July in Luogosanto - Harvesting and threshing of ancient wheat

At this time of the year, Gallura offers very unique experiences. July is the month of wheat and medicinal herbs.

It's July. You were looking for the bluest sea, and you found it, in Gallura. But how did all your umbrella neighbours find it? So, to isolate yourself a little, you get up, turn your back to the sea and go up to the beach, where the first fragrant plants grow. There you look up and discover the other horizon, a large green sea with silver rocks and many small golden islands. If you had a hawk’s view, you would see a swarm, in those golden islands: it is the Gallura peasants who harvest and thresh the wheat.

It's July. In the Gallura language this month is called aglióla, a word that means threshing. What is threshing used for? To separate the cereal grains from the chaff. Reminiscences of biblical parables? How about going and reaping some emotions? How about removing the salt and sand from your holiday and finally tasting the pulp of this land?

June and July are the months for harvesting flowers and seeds. In Luogosanto, right in the heart of Gallura, medicinal herbs such as helichrysum, hypericum and lavender are also harvested at the end of June. Some local organic farms cultivate, harvest, process, package and sell these raw materials and the many herbal preparations. The first weeks of July, on the other hand, are dedicated to the harvest of wheat, barley and oats.

Hospitality is not lacking; men and women of strong values ​​welcome a few lucky guests who can participate in the most important event of the agricultural year, admire the Aprilia that plunges, rubs, separates, sifts and throws the chaff from the cannon, dip their hands in the wheat still warm from the sun, collect it in the sacks, weigh them, register them and load them on tractor trolleys, participate in the conversations of farmers who exchange impressions on the quantity and quality of production, cultivation techniques, and then the inevitable stories, anecdotes and jokes. Because although the aglióla is a job, it is also and above all a great party, an opportunity to meet and exchange.

In various stazzi of Luogosanto, such as Lu Mucaréddu and Tressèrri, it is possible to participate in the harvest by hand, where elderly and young farmers explain how the operations are carried out, from the organization of reapers to the skilful gestures to use the small sickles correctly from the serrated blade, with which the sheaves of wheat are cut, then collected in sheaves and piled in biche.

The thrill of entering a field of golden ears that sway in the breath of the wind, alongside men and women who modestly share their great knowledge, is priceless. Taking part in an ancestral and fundamental work for Mediterranean culture, walking lightly on the earth that has nourished generations of human beings and making your own small contribution so that this ongoing ritual fills the senses and hands with emotions. At the end of the morning you will be amazed to find on your lips the sand and salt that you left by the sea ... but it will be a completely different flavor!

After the party you can go back to the blue sea and enjoy it even more than before, but every now and then you will turn to look nostalgically at the green sea and its golden islands behind you. Don't worry, nostalgia is cured: just go back to the hinterland, with an open heart. I'll tell you more, nostalgia can be prevented: just choose Luogosanto or another inland town as your holiday destination and enjoy the quiet, the nature, the culture of these places. Then, from here, whenever you wish, in a few minutes you can reach the sea and rediscover the border of an island that only then can you say you really know.

The granary of Rome

Over the millennia, Sardinian cultures have flourished and developed around the cultivation of wheat. Sardinia was "the granary of Rome" and still produces large quantities of this cereal, especially durum wheat, called tricu lottu (Sardinian wheat). Gallura, however, is also a special region here; soft wheat has always been cultivated here, called tricu còssu (Corsican wheat), one of the many fruits of the millennial exchange between the two banks of the Bocche di Bonifacio.

Corsica, Maddalena archipelago, Gallura

It seems that this ancient grain arrived in Sardinia after the Middle Ages, with the first Corsican shepherds who colonized the Maddalena archipelago, and that from these "Middle Islands" it landed in Gallura and was adopted by the shepherds-farmers of the stazzi. But in the twentieth century lu tricu cossu risked extinction, because institutions, agronomists and traders pushed the people of Gallura to prefer more productive and market-demanded varieties of wheat. Varieties that did not always take root in these granite soils and that needed constant care to resist mold and parasites.

The keeper of the ancient seed

Fortunately, a conscientious farmer, Agostino Sotgiu, from the Chèssa sheepfold, kept the last handpieces of tricu cossu and sowed the beans, year after year, selecting them and donating them to other farmers sensitive to recovery and the maintenance of ancient grains. Now, following the example of ziu Austinu Sóggiu "Dajòni", farmer-custodian associations have arisen that deal with the protection, awareness and enhancement of this and other varieties and its products: flour and semolina, mother yeast (la matrica), typical pasta (cjusòni, fiuritti and pulilgiòni), bread (lu còccu, lu panʼa lólga ), the Gallura soup (suppa cuata) and the inevitable traditional sweets (acciuléddi, cucciuléddʼe méli, papassini, casgiatini, casgiulati…).

Threshing

After the days of the harvest come the days of the threshing machine. Until the early twentieth century this operation took place in the farmyards, in Gallura called li róti. Some of these can still be admired in the windiest hills of the stazzi. They are monumental circular granite paving stones, with a pole in the center around which ranks of horses or oxen ran, which with their trampling freed the grains from the ears. Then the mass gathered and launched into the air, where that formidable zero-emission machine that is the mistral wind took care of sweeping away the straw and husk, while the grains, heavier, fell to the ground and collected in sacks . Despite the help of the wind, it was a very tiring and inefficient job, just think of the many pebbles that inevitably ended up in the grain sacks!

The mototrebbia of ʼ27

The first motor-driven threshers pulled by oxen were a godsend for the Gallura peasants. One of these, registered in 1927, Aprilia model of the Succursale Italo Svizzera Macchine Agricole S.a. in Bologna, is still in operation at the Capriólu farm in Luogosanto, thanks to the passion of another far-sighted farmer: Pietro Pirredda. Pitréddu has collected more than seventy threshers, from when he was a child, in the post-war period, to his father's following from one stazzo to another in Gallura, to his retirement years (actually working all the time), when he decided to restore his father's Aprilia and put it back into operation.

Lunch at Pitreddu

For years, Pitreddu, his children and a good group of friends have come together to thresh lu tricu cossu and lu tricu lottu of their companies. As tradition dictates, it is always a great party: in the end there is never a lack of a lavish lunch in the shade of the olive trees, someone playing the accordion, and children, teenagers, men, women and the elderly who meet and talk to each other. Also thanks to occasions like this, there are more and more hobbyists and new farmers who want to preserve and pass on traditional culture and crops