On the palette of colours that paint the summer of our mountains and valleys, gold has for some time now returned to be present. It is the gold of the ears of barley and wheat which, fortunately, have once again returned to sway, cradled by the August breeze, in numerous localities of the Province.
For most of us, all this represents a real novelty, but the reality is well summed up by the famous phrase that I have shamelessly borrowed to title this account of mine.
Indeed, because for some years now the cultivation of these and other cereals — of which memory had almost been lost — has resumed; cereals that, until the 1930s-40s, were very widespread throughout the Belluno territory, from Comelico to the Feltrino area, and particularly in the Agordino.
The cultivation of barley boasts a centuries-old tradition, of which written traces can be found as far back as the 1800s, especially with regard to human consumption of the hulled product.
There are numerous references in various texts, books and magazines, both from a historical and a culinary point of view. It is worth recalling, for example, what is reported in the late-nineteenth-century work by Antonio Maresi Bazolle, “Il possidente Bellunese” (a manuscript written between 1868 and 1890, consisting of over a thousand pages of small, dense handwriting, kept at the Civic Library of Belluno).
He describes, with particular richness of detail and an interesting literary style that deserves to be quoted verbatim, the various crops in use at that time, and dedicates a specific chapter to barley, even naming two native ecotypes: the Nostrano and the Agordino.
…On barley. Unlike wheat and rye, barley is sown in spring. The barley variety normally used here is the one whose ear has four rows; sometimes, however, the two-row variety alone is also sown, and this is the one used in the Agordino. This latter barley has a larger grain than the other, and so has sturdier straw, but all things considered the advantage still lies with the local (nostrano) barley.
It should be added that to sow two-row barley the seed must be brought from the Agordino, and this is expensive, because up there they demand Turkish sorghum in exchange for barley, weight for weight; and Agordino barley sown here crossbreeds with the local barley, so the seed must always be renewed. Barley is not used ground into flour like wheat or rye, but is eaten as whole grain, used to make soups, either on its own or mixed with beans. This soup is especially good if a little piece of pork is added to season it, and it is wholesome because it is cooling. The peasants make great use of it, while the upper classes show that they do not deign to touch it. To be eaten as soup, the barley grain must be freed from the husk covering it — that is, it must be hulled. This operation is carried out by the miller, who has a special device for it. The finest, largest and cleanest barley found here is the one that comes from the Agordino, and it is brought here already hulled and ready to be prepared as soup…
The varieties once cultivated were of the two-row type, that is, with flattened ears bearing only two rows of awned seeds or caryopses. The plants frequently exceeded a metre in height, with an erect or slightly arched habit.
According to traditional cultivation techniques, barley was sown in spring, between April and
May, and harvested by hand in the height of summer, cut with specific tools: the sesola or faldìn da forment.
After mowing, the plants were gathered into bundles (manèi) and arranged in the field so as to form a “tripod” in the shape of a sheaf. These sheaves remained in the field for the first drying, and were later taken to special balconies (piòi), in the sun, to help remove the remaining moisture.
Threshing (beating) was then carried out by hand using a particular wooden tool called the ferél. This precious cereal was destined exclusively for human consumption, “stone-hulled” for the preparation of numerous variants of the famous menestra de orz, which often represented the only alternative on the table to the ever-present polenta, or “tostato co la balòta“, as a popular substitute for the far more renowned but extremely expensive coffee.
Hulling is still carried out today, now only in very few mills, through the mechanical abrasion of the caryopses, with ancient equipment and quite particular stone rollers, called “pilaorzo” or “pestino a mole“, or in dialect “pesta orz“.
This processing, unlike pearling, makes it possible to obtain a product richer in fibre, preserving a greater quantity of nutrients — in cereals, in fact, these are mostly located in the outer layers of the seed, close to the pericarp.
Another use worth mentioning, because it is less well known, was for the extraction of malt, an irreplaceable ingredient in beer-making.
The renowned “Birreria Pedavena”, founded by the Luciani family, indeed had its original production plant in Canale d’Agordo, and at that time could rely for its supply of raw material almost exclusively on local cereal production.
As the years went by, alongside growing prosperity, the native barley varieties underwent a clear genetic contamination brought about by the introduction of varieties that were certainly more productive, but lacking any geographically identifiable character. The cereal’s production purpose became increasingly aimed at livestock feed, but in this way economic interest plummeted almost to the point of causing the total abandonment of cultivation, unable to withstand the unsustainable competition from the fertile lowland areas.
It is known, however, that what were once hardships are often rediscovered as contemporary riches; certain habits that were once necessary choices imposed by unfavourable economic circumstances, today we value as health-conscious practices, and so, boasting a certain wisdom, we reaffirm with satisfaction: there’s something new in the air…
…or rather, something ancient!
Edited by Paolo Tormen, from Col Maòr no. 4, December 2012