This is the ” farmer first tour to discover the values and lost jobs “, a project that will travel again with Silvia and Toti backpackers to experience the everyday reality of the most emblematic Italian peasant.
The trip lasted about 6 months and Silvia and Toti worked as volunteers to give their contribution to the defence and enhancing the local agriculture.
Flip&Grow the farm tour 1° stop
Oasis of Biodiversity Galbusera Bianca
Oasis of Biodiversity Galbusera Bianca – Sustainable Agricultural Village.
Flip&Grow farm tour - 2° stop
"The secrets of herbs" Piedmont - Italy
Silvia and Toti at the farm I segreti delle erbe, the second atop
of their Piedmont Flip & Grow the Farm tour.
There are lots of herbs to discover and to put the nose on. The place is gorgeous: a house in the woods! The family home is cosy and very friendly to us.
These days there are many things to do! Especially disturbing the small field of lavender and distilling essential oils.
Flip&Grow farm tour - 3° stop
Valtidone Verde (Lombardy) Italy
With a very warm welcome, Ludmilla introduced Silvia and Toti to the whole family and introduced them to the beautiful valley of Zavattarello (Pavia).
Here they are in front of a beautiful view and beautiful nature.
But their duty is calling: new stuff to learn and to practice!
Transformation of the cherries into jam, gardening and small farm work like harvesting cherries from cherry trees!!
Flip&Grow farm tour - 4th stop
the Cuore Verde Piedmont, Italy
Silvia and Toti were very busy with all the activities at il Cuore Verde (Piemonte), the fourth stop of the farm tour. They are learning a lot: canned in oil, the dough for bread and pizza with beer, egg pasta, homemade craft beer, fruit juices, not to mention the work in the garden!
Eating pounds of vegetables and fruits in season every day is really nice. It makes you feel so much a part of nature’s cycle. Toti is also helping to make markets in Acqui Terme, Ovada, and Novi Ligure. The alarm goes off early in the morning, but it’s a very nice experience!
Sunday was a long day of preparations for the much-awaited FESTIVAL COUNTRY … they picked fruits and vegetables early in the morning, cooked for everyone in the secluded garden, grilled and ate in good company. In the afternoon, we attended yoga lessons, and Vanessa accompanied the participants on a tour of the company, telling his story.
It was a beautiful day full of sharing, fun, love for the earth and good food ♥
Flip & Grow farm tour - 5th stop
Nun tà de scià (Liguria)
Silvia and Toti were at San Colombano, in the beautiful Valle del Chierico (in the Province of Genova, Liguria), a mountainous area 20 km from Chiavari.
Brunella and Guido were greeted with great enthusiasm and warmth. This country’s reality is a bit ‘different from the others because it is not a company making profit. It is, in fact, a house bought with many sacrifices to achieve the dream of living in a simple, genuine, cultivating the land for their livelihoods and recovering the ancient local varieties of fruit and vegetables.
This time, they needed to work according to the principles of permaculture in gardens and fields within the forest, and it was a wonderful experience. It almost seems to be one with nature and work as guardians of this corner of paradise.
The work is concentrated in the cooler hours from 6 a.m. until 10 a.m. The rest of the day is dedicated to meditation, remarrying, reading, and small house chores. They wanted a place like this!
Flip & Grow farm tour- 6th stop
Farm Roveroni Annalisa (Emilia Romagna)
Toti and Silvia continued the farm tour in the beautiful hills of Val di Taro and helped Annalisa and Enzo with their gardening.
One unexpected experience this time found them in front of a demanding “work in progress” in the constitution of a laboratory for the bakery, a store, and a future community with homes in bio-architecture.
The land here is very clayey, and drought is a problem on the agenda for which we see many efforts to irrigate the plants.
Doing the best also to express solidarity with those people who have a dream and struggle to achieve it.
Flip & Grow farm tour - 7th stop Fattoria dell’autosufficienza (Emilia Romagna)
For the Love4Globe guys, a few days in Bagno di Romagna, they participated in a field camp, born of our complicity with Francis, head of the Fattoria dell’Autosufficienza.
In recent years, in fact, some derelict land has been recovered, and training courses and projects have started that are slowly making this reality fully self-sufficient.
Along with other volunteers who had joined the initiative, they had very intense days. It was like being part of a big family and sharing many ideals, which created a special energy.
Elena and Alex gave them many synergistic ideas on agriculture, and they saw some typical permaculture practices live. It was a short stop, but so intense!
Flip & Grow farm tour - 8th stop
La Tribù delle Noci Sonanti - Marche
This time Silvia was speaking:
“What can I say? Coming to this place was literally like going out of the world!
For over twenty years, Fabrizio has created here his “tribe,” a community that seeks to evoke the lifestyle of indigenous tribes.
To choose to live without electricity, gas, or plumbing and therefore without any kind of normal comfort (there is a bathroom, a shower, a fridge, etc..).
These few days of total abstinence from modernity made us rediscover the beauty and sacrifice for the little everyday things.
Every day, bread is made by hand by grinding wheat. The plants are watered by hand after several trips to carry buckets of water. In the evening, we wash very sparsely with the buckets, and at night, the atmosphere is enhanced by the light of oil lamps.
