Where nature and creativity
meet on Tuscany hills

Crop rotation in organic farming is a vital practice that maintains soil nutrients, suppresses weeds, and controls pests. To sustain soil health, crops such as legumes, which improves soil fertility, are rotated with cereals, which exploit the soil. Egyptian clover, a leguminous crop, is widely used to fix nitrogen into the soil and nourish it.

Did you ever wonder why your throat is sometimes tingling or even burning when you taste high quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)? Were you may be wondering what exactly is happening in your mouth? Yet, this reaction is a sign that you are tasting a high-quality product. For years EVOO has been judged exactly on this ability to make you cough. The more you cough, the better the quality. This response is indeed a sign for the purity of the oil. Some experts even grade the EVOO as one-cough, two-cough, even three-cough.

After months of uninterrupted and meticulous work we finally reached the endpoint of our efforts in October 2019: the olive harvest. Harvesting olives requires a careful planning as each single step should aim at ensuring the best possible quality of the olive oil in compliance with the regulations for organic cultures. During the previous months, the biggest challenge was the fight against the olive fruit fly which had threatened to cause huge losses.

About ten to six thousand years ago many human cultures settled down going from hunting to settled farmers. The introduction of the first cereals emmer and einkorn marked this transition. “Ötzi”, the man from the ice, has been shown to feed on einkorn. Later on in human history, more high-yielding grains as spelt and barley and finally wheat replaced the fine einkorn. However, einkorn remains until today a very digestible and tasty cereal.

The harvest has been characterized by high quality olives and by a low and uneven distribution of the fruits on the canopy. We started hand-picking the olives from the trees early October and the work has been completed about two and a half weeks later.