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Chestnut processing and the Graà

The Graà is a traditional chestnut dryer, an essential fruit for peasant food in Grandola and Uniti. Chestnuts were harvested from chestnut groves and dried for storage during the winter.

Graá is a particular type of dryer, where one of the main agricultural products consumed by the inhabitants of the Grandola ed Uniti area and throughout northern Italy was dried: the chestnuts. Introduced in classical times, the chestnut is a very long-lived tree that can reach large sizes, as in the case of the Monumental Chestnut Tree of the "Field Meadows", at the township of Grona.

The chestnut forest, known as the chestnut grove, grows from the lowest elevations and can reach 1,000 meters in altitude. Farmers carefully followed its early summer flowering as well as the ripening of the husks in September: when they are ready they fall and, opening, spill out the chestnuts.

Drying was one of the ways to keep the precious fruits: this began around late autumn, when the weather began to become harsher, and continued for two or three weeks.

However, there are many recipes related to chestnuts, including that of the biröll, the famous and popular caldarroses, and that of the lacmel, a very simple dish made with cream and chestnuts....