This isn’t a yurt related post – it’s about the rule of sustainable development. As you may be aware we are developing a site in the mountainous region of Abruzzo, the land that God forgot about, but the fact he forgot about it doesn’t mean he didn’t love it when he made it, because Abruzzo has been blessed with it all.
Sustainable Rural development is a key word right now – Italy has been too forgotten: the election earlier on this month has shook the country, in fact it shook the whole of Europe, as more than 50% of the vote went to fringe parties. The power, you may say is going back to the people, Italy has grown so tired of bureaucracy and the biggest winner was the 5 star movement, trying to take down the establishment and start new initiatives like circular government, lower taxes and even to pay each citizen a salary. It is headed by Beppe Grillo the comedian.
But it’s another Grillo that is the real star of this post and it’s not a person but a machine, a 14 horse power motocoltivatore (as its called in Italy) and this is why we are going to talk about it a little, because alongside everything we are hoping to introduce to Central Italy, like ecotourism, there are some things we think Italy should introduce to the rest of Europe. Italy has become a world leader in small tractors and special terrain machinery, tractors that have been developed to suit a sustainable farming tradition, small plots worked by hand driven tractors, like our famous grillo, and tracked tractors which are suitable for mountain terrain. It’s this small scale production that we believe is the thing that may save Europe.
Those small cultivators are adaptable to a myriad of uses: pumps, small ploughs, grass cutters, they even are coupled to small propelled trailers to transport the old farmers about. It’s this small scale life style that is the real jewel of Central and southern Europe, a lifestyle that is disappearing, but it’s exactly the way we see development. We talk a lot about organic farming with locals, but sometimes driving around the small villages, I’m amazed, because with all the innovation we seek to introduce here, I look at the way they cultivate and realise that they actually have it all: they grow all their own food at times, from olives for oil, grain for pasta and bread, to tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Each old house has an orchard of fruit trees: figs and mulberry, lemon and orange, grapes for wine. It’s a self sustainable lifestyle driven by our famous Grillo, they don’t need a 5 star movement – their rebellion is a minimalism, their answer to progress, is to use machinery on a mini scale, and keep it small.
With the disaster that is modern farming methods, with the health hazard that modern wheat has become (i’m not joking but eating bread from modern wheat is like killing yourself by disintegrating your gut – read here), so this country we have come to sustainably redevelop, has actually taught us its’ old ways, and we hope those will take root elsewhere, as the mainstream for real farming, a sustainable living.
The model is very simple – you don’t need to be successful in a business to buy your dream home to retire in. Your home can be a relationship with the land, you live by cultivating organically grown food with minimum machinery, sure you can do it all be hand, but the marvel of small scale machinery means, that with minimal effort you can grow all your own food easily. So instead of becoming more rich and more removed, we decided to go back to the earth, to let Italy teach us about its farming. We aim to start offering Ancient grain from this region for sale (contact us if this is interesting to you) and I didn’t even start talking about the Olive oil, because the in the immediate locality of our site, is a special olive variety called Intosso, or Olive Grande by the locals. It doesn’t produce the highest percentage of oil per weight, but it produces one of the world’s best quality olive oils, a bottle of which can sell for £18 per litre.
So in this time of change in Italy, with Beppe Grillo leading a revolution in politics, and yes Italy does need an overhaul, but MY vote is for that other Grillo, the real motor behind sustainable development, and its called minimalism, live within your means.
