes the Umbrian torta bread on our woodstove (note his candle-holder above it) – 1976 (approx.)

“L’Italia si riscalda a legna e brucia il caro bolletta” (“Italy is heating with wood – burning up the costly bill” – i.e, heating bill), a local Umbrian paper reported recently. Yes, as fuel costs soar, wood is back, fire has been re-discovered. Although we have propane gas heating – methane heats many a home, too – we hardly ever use it: our woodstove is used not only for all our cooking and baking but also heats our water and warms the house (circulating heat through the floors).

Many an Italian home is woodstove-warmed today: since early 2012, the importation of legna da ardere (literally, “wood to burn”) is up 26% and the consumption of gas oli has dropped nearly 50% over the last twenty years. Over six million wood-burning stoves and fireplaces have been lit as cold weather moves in: an all-time record. Italy is now the world’s lead importer of firewood notwithstanding our 10. 4 million hectares of forest.

The boom took off in 2006 with the skyrocketing of gas oil and methane gas prices and woodstoves fed by pellets (made of pressed, dried sawdust – first introduced into Italy at the end of the 1990′s) or cippato (woodchips) became popular, too,. Italy’s enormous technological advances in woodstove design has made this country the European leader both in production of woodstoves and in acquisition.

Woodstove pipe and chimney pair – a lovely duo

Stroll a medieval hilltown and note the terracotta roofs: chimneys are often flanked by woodstove pipes.

The kitchen – the only room with any heat – was once the heart of any rural home (kitchen, storeroom and bedrooms – that was it) and woodstove and fireplace were the soul of the kitchen.

On the woodstove top, farmwomen baked the Umbrian flatbread, la torta, toasted bruschetta, put sauces and soups to simmer and roasted chestnuts; succulent geese, chickens , guinea fowls, and rabbits roasted in the woodstove oven.

Hanging off the spokes of a wire contraption encircling the woodstove pipe, rain-soaked jackets could dry – and small family laundry items.

Cooking rabbit cacciatore on
our woodstove, 1977 (approx)

On one of those spokes over our woodstove, a rudimentary candle-holder dangled: Pino had made it out of a tin can, cutting one side off, so that our woodstove was illuminated (more or less!). On rainy winter days years ago, that improvised clothes dryer was strung with the cloth diapers of our first-born (a January baby, our Keegan).

Below the oven door, there was a warm space where wet boots or shoes dried – or newborn orphaned chicks or baby rabbits dozed in a box.

A pot of boiling water was always on the stovetop (and in a cauldron hanging in the fireplace): none of us had running hot water in our homes.

Times have changed but la stufa a legna will always be the soul of our kitchen.

Read more about Peppa and her woodstove-roasted chestnuts
Read about winter nights around the woodstove and the fireplace
Click here to read about – and see – the chimney wonders of Assisi
Read about our rural life and rural friends



Posted in Rural Life on November 29, 2012

One Response to “Woodstove Revival in Umbria”

  1. Randy Ballweg Says:

    Great article Anne; pointing out that, once again, a gentle stroll through your Assisi will bring history to light!!
    Enjoy this Holiday Season!

    Randy

Leave a Reply

I hereby authorize the use of my personal details solely for circulation within the company
in relation to the Italian Legislative Decree n 196/2003 (see details)



WEB-SITE PRIVACY POLICY
Under Article 13 of the Italian Legislative Decree no. 196/2003, regulations with regard to the Protection of Personal Data, this is an informative report to all interested parties on the modality of the treatment of personal data, arising from interaction with our website www.annesitaly.com

THE PRINCIPAL FOR DATA TREATMENT
During site consultation, personal data referring to identified or identifiable persons can be processed. The principal for data treatment is Anne Robichaud Pian della Pieve Assisi 06081 (PG) Italy. The data will be mainly processed at the mentioned head office by the people responsible for the website or by other people appointed for occasional maintenance operations, provided that their actions conform to of the guarantees enshrined in the Legislative Decree 196/2003

TYPE OF DATA TREATED
Web navigation
The information systems and software procedures required for the functioning of this website, acquire some personal data during their normal service, the transmission of which is implicit in the use of web communication protocols. This information is not collected with the purpose of identifying interested parties, but due to its very nature, the information could lead to user identification through processes and relations with data held by third parties. In this data category there are IP addresses or domain names belonging to computers used by users who connect to the site, addresses with URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) notification of the requested resources, time of the request, used method in submitting the request to the server, dimension of the file obtained in replying, the numeric code mentioning the reply status given by the server (successful reply, error, etc?) and other parameters referred to the operation system and to the user's information environment. This data is used with the sole purpose of obtaining anonymous statistical information on the use of the site and to check the correct functioning; immediately after processing, the data is erased.

Data voluntarily supplied by the user
The voluntary optional and explicit e-mail transmission to the addresses mentioned in this site implies the subsequent acquisition of the sender's address, necessary to reply to the queries, as well as the other eventual personal data registered in the message.

OPTIONAL PERSONAL DATA SUPPLY
Except for the above mentioned navigation data, the user may be asked to supply his own personal data through queries or messages to the email addresses shown in the contact pages. Failure to provide such data may be the cause of the inability to obtain the requested information from the company.

TREATMENT MODALITY
The personal data is treated in compliance with the Legislative Decree no. 196/2003 and held only for the time necessary to achieve the aim for which it has been collected. Specific safety measures are taken to prevent any data loss, illicit or incorrect use and unauthorized access.

RIGHTS OF THIRD PARTIES
The data subjects are at any time entitled to obtain confirmation as to whether or not data relating to him are held, to know the contents and the origin, to check the correctness, to ask for integration, updating or change (art. 7 Decree Law 196:June 2003). In accordance with the same article, they are entitled to obtain the erasure, conversion into anonymous form or freezing of all data used in breach of the law, to object, on legitimate grounds, to the processing of data relating to him. All requests have to be transmitted to the e-mail address anne@annesitaly.com