Tuscany vacation, cooking, walking, truffle-hunting tour

Planet

In our farm we adopted organic agriculture. We improve soil fertility and maintain biodiversity through the use of organic fertilizers and compost, crops rotation and a lot of different local varieties of vegetables and fruits . In the vegetable garden we cover the soil with biodegradable vegetal film: it helps maintaining the right humidity without wasting too much water. . We have a system of irrigation giving water to crops avoiding any waste . The very few treatments to our olive trees and in the vegetable garden are all allowed in organic farming and reduced to minimum.

We renovated the old stone farmhouse using certified green building materials. The former barn is now a timberframe off-grid house where we live and give the cooking classes . Both the houses have an eco-tourism certification. We use renewable energy only. We aim to be completely independent from carbon using woods cut from our forests and solar /photovoltaic panels. The water is from our well and rain is collected in 3 tanks and given to the garden. We do recycling. We replaced the plastic bags used in all the guests' apartments for recycling with biodegradable vegetal bags .The towels are changed weekly or on request. Liquid soaps for personal hygiene are offered in dispensers to eliminate the use of disposable products. Our body and home hygiene soaps are certified organic. All paper used, including toilet paper, has an eco-label. We produce and serve organic food not because we have an official certification but because we do believe that industrial FOOD production is one of the biggest responsible of carbon emissions. It is time to reclaim our REAL food made with fresh local produced ingredients.

People

We are part of a network of small producers organizing farmers markets in the nearest villages. What we do not grow, we get from other small farmers in the area and in anycase all our ingredients used in the kitchen are from Tuscany . We promote the importance of buying fresh season produce and encouraging small agriculture and neighboor farmers against intensive agriculture.
We also do our best to promote our traditional gastronomy and self- production organizing with a local association workshops on how to make soap with olive oil, how to make candles with bee wax , how to make bread etc... We are big promoters of Do It Yourself , the furniture in the apartments were restored by us. We also deal with didactic tours for children with local primary schools. We teach children how to saw , transplant and the importance of eating fresh season vegetables. We take them into the woods and let them listen to the sounds of Mother Nature.