Week 15 - Val'Orcia

 

Boungiorno Friends and Family,

        This week was the first of many lasts. My last school field trip, my last workshop, and the last few days before my final project is due. We are certainly starting the busy point in my semester but all of our time here has led up to the completion of this project so it's very exciting. 

Our last field trip was exploring the hills of the Tuscany region and stopping at a few beautiful locations that kinda reminded me of the Flint Hills. The first stop of our trip was Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore. This is an active monetary of Bentideictine Monks that is nestled into the Tuscan landscape. It was very interesting to see an active monetary and I was surprised to see that the monastery had a gift shop where you could buy wine, olive oil, and other items made by the monks.

Inside the church of the monastery. 

One of the most beautiful elements of the monastery was these wood-inlaid chair seats. The detail that was put into each picture must have taken several hundred if not thousand hours.

There was also a large number of paintings done around a courtyard that explained the life of Saint Benedict. These paintings were done by one of the same artists who painted the Duomo in Orvieto.

After a fantastic lunch of homemade pasta and charcuterie, we headed to our next stop which was a church from the Middle Ages. This was one of the few churches that we have seen from this era. While visiting our professor reminded us that even though we have been to all these amazing churches throughout the semester we have admired their art and architecture, the reason these churches are here is not for us to study and admire. the point of these churches is to worship the Lord. It was a great reminder that the importance isn't on the earthly things but instead on Heavenly things, because not matter what man has created heaven is going to be even more beautiful beyond our understanding.

A view over the Tuscan landscape. While it's not the Flint Hills it certainly reminded me of it. 

To end the week I had my last workshop of the semester where we learned about making honey. At this farm, they grew grapes, hazelnuts, and olives and raised lots of bees. They were very knowledgeable about bees and I made sure to ask several questions. Here are a few things I learned.

1. Worker bees only live about 40 days whereas a queen bee can live up to 2 years
2. Worker bees have about a 5 km radius when collecting pollen
3. Male bees only fertilize the queen that's the only thing they do whereas the females are the ones that do all the work.
4. You can get different flavors of honey depending on the type of pollen the bees collect
5. The bees know which hive is theirs by smelling the pheromone of their queen.

I was also very interested in the bee hive and how they collect the honey.

Inside the box, there is a top section and a bottom section. The bottom is where the queen lives and lays her eggs and the top is where the honey is collected from.

The panels are removed from the top with a honeycomb on it where they can scrap the honey off of the panel. The bees still product honey in the bottom section that they feed off of but the top section is essentially excess honey they have created.

The queen isn't able to travel to the top section because of a metal grate. She is just a little bit larger and isn't able to pass through which means she is only able to lay eggs in the bottom and the top is reserved only for honey.

Finally, we were able to sample all the different types of honey they made with our lunch! My favorites ended up being Lemon Honey and Strawberry Honey.

One more week till my semester is complete. I'm honestly not sure where the time has gone...