Making Butter in the Valley of Hell

I was pretty sure I'd hit my yearly quota of butter tourism while we were in Paris. But it turns out Tuscany has some butter tourism opportunities, too. We went for a hike yesterday in the hills north of Florence, in what is known as the "Valley of Hell" (Valle dell'Inferno). The trail we followed was the Sentiero delle Burraie-- "Path of the Butter Huts." (Maybe there is a technical name for butter huts in English, but I sure don't know it.)

The trail goes past ten or twelve dilapidated butter huts. Butter huts seem to have been all the rage in the 19th century in these parts. The huts were built semi-underground, near a spring or stream, so that the cold water could be diverted through troughs around the walls of the huts to refrigerate milk and butter churned on site. (Refrigeration is important in the Valley of Hell, after all.)

The butter huts have intriguing names. This one was called Bacio (kiss). 

Mwah!

We saw the remains of some non-butter-related habitations, too.

All in all, your basic butter hut hike. And we made fresh tortelloni with lemon butter for dinner...