[Project] My dream comes true: mountain farm in North Tuscany. Forest garden & natural farming

Hi Guys.

I'm Remy, 33 years old. I'm from Borgo San Lorenzo, Tuscany, Italy. I've loved plants and trees since I was very young. I've always planted in other people's gardens, which gave me joy and satisfaction, but was sometimes (often) frustrating because the trees were not followed up/were badly pruned/were rooted. For this reason, I've always said to myself "one day, I'll have my own farm".

In 2023, my dream came true. I am the proud owner of a 50 acres (75% woods, 25% terraced pasture) farm in North Tuscany.

Climate, soil
- Avg. yearly rainfall: 2,000 mm (79 inches). Lots of rain, but with relatively dry summers.
- Altitude : 700m (2,300 ft)
- Soil : 5,5 <pH<6,5, sandy loam, quite deep for a slope soil (> 1,20 m). No waterlogging, very good water infiltration, tendency to dry on some sloppy parts of the property. Water and ice-related erosion points, primarily due to overgrazing in the past, kickstarting erosion patches
- Exposure: East
- Winds: North wind is dominant in winter, South in summer. It is not a windy place all over the year, but when there are big, windy storms (5 a year +-), winds can be very strong (as far as 120 km/h).

Some cool features
- Property water source originating in the woods. It comes from above, making it ideal for gravity-irrigation if needed. It also supplies the house.
- Self-sufficient in energy (photovoltaic panels)
- Self-sufficient heating (wood-fired boiler)
- Terraces created by the elders in the steepest fields
- Apple, plum, cherry, pear, walnut, hazelnut and raspberry trees already scattered around the property. The woods are 70% chestnut, of which 20% approx are sweet.

Challenges I’ve spotted so far
- Strong slopes so every movement, especially loaded, takes energy
- Poor accessibility: the dirt road is short and close to the main road, but the entrance is on a dangerous bend. As it is, leaving the property is dangerous if you don't know how to do it properly.
- Not a windy place, but when storms occur, venturi effect can push winds up to 120 km/h
- Contextual challenge: no access to cheap organic material (manure, straw, wood chips…). Gotta work with cover crops (and I love the idea but it’s challenging)
- Three wild plant species are very vigorous here: brambles, ferns, broom. Converted this challenge into a resource. Brambles give me blackberries, ferns make an excellent mulch, brooms are good for all the erosion control earthworks I'm doing
- Italian bureaucracy

Some views of the farm








The project
If I had to choose, I’d say my mentors are Sepp Holzer, Mark Shepard, Masanobu Fukuoka, Brad Lancaster. But there are but there are so many more...

My project is not yet well defined and is constantly evolving. Here is my idea to date (June 2024):

WATER
For the moment, I have no intention of setting up large ponds, firstly because my soil is sandy loam, and secondly because Italian bureaucracy is already giving me a hard time (we'll see later). For the moment, I'm taking advantage of my gravity-fed spring by setting up mini water reserves scattered around the property.

TREES AND CROPS
-> On the land closest to the house (300m2 terraces in total): family vegetable garden (it's already in place). Two terraces can be added.
-> On the three larger, relatively flat plots: keyline- planted, high-stemmed, old variety fruit trees. Plantings sufficiently spaced to accommodate intercropping. I’d love to intercrop using Fukuoka’s natural farming techniques.
-> The upper terraces: fruit trees planted in patches, in a less organized way, with the possibility of growing vegetables and annuals in the "clearings". Those terraces follow the dominant winds so I really need to slow them down, that’s why I wouldn’t choose more classical row planting.
-> The fruit trees will not only be a source of fruit harvests, they will also become the mother plants  for harvesting scions for my future fruit nursery.

HEDGES
I'm planting a lot of trees (poplar, oak, maple, lime, mulberry, plane, liquidambar...) that I'll be pruning (pollards) to provide wood and organic matter. However, I need to add one or two layers to provide a windbreak for the south and north winds, as well as an additional food source for wildlife and my family.

FERTILITY
No external organic inputs, as they are very expensive and not readily available. I have the advantage of having a plot much larger than my family needs, so I can mow part of the meadow for mulching, and use other abundant (some would say invasive) resources: brambles, broom and ferns in particular. And, of course, cover crops.

ANIMALS
Very drastic choice here: no animals planned to date (my family and I have a foot on each continent, and that's not going to change soon). I'm very open to ideas, because I know how important animals are in a farm.

Monies
As of today, my plan is to pay my daily expenses with wifi money and to not depend on the farm for generating income. In the future, the fruit tree nursery and the fruit and vegetable harvests could bring in significant revenue.

Prior to project implementation: knowing how to let go, and taking responsibility for doing things differently. Please help guys lol
Before going into detail and discussing about the exciting possibilities of this project, I'd like to share with you some uncertainties I face. I feel I have a responsibility towards locals to ensure "farm's continuity", i.e. to make sure the place stays as "clean" as it has always been before me. I think I feel a certain external pressure, expectations of a "stranger who would come and buy the farm without knowing how to manage it" (I'm from a village 100 miles from the farm, nobody knew me before I bought. I work in food world, but I don't have practical agriculture experience, except my passion for plants, neither had my parents). The farm facing the whole village doesn't help lol. I don't know if I'm clear!

