Umbria cooking vacation, Italy

Environment

Our aim is to preserve nature the way it is, that's why our farm is totally organic, and have banned all kind of chemical products. Also the products used for cleaning are all natural and don't affect the enviroment. We produce our own soap for the dishwasher just out of natural ingredients, We produce our own electricity and hot water through solar energy, we compost all the leftover from food which makes it a great fertilizer for our vegetable garden. Our dogs and cats eat natural food and not canned or ready food. All that nature provides is precious so nothing should be wasted, that's why we put reductors of water on all showers, and all our lights turn off automatically. Most of the food that people waste can be converted in good food for our pets, or our sheep and hens. We try to share this philosophy with our guests and it works!

Community

Whatever we cannot grow we get it at the local market, we only buy regional products such as wine and beer. We only get eggs and meat from local suppliers and cheese is only bought directly from farmers. We love taking tourists to local wineries and food farm, and organizing food and wine tastings for them. We supports small productions as they may find it difficult to compete with the industrial production, so they need extra help to survive.
We always privilege these products which risk to disappear because they require too much work and high costs of production such as saffron and a few varieties of local beans.
All our guests are encouraged to attend the local market or the little shop, rather then go to the bigger supermarkets. We also invite them to go to those restaurants that share the same philosophy, and they make the effort, also because food there is better and healthier.
We always use products which we know can be found locally, if not we just change our plans, and cook something different!