After a few days, we can say that only the idea of a warm shower can give a feeling of well-being as extreme as even the thought of a soft mattress on which to rest your back.
On the one hand, there is the rediscovery of small pleasures and, on the other, an awareness of how difficult it is to decide to give up even the most obvious comfort.”
Flip & Grow farm tour - 9th stop
la Valle dell’Olmo Scuro (Marche)
Silvia and Toti spoke about the current stop: “We jumped to a beautiful place, where we were invited a few days before by email.
We have known Michael and Antonio and have had the opportunity to organize some educational activities for little children here on vacation.
We made them have fun painting with the vegetables, decorating stones, recycling magazines and tetra packs, and then playing around the magical elm multi-centennial.
It was a nice way to bring these children to the world of recycling, creativity and music through nature and the rural world.”
Flip & Grow farm tour - 10th stop
Officinalia and "Pool of Olmi" (Tuscany)
Tuscany is Love4Globe’s tenth stop on their farm tour. This land offered them landscapes, colours, and extraordinary people.
Officinalia is a beautiful family entire of activities. Every day is full of exciting things for our friends Silvia and Toti to do. They were divided between honey processing, processing fruits and vegetables in their laboratory, collecting in the fields, and taking care of the many other things to take care of and run. Every morning, they went to milk Gaia, the cow that gave them milk for breakfast, yoghurt, and fresh and tasty cheeses.
They also harvested prunes and plums and made juice, turned a lot of tomato sauce or canned tomatoes into pieces, cooked and put into jars of caponata, and collected the season’s first apples. But many other things were waiting for them!
After their time at The Officinalia, Silvia and Toti went to San Gimignano and later Populonia (Livorno), more precisely, to the beautiful Bay of Baratti.
They worked with Frida on the “Pool of Olmi.” Frida lives in the Etruscan park, four steps from the sea and an oasis of beauty, tranquillity, and nature.
She tries to revisit how we live in Etruscan by taking inspiration from its agriculture and products.
She used to live in a hut of reeds and clay without electricity (she used a solar panel and a few light bulbs in the evening), and the water was from the source. Silvia and Toti were learning some green building techniques to help build Earthen in its future laboratory.
They have also worked in the cultivation and processing of hemp (Cannabis sativa) and flax. So, two weeks of beautiful and intense, refreshed by the proximity of the sea and accompanied by beautiful sunsets.
Flip & Grow farm tour - 11th stop
Podere Veranello (Tuscany)
Silvia and Toti stopped at Podere Veranello (Tuscany) on the 11th stop of the farm tour.
The farm Veranello is near Scansano (Grosseto), south of Tuscany.
It has a nice atmosphere full of young people’s energy and ideas. The garden explodes with vegetables.
Flip & Grow farm tour - 12th stop
Terra e Libertà (Campania)
Continuing their farm tour, after Toscany, Silvia, and Toti went to Campania, they stayed in a small locality of Montella (AV) in Irpinia; everything here follows the rhythm of tammorra and organetto.
Silvia and Toti met the guys from Ragnatela and Genuino Clandestino, and it was a really good meeting.
They prepared delicious bread and pizzas cooked in a wood oven using “Ragnatela” and “Genuino Clandestino” varieties of organic grains. The flavour and texture were completely different from those normally produced by bakeries! They collected the famous Montella chestnuts igp in the forests of the nearby mountains.
Flip & Grow ! Farm tour - 13th stop Fattoria Fonte Trocchi (Abruzzo)
What a creative and interesting place! Here in Tufillo (a village of 400 souls on a hill in the province of Chieti), Nicolas and Federica have managed in two years to turn an old country house and a vacant lot into a place almost self-sufficient (it will be completely very short!).
They are two artists who love the earth and a simple, sustainable lifestyle. Their cosy little house also has space for some of their beautiful works (paintings and reliefs in terra cotta). Together with them, we learnt the basics of working with clay, creating some vases to hold the grain, and starting the construction of a bread oven!
Of course, we can not forget the work in the field with Wheat Senatore Cappelli, Farro, and Chickpeas.
What a beautiful sea landscape!
Flip & Grow farm tour 14th stop
Tempa Del Fico (Campania)
Silvia and Toti, our friends of Love4Globe, have been, during their farm tour, in the beautiful Cilento National Park between the hills and green forests of Campania.
It is a wonderful place where you can still admire the mountains and free horses, cows, and sheep Istrian free in their habitat. Tempa del Fico is cultivated, but most of all, it is bread as it once was!
Naturally leavened with sourdough, it grinds millstones of ancient grains such as Carusedda and Saragolla. Also, here is an interesting project: “ciucciopolitana,” or organized transport with donkeys, is an original alternative to living the slow rhythms of nature and rediscovering the relationship with these special animals.
Flip & Grow farm tour 15th stop:
Sotto i Pini (Sicilia)
Silvia and Toti stopped in Zafferna, close to the Etna, during their farm tour.
“It seemed far away on the day of our departure from Lombardy. We are located on the slopes of Etna near Zafferana, and we are working with a beautiful reality called Under the Pines. Here, Paul is responsible for the cultivation of avocados. Yes, you heard right: Avocados made in Italy … from Sicily! It seems incredible, doesn’t it? We are very excited, and we are learning many new things.”
