Home / The teaching farm
Rete delle Fattorie Didattiche della Toscana
A teaching farm is not a day out: it is a workplace that, for a few hours, lets itself be watched up close. Here we pick, grind, mill and taste — the same things we do the rest of the year, explained while they are being done.
We go into the olive grove, pick the way it is really done, and then follow what happens to the olives: the weighing, the milling, the oil coming out. In season you see the continuous cycle at work; the rest of the year you visit the mill at rest and understand better what each machine is for.
From field to grain to flour. The stone mill grinds slowly and leaves the living part of the grain intact: you touch the wheat before and the flour after, and your fingers feel the difference from supermarket flour before your palate does.
Chickens and hens scratch about freely among the olive trees, the sheep keep the undergrowth clear in place of the brushcutter, the donkeys let you come close. It is not an enclosure to look at: it is the way the farm works, and the animals are part of it.
Schools of every level, groups, summer camps and families. The visit adapts to age: with the youngest we spend more time with the animals, with older children we go into what organic means and what farming without synthetic chemicals really involves.
Visits are always by appointment: we agree the day according to the season and what you want to see. During the milling season — October to December — the mill is working, and that is when there is most to see.
