How this Syntropic Farm in Italy Bounced Back

This is a video from last year when I was traveling Europe. I got to see so many incredible farms and Giuseppe in Italy. They had a fire, they're doing incredible agroforestry, but before we dive in and share, I gotta tell you I'm doing a free live training, a webinar, at the end of this month, May 29th. You can register down below. If you want to turn your land into some kind of agroforestry, guest experience optional, links below. Enjoy Giuseppe's farm. This is Giuseppe, an Italian man who has been born and raised here in Palombaio, and this is Regen Habitat. Yeah, it's our project. It's a beautiful project. There's a whole series of agroforestry systems we're going to dive into. There was a fire here, you guys are working with existing almond trees, pears, there's cherries, there's this huge diversity of things, but you're surrounded in what is kind of monoculture of almonds, traditionally. Actually, the biggest monoculture here is olive trees. We are the region that produces 51% of olives of Italy, and this area, in particular, Bari area, produces a big chunk of it, and as a secondary crop, a few fields have almond trees monocultures. So we inherited this almond monoculture from my family, 5x5, and then we started transforming, retrofitting it into an agroforestry system. And you say 5x5, that's the spacing that the almonds had been planted at, which we're looking at here, here, down these lines, and you began retrofitting how many years ago? The first part of the field was started in 2018, but at a very low pace, let's say. Then we started kicking in in 2020 and accelerated in 2022. And when was the fire? Because we're standing in a corner of the field that probably was least impacted, so it looks the most developed compared to a lot of the other areas. And you've been continuing to expand since then, you've been replanting. When did that fire happen? So the fire happened right after we had accelerated with the planting. In 2022-23, we had planted around 7,000 plants, and in July 2023, we got a big fire that burned out 80-85% of our agroforestry system, including the 30-year-old almond trees. Everything was burned to ashes, and the following winter, we replanted it all. And again, as every year we were doing, we doubled the surface because we got the neighbor land. We got to 2 hectares, 0.4, and we replanted the previous hectare, 0.2, and planted totally fresh, new agroforestry in the other hectare, 0.2. And you guys have big goals here. The goal is to have 30 hectares of agroforestry scattered around the Palambayo area, because the land is quite fragmented here. It's hard to get a 30 hectare section, but you're on track to continue buying more land, to continue implementing larger and larger scale agroforestry. And it's, like you just said, experimental agriculture, it's experimental agroforestry research that you're doing. Yeah, it is experimental in the meaning that we are experimenting what works the best. Like, we know it works. Here we can see even just the previous trees, the almond trees, that are loaded with almonds, and the branches are bended in this area, while if you turn your head in the only line that is not implemented as an agroforestry, because it's where we turned our machinery, the trees are healthy because still we apply biofertilizers and compost, but they are way less loaded with fruits. Moreover, for us, I always say agriculture is the economical excuse to do ecology. This is our real goal. Like, we want to do ecology to be part of the solution of the ecological crisis, and do our part, and at the same time make it possible through the economy that is generated by agriculture. We are very passionate about agricultural systems that can work on a larger scale, but not that much because of entrepreneurial ego, but more knowing that it is a good mean to run an ecological ecosystem. So, we need to make it work. It doesn't mean any discount on, you know, like, making it work. It's not discounting the foundation that you have, and we know this type of agriculture works. It's more about how do we make it work in this context, in this particular area, with these particular markets, with these particular conditions, management strategies, scaling up the team here. It's not just you. You have got this constant flow and foundation of volunteers, interns, who are assisting with management, planting, propagation, water management. Yeah, and also we have many courses, educational programs, like permaculture design courses, agroforestry courses. It is true that with this kind of setup, we have a lot of hands, let's say, that help us in the agricultural part, but of course it takes also a different set of skills that are not always or shouldn't be always required to a farmer. I mean, we are kind of in a privileged position because of these many hands that help us, but at the same time we want to practice it in a way that even who doesn't have this exceptional help or setup and just wants to farm can still do it and can find creative ways to overcome the issues that these systems have. I mean, we don't have to hide, it's very labor intensive for sure compared to a conventional system, either organic or not. That's why we are also researching on machinery and trying to find most efficient ways to