Realm's activity

That is great. Ram. The collection of small cottages that we are hoping to buy come with bosco ceduo, seminativo, pascolo, vignetto, a small area of ulivio, and some incoltro, which we think were the vegetable patches. At present it is just oaks, brambles, etc. and clear signs of wild boar activity. In other words just the sort of place a peasant farmer would have lived in. Whilst we were searching we found one place, too high for us at 900 metres, and too steep for my liking, where the old couple were still keeping sheep, chickens, rabbits, and as we walked passed an outbuilding a pig snorted at us, even though we could not see it. The wife still made their own cheese. What impressed me most was their vegetable patch. There was not a single weed to be seen! I have not seen such care for the land since I was a child. I suspect that places like that are getting quite rare even in Italy. My wife is fascinated by anything horticultural, so we are both looking forward to being peasants. Many thanks.

Hi, We are looking to buy, and now need to open a euro account. Does anyone have any experience of banks in the Borgo a Mozzano or Diecimo area. We looked at the Barclays branch in Lucca, but they seem to deal only with businesses. We picked up a leaflet from the post office in Pescaglia today, but the queue looked as if it was very slow moving, with everybody sitting down just to pass the time of day! We are particularly concerned that in the past some have complained about being charged just to transfer money into their account, and I am not referring to exchange charges. Many thanks.

I knew, from past experience, that I could trust some of you to come up with really good answers. When google maps are magnified enough they show bus stops. If we have understood it correctly, we can expect tarmac road up to that point, which is about 1 to 1.5 kms short of the property. We have looked carefully at the question of micro-climate there. It faces south west and has a circle of hills above it to the north and north east, which may help. The land is steep, actually terraced, but until we can visit we can not be really sure what that means - though www.earthtools.org gives a lot of info about height. So we have been able to get an idea about the general lie of the land. As for being snowed in, I am a bit concerned, and will be checking the roads carefully with that in mind. We intend to be capable of coping with whatever the weather throws at us, which does mean being well stocked in advance. And with a decent mobile signal we can still stay in touch. (We walked one site trying different mobile operators to see which gave us the best signal.) My wife did know that fruit trees do need several days below 7 degrees C in order to fruit well the next Summer. Our Rosemary, here in England, survived until March and then was killed by the last lot of bad weather. Kiwi fruit was not on our list of possibles, but it will be now, though I believe they do not ripen until quite late. Some we saw in Pont St Esprit last October were not then ripe enough. Again, Many thanks.  

Thanks Ram. We did not know about vincoli, so we will certainly be asking about them.  Hopefully there are none, but we will make sure.There is one thing that we really appreciate about ItalyMag, that is that collectively there is so much knowledge out there that is freely available.  It is fantastic to be able to go online ask a silly question, be shown what you really need to ask, and then be given the right answer.  Many thanks to everyone involved.

Thanks Penny and RamThe building was urbanized by the present owners some 18 years ago, who then went away and left it to deteriorate.  The agricultural value of the land would have been quite reasonable then. It is not terraced, the slopes are mostly gentle, and it appears to have had some olives on it, plus particelli marked out as seminativo, with a small particelli of pascolo, and about 30% of the total land marked as bosco misto (the soil depth may not be very great there).  BUT although we have not yet been able to walk over the entire site yet, what we have seen is 30 foot oak trees where we would have expected pascolo and olives.  Clearly the land is not worth very much after so many years of complete neglect.I was wondering whether Penny's comment might help as we know the approximate measurements of the present ruin - we could not get close enough to get precise measurements, and we do have the scale drawings that were submitted to the commune at the time of urbanization. The value of building land surely cannot vary hugely from a virgin site, once proper allowance has been made for the allowed building volume.When we are there later this month we will make a point of visiting the commune to get to know them, and see how they respond to our ideas (we are quite happy to accept the local style).  But what we are trying to do is get some idea of what we should offer, and that depends on the building land value.

Thanks Chardonnay. We had realised that the roads could matter.  The agent took us halfway up an overgrown track and then we had to walk the rest.  About one kilometre in total. He said it would cost 10,00 euros to repair, but I was thinking I should double that.  We visited the site on foot privately another day, but had to walk all of the way, as our car's camshaft sprocket had sheared off just south of Grenable, and we did not dare to take the hire car off tarmac.  I was looking carefully at the slope of the road and concluded it would not be difficult to get into pretty good condition.  What we will not tell the agent is that we are certain that alternative ways onto the property exist, without anyone else having the right to cross the land for access reasons, or even for us to need to negotaite access rights across somebody else's land. Those tracks we were able to walk would be shorter and probably easier.  Later this month we are planning to revisit and will check these tracks out more thoroughly, and if possible drive over them.Electricity and telephone lines pass by about half a kilometre from the property (but add another 200 yards to the house site) or so away and the land between is fairly flat and at present totally unused.  There is no public water supply.  There is mention of a spring, but as there is also mention of a well, we suepect that the spring could be seasonal.We are both well aware that it is a big project, but my other half is exicited by the prospect of having that land for crops and shrubs, as well as olives, but we would also plant some fruit tress as well.  We brought back a soil sample to test it, and have watched the weather forecasts for this last year so we have a pretty good idea of what to expect.We might be the only fools who have actually looked at this one.