“The Ultimate Active Experience in the Dolomites”
Pietro Franco Deltedesco, miller from the Dolomites
Deltedesco says, shrugging his shoulders: “I try to keep it going until I can. But when I’m not there anymore …
Until the time after the war, almost every village had a mill, normally owned by several families, where they brought their share of crops to be milled. It was measured by volume, so there was a big difference where the crops grew.
There was not much growing on the steep slopes in these high, narrow valleys in the Dolomites. Each family brought to mill rye and barley, barely enough for the whole year. Each village also had a public oven. Bread was made twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, and this was big event for the whole village to gather for the whole night, grown-ups and children, everybody with his own task.
The bread was put on a wooden grate to be dried and had to last for the next months. It was cut into chunks and soaked in the soup, so it could be eaten.
The running power of the mills is water force. It runs over the large wooden wheel that makes the big, heavy mill stone turn around. The whole mill is made of wood on a rocky basement, and also all the wheels, machines, containers are made of wood. Dust flies around, illuminated by the sun that falls through the little window in the wall, as the heavy grindstone makes is slow, steady turns or the sieve moves back and forth and the freshly ground flour falls through.
All this is accompanied by an incessant, rhythmic “Toc toc toc”, that becomes a song, as it melts with the sound of the flowing water.
Until the winter comes, and with it the ice and the snow. Then everything falls silent.