propagate plants and to get our organic matter super cheap or for free, always trying to find solutions that are realistic, replicable, and that can make the project go forward maximum possible speed. That's something you just shared with me about the one lesson to take away from many of these permaculture trainings that you offer is just find a way to source free organic material from your local area for your project. It can be one of those things that really make or breaks. Yeah, sure, like I was telling you that one of the advantages of being a local is that you kind of start with a network, but you can also build it up if you join another piece of planet, let's say, to collaborate with. In our context we wondered, okay, what is wasted? What is an abundant source that farms or even other companies have that we can use as organic matter? And we came out with olive leaves, of course, since this is an area that produces a lot of olives. Is the olive leaf waste product or by-product coming from olive oil production? Yes, when the farmers bring the olives to the mills, they blow out the leaves from the nets to squeeze only the olives, of course, and not have the leaf scent. There are piles and piles accumulating in olive mills for days and weeks and sometimes months, and we offer them a solution to get rid of them without having to employ labor to either burn them illegally, of course, or find another way to get rid of them. So we are happy to make them get rid of them. Also we partnered with some gardeners, same story, like they have prunings from villas, gardens, so they bring us prunings, we shred them and we have more organic matter. Another source for us, again, the second crop is almonds. So we asked who takes off the fruit part of the almond that is out of the shell to bring that in. And so it's a super nutritious organic matter because actually it's one of the few fruits that are left over for, you know, the economical purposes. Because the fruit, the actual fruit skin of an almond is discarded. Yeah, exactly. It's this green part that you can see in Italy, we call it mallo. Other organic matter also produce compost, hot compost and warm compost. So that's the material that we'll see along the edges of all of your tree lines here. What else is incorporated into your tree line that stands out for you? It's on the edible side, but also on the support species side. And another strategy, of course, is support species. So we have, for example, here we have Artemisia arborescens, which is a very strong plant that grows super fast and in very poor conditions. We have many aromatic plants. We have some old stars like Solanum lacinatum, is one of our best producers of organic matter, like same family of tomatoes, but it's a bush. It grows super fast and you can prune it very heavily. We are testing these kind of plants and we are reproducing only the most productive and the fastest producers of organic matter. And we discard some. For example, we have brooms that, I mean, they are thriving, but they are not so fast, so we are not investing on them anymore. In this context, of course, while we are propagating a lot of Paulownia, Artemisia, a lot of Rosemary. Because they're the top performers. Yeah, exactly. We walk around and Paulownia is one of the ones that I see the most of, just looking around the landscape. It's in almost every single one of the lines, maybe fewer in these older areas, but especially all the new lines, you've got a really high density of Paulownia. Yeah, we have 1,704 trees planted last year. Very specific. Yeah, I know them by heart. The idea is to just limb those up, get that emergent canopy. To be honest, I wasn't betting so much in this climate on Paulownia. I knew they were fast growing, but I thought they would be outperformed by Eucalyptus, for example. But it was a very pleasant surprise to see the speed of growth with a very low amount of water that we can provide as irrigation. Let's talk on the water real fast. What kind of rainfall do you guys traditionally get? So the average here is around 550 millimeters yearly, but this rainfall is concentrated between October and sometimes April, sometimes May. So we have at least four months with barely any rain, especially in the last years, because we used to have a good storm a month in the past, and now we're more and more erratic. So this is something very important. We need to store the winter rainfall in our soil so that it's available for the plants when they need it. And quoting a friend of mine, another permaculture designer, Marco Pianalto, a Mediterranean climate is the climate where it rains when it's not needed and it doesn't So we need to find this buffer, which is for us organic matter and evergreen plants that still can make some photosynthesis during winter. Yes, store it in the plant tissue, store it in the microbiology, and store it in the decomposing, decaying organic matter. So this is very important for us. And speaking of those extremes, weather, climate-wise, what do those extremes look like? In summer, what's the peak temperatures, and in winter? Yeah, we can get even 43 degrees, and it's very common to get 41 for some days in summer. And in winter, we can get minus three, sometimes minus four, exceptionally minus seven. But let's say we are targeted on the