Azienda Agricola Barcarelli
This is a family business owned Bruno Benz, Liliane Kobelt and their children Nora, Leah and Basil. The farm is located in the province of Pisa, in the town of Palaia with 16 acres of land. It has approximately 1000 olive trees with a beautiful southern exposure, terraced grounds and the ideal soil composition of lime, sand and clay necessary to cultivate olive trees in the old tradition.
As idealists we wanted to do everything correctly and ventured into organic farming with all regulations and permits required by the law.
After the initial optimism, we quickly realized that the mild climate and prolific sunshine in the spring created an explosion of nature's growth which made it difficult for us to care for the land and cut back the old olive trees so that they would propagate and produce olives. As time was quickly passing, all of these demands made it impossible for us to continue our original plan and we immediately made the decision to renew the whole Azienda by creating all new terraces and planting new, young olive trees. This allowed us to operate our olive farm more efficiently while simultaneously restoring and rebuidng our farmhouse which was in great need of restoration.
The official biological land treatment was implemented for the first 10 years but then discontinued because the official certification bureaucracy only seemed interested the revenue of the certifications and never conducted an anaysis to verify the farm's honest organic validity. Only after we cancelled our membership (more than § 1000 per year) did a official come to make the organic analysis.
Following this unsatisfactory experience, we have decided to work to continue our Azienda under the principles of organic agriculture, but without the bureaucratic procedures that are implemented for revenue only.
