A rather strange little collection of buildings at the farm, built into the first hillside terrace below the main farmhouse. This is our new storage center, called the ‘cheese farm’ because this is where our mother used to make cheese and yoghurts. The lower building is built in front of an ancient Etruscan stone grotto, and includes our mother’s modern temperature controlled refrigerators now repurposed as our storage rooms.

The little building perched above it is still in progress with some renovations still to come, but will be a staging and drying room for the herbs and plants that we are planting in the grove. All the roofs have been rebuilt, everything has been fixed and cleaned, and we’ve just received our HACCP certificate, which is the last step in our process of the farm’s biological certification. It’s taken a year of hard work, study, exams, and inspection, but it’s done.