Kallikratis february...

Well, its not all and only herbs.. There also is time for getting together, playing music, eating and drinking and sharing time with friends..

We had a few days of party in Kallikratis, shared a wonderful time..

Lampis Xilouris and Giangos Chairetis from Anogia played the lutes, drums were played by Charis and Antonis..and many others were singing, clapping hands.. Dimitri joined the next day on bouzouki and mandolin, Panagiotis brought his guitar..

For two days, the house and our hearts resounded with music and rythms, and the singing of 'mantinades', 15-syllable rhyming couplets in Cretan dialect, often improvised..





Here Lampis Xilouris playing with heart and soul..

Giangos Chairetis

We all had a wonderful time.. I wish I could post some soundtracks here, which we recorded.. but it doesn't seem possible.. To get a feeling of some of the music played, you could visit the website of Lampis' brother Giorgis Xilouris, there are some videos and especially the latest one, where he plays with Giangos at http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=270962486382&share_id=320900997552&comments=1#!/video/video.php?v=367422154337

So back again.. well, we had our friends Willy and Johnny visiting from Holland, staying, working and sharing with us almost three weeks.. Together we collected and distilled Lavandula and Lentisk.. together we finished the details of the 'shop' in Kallikratis... Johnny especially was very active trying to attract attention from that lone car passing.. calling 'stop, shop' out when the whole place still looked like a buildingsite.. we had lots of fun together, as well as a lot of good get togethers and much work..

Then we got a call from a TV crew, they wanted to do a documentary about our work for the digital prisma channel..so we had to think about a herb that could be collected and distilled the same day, for them to film the entire process from collection to distillation. We went down to Modi and collected Lentisk, since there is a population just behind the distillery. From left to right you see Maria, Babis, Janina and Johnny cutting, Willy took the photo, and later Mario joined us as well in order to collect enough for a distillation.
You can click the photos to enlarge them...

We had a wonderful time with the crew that day.. Then as evening approached, they sat us down for an interview, here you see us and them through Willy's lense.. The documentary will come out sometime in January next year on prisma channel..

They were surprised though, that 6 people collecting most of the day followed by 3 hours of distillation only resulted in about 100ml of essential oil...but thats what Lentisk gives...

Back in Kallikratis the next day, we were preparing for Johnnys birthday party.. goats had to be caught in the wild and slaughtered, bread had to be baked and foodstuff prepared..

And we had a wonderful time... Kostas, who builds magnificent string instruments in Chania had brought his guitar, and Thoma joined in with his wonderful voice..

Willy (Wil deZeeuw) made two short videos, which I here post with her permission..maybe you can grasp some of the atmosphere...it was a truly fine and starry night, fresh mountain air... In the second video they sing Johnny's birthday song...Gianni is the Greek name for Johnny...