The landscape

"If there were rivers here, my Apulia, you would be a totally different place".
In 1955 the poet Vittorio Bodini thus expressed the lack of water in this area.

The shortage of water, the absence of lakes and rivers, the scarce rainfall in this part of Italy, doesn't hinder the flowers from covering the fields from January to July, and does not prevent our trees from yielding good fruit. Nature here finds a perfect balance and flourishes even in the most unlikely nooks: a handful of earth in the crag of a rocky cliff is sufficient for a miniature mediterranean garden to take root, a tiny bonsai typical of the area, the olive, the carob tree, the fig tree.
Even if the soil layer isn't deep, the roots of the olive trees manage to delve into it and to cling on to the white rocks that surface into the fields. The farmers of Puglia are familiar with these stony surfaces: they have struggled for centuries to reclaim this land and to improve their produce. There were so many stones in the fields, that perhaps in an attempt to get rid of them, they have used them to build small houses in the countryside, the "trulli" or dry stone huts and the rubble walls. And yet, these stones keep coming to the surface, like tubers in continuous reproduction.
The many rubble walls present in our countryside do not only function as dividing lines of the various properties, but also help to hold firm the soil which otherwise would be washed away by the rain water. And all the incredible terraced fields were built so as to allow cultivation even on the slopes, which otherwise could have been used only as grazing grounds for goats.
It took great human toil by "Un popolo di formiche/A people of ants". Tommaso Fiore writes:

"you ask me, how did the people manage to dig so many stones and line them up in this way?
I think the task would have frightened even a group of giants. This is the harshest and stoniest of rocky landscapes, Murgia; to render the terrain agriculturally viable, terracing the slopes...it has been necessary to work hard and assiduously like a group of ants".

On top of the rocky ridge that to the south marks the boundary line of our property, you will find an almost hidden, tiny little church dedicated to Saint Biagio, an ancient hermitage once inhabited by monks. From this wild and solitary site, you can catch a glimpse of my house surrounded by a green sea of olive trees that merges out into the blue Adriatic Sea.
In the basement of every family farm in this area, there is an underground oil mill, normally excavated in the rocks from natural caves below the buildings. Up to the first decades of the past century, the harvested olives were pressed in these mills. The mills were powered by animals, normally small donkeys which later on were substituted by the first combustion engines and by a complicated system of belts and pulleys.
Our family farm, the "Frantoio/Oil Mill" takes its name from the underground oil press above which the farm itself was built. By going down just a few rock-hewn steps you come into a vast underground world, hewn into the rock and centuries old. In this place one immediately perceives how intimately our land is linked to the olive oil production. When you look at the old utensils and equipment and the cast iron press you get the impression that the work of the mill has just been suspended some hours earlier. Our old folks say that actually, these grinders have stopped turning and crushing the olives only about thirty years ago. And since that time everything has remained exactly as it was then, a true exhibit of industrial archeology.
The microclimate in the underground mill is perfect to preserve fruit and vegetables organically produced on our farm and offered to our guests. My mother is a very demanding cook and uses only good quality, absolutely genuine products. Some vegetables and legumes are of traditional variety and sometimes rather unusual, such as for example wild herbs and flowers, which she utilizes frequently as ingredients in her very secret recipes.
This land of ours is a clean environment: ask the glow-worms that nightly come to visit us every summmer evening!