The family story

“My parents were farmers in the mid 1900s. In the beginning in theValdarno area they used to cultivate the terraced mountain field: a very difficult work at time with that type of land. My mother cared for the sheep and my father worked in the fields until he decided to become a miner, a labor as hard as that of farmer. Every day he rode his bicycle from Loro Ciuffenna to the mines in Castelnuovo De’ Sabbioni, 14 miles away”. The hard work At the beginning of the 1960s, the Leopardo family settled in Campo Lacconi, on the slopes of Pratomagno, Poggio Lacconi. They bought four acres to produce wine and olive oil as well as cultivate wheat and barley. Federigo attended the school and became an electrician. In 1980 he decided to leave the land for the building trade: first as a laborer, then as a bricklayer, then as a scraper and as an operator of excavation equipment. At the day’s end, he worked again in the fields, till sunset, to maintain his roots.

Traditions and love for the land

The cultivation of aromatic and medicinal herbs is done on the slopes of Pratomagno. “I have always been attached to this land. The firs time I drove a tractor here, I was seven years old and I still remember the first person I met on the way: it was the priest”.

Unable to forget his land

One forget the past and puts the pictures in the photo album of memories. One goes away but always returns. Unable to dismiss his roots, he picks up a handful of his native earth, feels it and decides to return and take care of the land he grew up on, to do something different than his parents. This is the story of Federigo Leopardo, who renewed his family’s fields and home, his dream was to grow aromatic and medicinal herbs. And now the dream has taken shape.