minus three, 41 range of temperatures. And what makes a bit of a challenge here is the fact that we are getting warmer early springs or end of winters, and then late frosts. So it's a bit of a tricky time roulette, because we want to plant as early as possible in the rainy season to get as much rain that the plant can rely on. But at the same time, we cannot anticipate too much, especially for some more frost-prone plants, like many evergreen, except of the conifers, because otherwise they will get burned by the frost. So this is a bit of a challenge, and we are tuning in with the timing. Sometimes it's counterintuitive, like we plant late compared to the rain, and because we know that the frost is a more hidden issue than rain, but still acting in the success of the plantation or not. And in terms of the keystone species, in terms of target crops here, obviously almonds, because that's what's in the area. I don't see you planting a whole lot of olives, but that might just be because the olives are already abundant here, maybe it makes less sense. I've seen a lot of other stone fruit trees. What does that mix look like? Because you're being very intentional about it. You're not just higgledy-piggledy mixing, and we're just going to put a bunch of different trees in this line and this line. It seems very structured. You've mentioned that there's alternating lines of emergence mediums. We've got mulberries with grapes on them for Vita Maritate. What does that process look like for you? Also, did I say that correctly, Vita Maritate? Vita Maritata. Yeah, very close. The farm has developed in different stages, and actually with different conditions. We didn't know we would get to this size. It was very fortunate that the neighbour sold the land so we could expand. So this part of the land that is what we call the old field, because it was the first to be planted, has kind of all the fruit trees that can grow in this environment, because it's thought for our own consumption as fresh fruit and as gems. So we want to have a little bit of everything. Plus, here we have kind of a collection of varieties, and also we test them, which ones are doing better and that are early producing, or that stand diseases or drought, which is the main issue here. So what were some of those ones that stood out from these first high diversity trials? The species we have here are like some apple trees, pear trees, apricots, figs, persimmon. We have feijoa, pineapple guava, goji berries. We have queens, Chinese queens with cherry trees, of course, plums, Nanjing cherry. We have the pronostomentosa. And the castanhas. Chestnut? No, chestnut is one of the few that, of course, we tried out. Ah, is castanha chestnut? I thought castanha was just nut in general. No, no, castanha in Italian is chestnut. I've been saying, I've been misusing that word. No chestnuts, but any other nuts in here? Yeah, we have pecan nuts, walnuts, of course, almond. These are the nuts we are growing. That's a great mix. All those fruits you just listed, the nuts. We will get to macadamia, but it will take some time. Negative seven, I don't know. Yeah, I have a friend that got minus seven when the trees were adult, and they made it. I mean, this is actually another part of the project. We want to experiment with tropical plants. We already have subtropical, but with minus three is not easy to get them all. So we have a wall, and we want to create a microclimate with a greenhouse, and using the thermal mass of the big wall to have one line that will be devoted to tropical plants that we are already collecting here in pots. I was joking with Giuseppe earlier that he's going to get so addicted and excited about the tropicals. I'm going to come back here in five years, and everything is just going to be cut down and turned into greenhouses for tropicals. No, no, I promise. So fascinating systems. You're also incorporating vegetables in between in some of these key areas closer to the house. Yeah, right now we have a few lines in between the almond trees. We weren't planted with perennials, but we kept them for one veggie bed, basically. Sometimes we are also using a hybrid, like we have a veggie bed in which we also seed perennials, but as a nursery. So the idea is that in spring we seed, and then in winter we can uproot them when they are without leaves. Nice. Which kind of trees are you talking? Fig, mulberry? Mostly almond trees that we will use as rootstock for stone fruits. Ah, so you're putting the almond seeds in. Yeah, yeah. Here is an example. You can find one, yeah, but in some other beds there should be a bit more. Love that idea. So just to recap that, because you said it quite quickly, using the annual vegetable production beds in between the tree lines, also planting fruit tree seeds in there, so that once you've harvested the veggies, once things go dormant, these almonds, then you take them up and plant them where you want them. Yeah, we try to stack functions as much as we can, and the same space is used for different purposes. What else? So I was saying here it's, let's say, the most diverse system, where we have all kinds of fruits that grow in a warm temperate climate, in a Mediterranean climate, and with a pinch of subtropical. And we have also in the new field, the setup is a bit more regular