Although I try to ignore these uncertainties, they do have an impact on my actions, on two levels in particular:
- Electric fence: the meadows are surrounded by 1km of 5-wire electric fence. The previous owner had put it up because he had 200+ sheeps, against wolf attacks. This fence can be an asset for my future crops protection against grazing (fruit trees, vegetables, berries, etc.), but it requires an enormous amount of maintenance work (weeds, brambles, young trees, ferns). I always give importance to popular wisdom and for them it's inconceivable to have crops here, in this context, without protecting them from deers and boars. It's a kind of continuous and relentless struggle, which takes an inordinate amount of time, and is not in phase with the vision I want to imprint on the farm (natural farming,...). For now, I'm keeping the maintenance everyday because I feel it's an asset I will lose if I let Mother Nature take over. Do you think I should give up on fence maintenance once and for all and let the wildlife take over? Once I've made that decision, I won't be able to go back because the brambles will quickly take over everything. One thing's for sure, spending my days pulling brambles and cutting grass under the wires with a brushcutter and hand tools doesn't make sense, given my plans for this farm.
- Maintaining meadows against the progress of the forest: in the same style, I see ecological successions advancing in the most difficult-to-access areas of the meadows (slopes, property edges...) and I feel this "duty" to keep them "as they were" and prevent the forest from gaining ground. We agree once for all, we put aside these useless pressures and learn not to give a damn about other people's opinions?
There's so much more to say, but I think I've covered the essentials for now! I look forward to reading your opinions, feedback and reviews.

See you soon!
Remy

Welcome to the forum!  That is a beautiful property.

It seems that you have put a lot of permaculture effect by observing the property.  And you have a written report to look back at years from now.

Have you thought about doing rainwater catchment as a reserve for water?

Hi Anne,

Thank you!
By rainwater catching, you mean roof/buildings water catchment, or more, mini-ponds on the land on strategic places?

Hi Remy -  Thankyou for sharing your lovely property with us. It looks beautiful with so much potential. I think you are wise to not have livestock if you are not there to care for them. Maybe in time you will find someone locally that can come when you are absent, but it is one less thing to worry about in the mean time.
As regards wildlife coming and eating your crops...what would Sepp do? He does use fencing, but also lets trees grow naturally and accepts the browsing of the deer and bunnies. I'm not sure he has boar though, they can be a real challenge I gather. I think I would maybe consider fencing a smaller area with non electric fencing around the vegetable patch, or even electric fencing (given your lack of mature trees to harvest for posts perhaps). I wonder whether the boar could be given access to parts to help with cultivation like you might chickens or pigs? Just throwing ideas at random here. I know how much damage just a field vole can do to a row of peas, so don't want to take the issue lightly.
Have you looked at syntropic agriculture at all? I quite like the idea, but still have a feeling it suits a warmer climate than I have here, but may be worth you considering. It is basically planting all your succession plants at once, allowing survival of the fittest and chop and drop at maturity to avoid senesence, creating lots of biomass. We have a thread here about it as a starting point.
I'm really looking forwards to seeing how your farm develops.

I read that you were not going to have a pond so it would be great to catch all that rainwater off your roof.

Here is one guys approach:

https://permies.com/t/76631/Waynes-rainwater-harvest-start-finish

Anne Miller wrote:I read that you were not going to have a pond so it would be great to catch all that rainwater off your roof.

Here is one guys approach:

https://permies.com/t/76631/Waynes-rainwater-harvest-start-finish

Thanks for the thread. Very interesting indeed.

I would love to have ponds in reality! But:
- My soil has little clay and drains well
- Italian bureaucracy makes this kind of earthwork difficult and costly (but not impossible)
- I would have preferred to have a pond without waterproof plastic sheeting

Considering these points, I'm not sure ponds are the way but I could be wrong! What do you think?

Consider I have a water source originating in the woods higher in the property, which was brought to the house through a pipe and is flowing all year round. Wouldn't it be interesting to build mini water reserves, overflowing from one to the other? Like ponds but in close tanks. I already have 2 like these, I would love to put lots more.

Nancy Reading wrote:Hi Remy -  Thankyou for sharing your lovely property with us. It looks beautiful with so much potential. I think you are wise to not have livestock if you are not there to care for them. Maybe in time you will find someone locally that can come when you are absent, but it is one less thing to worry about in the mean time.
As regards wildlife coming and eating your crops...what would Sepp do? He does use fencing, but also https://permies.com/w/bundlelets trees grow naturally and accepts the browsing of the deer and bunnies. I'm not sure he has boar though, they can be a real challenge I gather. I think I would maybe consider fencing a smaller area with non electric fencing around the vegetable patch, or even electric fencing (given your lack of mature trees to harvest for posts perhaps). I wonder whether the boar could be given access to parts to help with cultivation like you might chickens or pigs? Just throwing ideas at random here. I know how much damage just a field vole can do to a row of peas, so don't want to take the issue lightly.
Have you looked at syntropic agriculture at all? I quite like the idea, but still have a feeling it suits a warmer climate than I have here, but may be worth you considering. It is basically planting all your succession plants at once, allowing survival of the fittest and chop and drop at maturity to avoid senesence, creating lots of biomass. We have a thread here about it as a starting point.
I'm really looking forwards to seeing how your farm develops.

