One of the premises for BioIntegral philosophy is to recover traditional farming practices: instead of single-crop farming, for example, to make room for mixed crops, for rotation in the fields, for seed diversification.
We had a chat with Anna Baj Macario regarding this, who, at her Castello del Trebbio, has managed to create an internal chain that goes from natural fertilisers all the way to the table.
<<Here at the Castle we are able to reuse a whole lot of things: to regenerate our land we sow string beans and spelt; and the latter, once harvested, becomes the main ingredient in salads (in summer) or soups (when it’s cold) that I offer the clients who come on excursions here to taste our wines. Or chick peas, which are also used for refertilising the vineyards, but when dried and salted are excellent to accompany our aperitifs. And there’s more: the spelt, when ground, becomes flour. I would like to start making pasta out of it.>>
<<We’re also working to produce puffed spelt cakes: the process is quite long but I know I’ll see them on my table soon, not to mention on those of our clients, who really appreciate discovering hands-on that the much abused expression “ zero kilometre” is something very positive. And then, as far as we are concerned, I’d like to talk about zero waste.>>
To give our excursion in Chianti a proper ending, Anna has taken us on a tour of the property’s so called “hunting reserve”. <<Here they really don’t hunt anything at all but the extent of this Estate [almost 400 hectares] allows us to leave a part of it uncultivated: many animals find shelter here all year round making Trebbio a territory which is always rich in game. Animals that we, being BioIntegral, leave in peace, naturally: here the salads are made with spelt, not with rabbit!>>
Be as it may, the BioIntegral pantry is expanding, there’s nothing to say about that.