and simplified, also management-wise, so that it could be replicated by a bigger commercial farm. And the main species there are apricot trees, fig trees. We have many walnut trees that we will use as a hybrid between a focus, so for production, but also as a support species. And this is the layout for those new systems, where you're being more deliberate about putting medium strata fruit trees in this line, emergent. And medium in the other one, and then of course all of them have low layer, which is mostly aromatics here. So I got it clear, medium, high, emergent. It's like medium, medium and emergent, medium, medium and high, medium, medium and emergent, medium, medium and high. So this was a strategy to still have more or less the right projection of canopy by the layers, and at the same time, be able to grow at least four, five different fruit trees in different setup. Plus of course the support species, that there are mostly paulownias. And focusing more, more agriculture, rather than you mentioned that gradient between forest garden, high diversity, complexity, learning, laboratory, as you scale up, focus. Yeah, it's very important for us, like also when I train other people to prune, okay this line I show you one peach tree or two, and then 30 more, you know, on the line. And you get used, you get a good rhythm, and it's also somehow empowering, you know, because you come here, you do the first five meters, and you don't know what to do with the next five, because the plants will be different and so on. So but here again, it's like the playground, and I think it's also very useful to have something very, very complex to learn from. But at the same time, I mean, we don't have to be ashamed or afraid to more simplified systems, if in the end we are promoting high diversity of microbiology, of other animals, and also support species. And we will play with the diversity also in the successional stages. It's kind of a way of getting out of the capital scene somehow. Well and even if it's not hyper diversity within the line, you zoom out and it's still a diverse farm. Yeah, sure. The system is still super diverse. Yeah. It's just focused per line, easy management, harvesting. Sure. Cool. Let's go check it out. Yeah, let's go. This is just that system we were talking about. We have the medium line of fruit trees, but again, Polonia every meter or so. 75 centimeters here. Crazy. And then emergent line. So this is pears, that's peaches, with maybe... It's four meters, almost everywhere. We had to adapt a bit to the pre-existing fruit trees, but the main idea is four meters. Here we have the pear trees and the plums as focus trees. Emergent medium. Yeah. And here we have only medium trees, the peach trees. Yeah, this is one of the examples. And then we have polonias, we have aromatics, more support species like tamarisk, which is doing pretty well, actually even more in the old field where there is a bit more fertility. We have strawberry trees, we have loquats by seed, which is also our secondary crop and support, like we are treating it as a jolly somehow. This is a way more simplified system. Here you see the organic matter, like... It looks like a lot of grass. Actually, it's really quite spongy. You know, obviously there's vegetation here going up towards the tree lines, but it's still rich with organic matter. Yeah, still you can dig bare hands and have... That's beautiful. And this is all the olive leaf mulch. Yeah. And is there a day where you plant inside of that or it's just easiest to keep it as just an area to deposit mulch? So right now we are just adding organic matter in these sausages, let's say, next to the agroforestry lines. The idea is that at some point, probably when this will be more decomposed, we will start seeding some veggies, like mostly cucurbitaceae, but also some species that like to grow in full organic matter, like tomatoes or cabbages. This will have also another purpose somehow. And we'll probably use the same irrigation, the drip line, to irrigate the same plants. Yeah, we will go more and more inside the lines. And the goal is, okay, we start accumulating the resources where they are most needed, but then the idea is to have only one field to merge this web of both roots and microbiology and unify all the fields. You got to understand, when it's young, it's a young system here. Yeah. It looks very small and spread out, small little short line over here, small little short line over here. But, and I've seen this same dynamic happen at my place and everywhere else is, as things grow, the canopies spread out, they touch the organic material, everything just morphs together. Yeah. And so that's the idea. And then as that happens, you'll be able to use more and more of this space, more fertility, more shade dynamics, more pruning. You're going to have a lot of pruning with all these polonia. Good thing they're softwood. Really, it's a system that I've seen the most polonia in, so I'm quite interested. I like the tree. It's a beautiful tree. It does really well. The management of these is going to be just sending them straight up, making nice timber, you said, maybe alternate coppicing. Yeah. One of the management ideas that we have is to coppice the two external ones and let only the central one to grow fully and then