Hazelnut harvest

Looks poetic doesn’t it? Not until you’re woken up early with what sounds like an enormous industrial vacuum cleaner. Still, the hazelnuts maintain their mystery, lying in steeped, green darkness, wrapped in shade and silence. The harvest has started and the contrasts are amazing. Stopping on a walk, you can hear hazelnuts drop in the nearby quiet, in the distance the vacuums zooming away. Sometimes a creature in the foliage – bird or boar? Under the branches the well kept hazelnut fields are so tidy, smooth white dust peppered by little copper-coloured flecks. So starts the Pimontese harvest season, with the humble hazelnut.