Farming should be life-affirming.
It can be beautiful.
It can be an integral part of the natural ecosystem instead of being the vehicle for its destruction.
Bella Terra is a smallholding in the middle of land returning to wilderness; fields and forest in the mountains of Italy, on the periphery of the comune of Assisi. For seven years we have lived and worked on less than a hectare of the thirteen hectares we steward. Our food and medicinal plants are grown in an intensive perennial polyculture, on the edge of woodlands, leaving the remaining twelve hectares to return to Mother Nature. The gardens and fields are naturally evolving into a food forest, erasing the line between the cultivated and the wild. The vegetables, fruit, nuts, olives, and herbs are produced in a closed system, relying only on our compost and the undisturbed soil ecosystem for nutrition. Our poultry run free and forage. Our donkeys roam the old fields and woodlands. We hope to provide for all our needs on-site.
We are working to create a self-perpetuating agricultural ecosystem using a hybrid of climate science, recent soil biochemistry, a little permaculture and biodynamics, but primarily close observation and respect for the ways of the natural world. We save seeds. All our organic waste—from the gardens, fields, and the household—goes into the soil. We irrigate with rainwater. There are no costs beyond the start up costs of buying the land, purchasing a small used tractor for hauling, and building a greenhouse. Instead of selling food to the community, our current focus is providing plants to our community of friends and neighbors—vegetables, fruit trees, and herbs—encouraging them to start their own small farms rather than be dependent on us. Our farming philosophy lies somewhere between resilient agriculture, benign neglect, and preparedness for collapse.
We are artists, scientists, environmentalist tree huggers. But mostly we live fully within the seasons, growing much of our food and protecting the beauty of the surrounding natural world. We cannot imagine doing anything else. We cannot imagine loving doing anything else as much.
We are American expats.
Zia Gallina is an artist, a botanist and a writer. For many years, she was an instructor with the U.S. National Park Service lecturing on native and naturalized medicinal plants. She received a graduate fellowship in biology from American University, in Washington D.C., where she taught biology and environmental science.
Zio Volpe did his surgical residency at Harlem Hospital in New York City. For twenty-two years, he was a biomedical researcher at The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
We have forty years experience in sustainable farming in the city, the suburbs, and the mountains.