alternate, like, coppice the central one and let the external ones cover the emergent layer. This should allow us to have also some timber production, like straight, nice trees that are thick enough to have some value, but also it's a strategy to not go crazy with the pruning of the branches and be a bit more relaxed, let's say, on the growth and then just thin them out, kind of a rotation. Part of the research is which is the best rotation. This will test, you know, different solutions and see what works the best. Yeah. Because you've got a lot of opportunity. They're planted everywhere. Yeah. And so this system is distinctly different than some of the other systems we're going to maybe go see where it's that same pattern, emergent medium, medium, medium, medium, high with these different assortment of species that you mentioned before. Yeah. What's happening in some of the other areas, how it's different to here? There is another area where our focus trees are mostly apricot trees and fig trees, trees that grow very well here. So the choice was given by the fact that you can graft apricots on almond trees. That is one of the most drought resistant, productive plants here. And also the possibility to dry them because we want to sell some fresh fruits, but we value the possibility of having a easy processing, like not necessarily in the gems, but dry the fruits, maybe make a muesli, you know, something that it's a relatively low tech, at least low effort to be processed and still have the possibility to sell when we want, when we need and not have the gun of the fresh food that is rotting in the shelves. Also, it's given by our context, which is many people from all over the world are coming to our workshops, our courses, and many like to support the project. They have tasted already our food and everyone says that there's one more gear somehow, compared to organic because of this, the availability of nutrients in the soil doesn't have any comparison with the surroundings. And on top of this, the climate, which is harsh by lack of humidity. I mean, we're not a dry land, but it's relatively dry. So the fruits and the veggies, they are like candies, you know, it's like a concentrated... Well, because you're not over irrigating. What is your irrigation schedule? Because obviously for them to be so dense with flavor and nutrients, you're not just like cramming water into them during... What's the schedule look like? We irrigate on around 2,600 meters of agroforestry lines. We use 30 cubic meters every 7 to 10 days in July and August, which are the hottest months. And then in June and September, we do this every 15 days, sometimes every 20 days. And that's far below industry standards. Yeah, yeah. It's less than a tenth of what farmers do for their olive groves, not for fruit trees. Which olive groves shouldn't even be irrigated. Yeah, shouldn't be irrigated at all. I mean, we irrigate way less. Fig trees, as I told you, we got a problem, but they already sprouted. No one succeeded in the first year. And then from the roots this year, they are sprouting back. These are a little bit closer together. Here, it was a lot of adjustments. So basically the lines are all parallel and supposed to be four meters. But when there was a pre-existing tree, we had this tolerance of half a meter or something. Plus in that area, there were already peach trees already established and that we wanted to keep. And we decided to align to the diagonal of the pre-existing plantation, but it wasn't perfectly aligned with the previous one. So we cheated and we started adjusting the lines, you know, a few degrees so that we could match the diagonal of the pre-existing plantation. But the species selection that we're seeing here, walnuts, apricots, figs. And some grapes next to the fig trees. With the idea for the grapes to grow up to fig trees. Yes, yes. We want to marry them to fig trees. We have heard it's a good marriage. And lots of artichokes. Yes, it's one of our favorite placentas. Artichokes are easy to reproduce by division. They produce a crop and they produce sheet loads of organic matter. And when they grow rampant, they minimize the amount of weeding, which is very important, I mean, to lower the management. What does that look like here? Because obviously there's lots of tree lines. What does the weeding labor kind of look like for you guys? It's intense. It's still intense. And we noticed that the lines where we succeeded the most to have high density, and especially placenta growing properly, those ones are requiring way less. And are those the ones with the high density of just the really functional aromatics? Yeah, sure. Especially rosemary. It's one of the best with Artemisia. Is that the prostrata rosemary or the upright? This is the one growing upright. Yeah, Artemisia arborescens and Artemisia absinthium that also can work as a crop for essential oils and medicinal purposes. Yeah, so we use them a lot with these secondary function. But yeah, artichokes and cardoons are some of our best shots somehow. We are very happy about artichokes. The volunteers were a bit less because they had to clean them up. But we got quite a good production in the most established rows with artichokes. These were just transplanted this year, so they produced a bit, but not super abundantly. But