Hi Nancy!

Yes boars can make lots of damages and love all kind of thick rooted plants, young trees roots, and so on.

I didn't know Sepp uses fencing, I thought he was "fully unfenced" and that he invented his "burned bone juice" recipe because of this. Do you have any link on how he manages fencing? I searched a lot about this on the net and on his book but didn't find anything relevant.

Maybe in the end, the answer is in the middle: as you say, maintaining electric fencing, but maybe for 1/4 of today's surface. The electric fencing needs tree posts (see photos later). I don't lack them, as 75% of the property is made of woods. To sum up about the fencing thing, it is really useful as of today, but the amount of work it requires today with 1 km of fecing and prevents us from focusing on other structural tasks.

Some views of the 5 wire electric fencing (you can imagine the amount of work it requires - considering it is 1 km long and that you don't want any plant touching it for the electric pulse to stay strong)








PS: as you can see, chestnut posts hae to be replaced as they are aged and more than 50% of them is rot underground so there is definitely a strategic decision to take on the fence.


Thank you for syntropy thread link. Yes I know it and like you, i have the same feeling about climate compatibility. But I'm open to everything. As of today, keyline (on non-terraced parts) is what convinces me the most considering slopes, exposure, and rainfall levels here.

Hi guys, I was thinking, what about hedge laying to replace the electric fence? I could do it progressively

I think if you could get some thick hedges going then it could help with keeping the hungry deer and boars out, they can nibble on the edges without going too far in?  I'm not an expert on this by any means.  Another thing to consider is that if you get to know your new neighbours and they learn more about how glad you are to be there, maybe they will see that you're a nice neighbour and won't have strong negative opinions about changes you make, because they know you're excited about rural life.

Jealous making property sir.
That's a great way of fencing, but deer jump very high. Any wolve packs around?
Water works are like a line of ponds, one flowing into the other, it creates differing niches, which boost biodiversity, and giving a living space to keep pest eating insects, so plagues get less of a chance.
You could help block the wind by planting water loving trees there. With these kind of things i'd try first and see if it works. With the droughts and floods, bureaucrats should turn around in a couple of years.
Did you check out Sepp Holzer's work? He's like on this big scale farming.
I'll just bounce some ideas for you, key line tree planting, syntropic farming techniques. perennial varieties of veggies, because they get big roots and will be easier bouncing back from attacks from any eater, localized seeds always do better, even better safe your own seeds and mix varieties in a modern landrace style, grow wheat like rye and oats and what have you for bread in future and to surpress the nettles and unwanted local plants taking over too much if nobody is there herding..
But whatever you do, start small, feel if it works, observe and then scale up a level, don't invest like mad in one thing you're sure about that it's going to work, because many times it doesn't, better many things at first and fail, fail, fail and keep going and learn, learn, learn and then win ,win,win.
And keep telling us about it, bacause many times people come on here with big things and then you don't hear whatever happened, which is not social, because this is a hive mind registry where people put time into. So i won't write any more and start my gardening meselves.
Ciao, all the best!

Riona Abhainn wrote:
I think if you could get some thick hedges going then it could help with keeping the hungry deer and boars out, they can nibble on the edges without going too far in?  I'm not an expert on this by any means.  Another thing to consider is that if you get to know your new neighbours and they learn more about how glad you are to be there, maybe they will see that you're a nice neighbour and won't have strong negative opinions about changes you make, because they know you're excited about rural life.

Hi Riona, yeah I think I just have to stop thinking about that and just prove by facts that I'm here to try to do my best, even if it's not is the old school, conventional way.

Hugo Morvan wrote:
Jealous making property sir.
That's a great way of fencing, but deer jump very high. Any wolve packs around?

Salut Hugo!

Yes, there are wolves, and there are hunters. But deer and boar pressure are really high here.
There are two limits with hedges, the first, as you said, is that they have to be tall and perfectly hermetic (not a single hole), which is hard to obtain. The second is that 30% of my current fence is in shady places so these bushes wouldn't grow well. my alternative then is to redesign the layout to allow the hedges to be in full sun. If I were to embark on this adventure, I'd mix osage orange, honey locust and a third species yet to be determined.

Yeah Sepp is definitely an inspiration for me, also because i share his "steep property" configuration. I have no doubt his bone sauce works, but I don't know, I'm unable to let go on that one at the moment!

For the waterworks and overall project planning, I'm going to work with a friend of mine which is specialist in permaculture, waterworks and keyline design, to have a global view on the project. Meanwhile, I am testing on small scale, various techniques, trials, combinations, etc.

My project idea is evolving, I'll share it with you guys here soon!

All the best
Remy