IT'S funny how these things come back with a different label,' muses Julian Matthews, the founding and managing director of Real Wild Estates. He's talking about agritourism, the meeting of agriculture and tourism, a growing global trend based on an old idea. For much of the 20th century, farmers would regularly invite families onto their land to help harvest crops in return for free lodgings, he points out.
Today, although examples of agritourism can be found all over the world, it is most closely associated with Italy. It first started to achieve widespread fame in the Mediterranean country in the 1950s, as traditional and small-scale farming became increasingly less profitable. Farmers were forced to diversify, so they threw open the barn doors, welcoming outsiders, urban Italians, and international tourists, who learned how to milk cows and prepare produce, such as cheese and wine, and picked vegetables and herbs. Free labour turned into paying customers and, over time, some of the agrotourismos became increasingly luxurious.
Perhaps the best high-end example in Italy now is Borgo Santo Pietro in Tuscany, a 300acre estate 40 minutes from Siena (www. borgosantopietro.com). Spear-like cypress trees, so tall they seem to pierce the bright blue sky above, line the long gravel driveway. They're a common feature outside hotels, farms, and homes in the region, a symbol of welcome. Behind are mellow-coloured stone and terracotta-roofed dwellings-with bedrooms of varying sizes and, at the top, the central house, more than 800 years old, all soft, crumbling corners, tumbling wisteria and linen curtains waving lazily at new guests through open windows.
Denne historien er fra June 29, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 29, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
