“Buy land: they’re not making it anymore.” (Mark Twain)

A love for the land, born both of tradition and of family upbringing, has always run through my entire life.
As a child, together with my brother, we were constantly following my father in his “agricultural ventures,” and today I can say how fortunate that was for us.
We grew up witnessing his dedication and the sacrifices he poured unconditionally into our countryside, into every single stone, wall, and embankment there was… into “Our Lands,” as he called them.

There was never a summer in which he did not repair a road, straighten a fence, complete an enclosure, clean out a well or a spring, rebuild a collapsed wall, or replant the vegetable garden in every property, year after year.

He was tireless.

Over the years, we learned to know tools of every kind: bulldozers, loaders, excavators, brushcutters, tractors, concrete mixers, kneading machines, tillers, rotary hoes, chainsaws, chisels, workmen, farm labourers, and craftsmen of every sort.

Those summers of ours were unusual: the sea belonged to July, in the city, in Palermo… then it became “the time of San Giorgio and the countryside”: the animals, the work, the village, the hazelnuts, the local people… along with so much else…

After his passing, so premature and unexpected for us all, my brother and I sought to carry on his work.

Today, the result of our commitment lives on in two real and thriving realities, parallel and complementary, able to come together in harmony, just as they did in life:

“Don Cesarino” and “Donna Cettina”…
… together with all that “those summers” and “these lands” taught us.