Lunigiana chestnuts, once a vital part of community life. Picture: Lunigiana Marketing & Web.

It’s chestnut time in Lunigiana, the unspoiled part of northern Tuscany that surrounds the mill, and you’ll often encounter a whole carpet of them round a corner on our narrow tree-lined roads. We also have many traditional seasonal dishes using chestnut flour.

Chestnuts in Lunigiana: more than food

In times past the chestnut harvest had far more significance than does today, because chestnuts were much more than a mere culinary delight: they were life-savers. In this poor part of rural Tuscany, and not so long ago, significant numbers of people in the past starved to death in the winter months. And many more would have done so if it hadn’t been for chestnuts. They provided flour for winter sustenance, and families kept their groves of ‘bread trees’ as well tended as their vegetable plots.

Chestnut wood in Apella, Lunigiana. Picture: Nicola di Gennaro – CAI Fivizzano.

The chestnuts were dried, peeled and stored before being taken to a watermill like ours in Posara for grinding into flour.

You can still see dozens of gradili, the old, two-storeys-high drying rooms, with a regular pattern of openings in the brickwork of the upper floor, where the chestnuts were put on racks. Slow-burning fires were lit on the floor below. The drying process lasted 40 days or so, during which the family had to stay in the gradile for hours on end, to make sure the heat was just right.

Re-enacting chestnut drying in a gradile. Picture: Matilde Ferrarire, Sigeric – Servici per il turismo.

So they became places for social gatherings: the recounting of legends, the telling of tales – and for the village girls, the assessing of eligible young men.

Suitors were sent to be vetted, but if a girl didn’t like the sight or sound of the boy, she signalled for damp wood to be put on the fire below – and he was “smoked out!”

From chestnuts to chestnut bread

When they were dried, the chestnuts were peeled, cleaned and stored (in specially made cupboards called madie), before being brought in batches to a watermill for grinding into flour between November and April, when chestnut bread was vital to fend off starvation.

(You can read more about the chestnuts of Lunigiana by clicking here.)

Creative holidays in Tuscany – art, stories and good company

Come and join us for inspired tuition, warm hospitality, beautiful accommodation, delicious home-cooked food and stunning locations, as well as good stories and friendly conversation.

We call our Watermill weeks convivial creativity: so ,join us, be creative – and have fun! You can read all about our unique holidays – painting, knitting and Italian language – by clicking here.

Many local towns and villages have chestnut festivals.