Mi piaci come la torta di ceci

“I like you like the torta di ceci”

Returning to the villa yesterday afternoon — blue sky, sun out, daisies sparkling against the green grass. The neighbour has a team out working on their trees. Piles of olive branch cuttings are deposited on the grass under the trees. The pruning season has started, and he’s ahead of me. Neighbour envy, Tuscan style.

So it's time to get moving. First step: disinfect the pruner and saw with alcohol. I immediately cut my finger. Not badly — but for a moment I'm amused by the idea that this letter is from a hospital bed, having severed a finger. Luckily, it didn’t come to that.

The mission is simple but time-consuming: remove dead, diseased, or crossing branches; remove newly sprouting shoots from the root system at the base of the tree; and thin out the overcrowded canopy. Basically, anything blocking light and air from reaching the fruiting wood. It takes one to two hours per tree. The shape you’re aiming for is the polyconic vase — an open goblet form with six to eight main branches, arms raised to the sun. It feels like allowing the tree to breathe.

What nobody tells you about pruning is what it does to you. I’d spent the morning intensely concentrated on LifeUnwound's future plans. An hour on the land and something shifted. The act of clearing dead wood — physical, deliberate, unhurried — brought me back to myself. Space for air and light in the tree. Space for the mind, away from technology.

And this enriching pause despite the interruptions. Simone is here varnishing the shutter frames damaged by summer heat and the tramontana winds blowing down from the Apennines. It’s his third visit — each time he declares the job finished and leaves, later we find somewhere he’s missed. He is keen to tell me about his next opera performance in the nearby village and explore whether I can help him set up a show in Brussels or London.

The cat follows me through the grove, indifferent to the pruning but happy for the company, pausing occasionally to chase something invisible in the grass.
Hungry work. My mind turns to Thursday night at the nearby Circolo — the village social club. It’s pizza night, but the "pezzo forte" is the torta di ceci. A savoury pancake of olive oil, water, and chickpea flour, baked at high heat in wood-fired ovens in heavy tinned copper pans until crispy and golden outside, soft and yielding within.

Livorno claims it as its own. The expression — “Mi piaci come la torta di ceci” — reappears regularly in graffiti in the nearby city, telling you everything about how seriously they take it. My step-uncle Alberto, a vero Livornese, declared last Thursday that the torta at our Circolo is better than anything you’ll find in Livorno. This is fighting talk. We are in the province of Pisa. The Pisani and the Livornesi do not get on — think New York versus Boston, Barcelona versus Madrid. Just an example: someone has helpfully scrawled "Livorno merda" on a wall just outside the village. So he's breaking sacred traditions. But the torta is good.

The Land: At the moment, it’s all about the olive trees. Last year, the olive fly decimated the harvest — it was painful to see so many spoiled and fallen olives, and we didn’t produce a single drop of oil. Reserves are low, and we need a good season. We don’t use chemicals, so the challenge is building a better organic protection system before the fly returns. The cycle of life.

The Villa: Busy preparing for the season and the first retreat in May. Painting, repairing, upgrading. On our minds: where to put a gym, whether a new bathroom makes sense, and whether a panoramic outdoor sauna would justify itself on cold autumn mornings. (It would.)

The Table: Simple. Local organic vegetables, beans, our oil, schiacciata bread, pecorino, parmigiano, and walnuts. Dessert is a homemade cake with red wine from the local azienda. Food that nourishes the body as much as nature nourishes the soul.

An Invitation to Unwind:
The May retreat is almost full — one spot remains. If you’ve been thinking about it, now is the time. → lifeunwound.ghost.io/wellness-and-yoga-retreats
A new retreat will be announced shortly (September or October).
Or if you’d simply like a week at the villa on your own terms — the rental link is here.

Con amore dall’isola nel verde.

Charlie