still, they reduced a lot the amount of weeding. So with this combination of saving labor, and a secondary production, and production of organic matter on spot, we managed to have a good ratio of labor compared to crop. Well, it's like Felipe said, when ecology meets economy, we're happy. Yeah, it's hard conceptual work to put the numbers in a line, and it needs to be tried out. You have to experiment, like all of us that are trying new things and driven by, I would say, a purpose that is ethical, not only economical. Still, we have to make it happen for, I mean, again, on a scale. So we have to find strategies that are replicable, and they can go on a large scale somehow. Is that the biggest thing that you're finding is kind of like the biggest sticking point, is that early stage management of like weeding tree lines? Is that the biggest sticking point that makes it difficult or challenging for people to kind of adopt this at a larger scale, because they look at the weeding of the tree lines or the labor that's involved in those first couple years? Yeah, for sure, it's discouraging. I'd rather just like spray glyphosate. Yeah, but even organic, we have had visits of farmers, and we work with farmers in the designs, and also in the courses, we're having more and more professional farmers coming. I like to hear that some people teach courses, and it's mostly just like small backyard gardens, so I appreciate, and you said before, that the people who come to your courses, they go on to do farming. They're not just for home gardens that apply this agriculturally. Yeah, we have a wide diversity, and I would say that everyone appreciates. We are very clear telling them that it's possible on a small scale, it's nice on a small scale, it's also possible and nice on a big scale to do it professionally, and it gives also a purpose in life somehow. The professional farmers that come, or so-called life changers that start then a farm like two hectares or one hectare and a half, or even we have worked with some that have tens and tens of hectares, they see this and they say, ah, okay, this is doable, like it's not scary as a forest garden on a large scale. It has to be adapted, and here we try to demonstrate that the importance of fitting the right requirements and being context specific for making it happen at the right pace and at the right scale, at the right management and with the right people. So yeah, we have farmers. They come, they attend courses, they ask for designs. I always say, I mean, of course, I can design, I can, let's say, follow the project, I can consult, but at the same time, we need that who is managing the land is a co-designer. It cannot be just labor or an entrepreneur just putting the numbers in a line. They have to be co-designers. They will be the ones observing the land. They will see the response of the land. They will notice things that we will never see. So that's why training is so important, even paired with consultancy or design and some follow-up, of course. And is that something that you guys are going to offer more of here rather than just entry-level permaculture or, you know, design is how do you manage these systems as they develop? Yeah, we are also planning some advanced courses. Because it's a perfect training ground. I mean, you've got systems that are establishing, you're going to need management. You're going to want to also train the local people who are starting to implement these things. Here's what to expect. Here's good practice. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, with our mission, I think we will be done starting implementing in probably 10 years. And still, hopefully, 200 years, we will still be managing the piece of land that we kickstart. I think it's very interesting. When I started, if I had the opportunity of seeing different systems and put myself in and see what fitted me the most, I think it would have helped my personal journey into regenerating land. I think it's super interesting to see both the beginning, middle stage and final stage, even though doesn't exist such a thing, but like a more mature stage of different setup. I think it's very interesting for people to experiment this. Because most of the courses are like we plant and then we will never see the place again. Here we can say, okay, guys, we plant this, but look, this was planted one year ago, two years ago, five years ago, and so on. And you can see how it will look like and how you will change your relation, actually, with the system. The first course that I ever did, it was all relatively established. And I was like, I don't see how you can, like, how does this come together? We're looking at like blank grass, and then this like 15-year-old, and I see the connection points. And so I think the value there is like showcasing not just the different ages, but also the different types of systems. More forest garden, chaos for people who that's appropriate for. But then it was described as the signal-to-noise ratio with Felipe. He's sticking in my brain that signal is things we can understand or familiar with. Noise is unfamiliar things that are just adding complexity and persuading us away from something. And so for some people, the forest garden is high signal, very low noise, because they're like, oh, this is exactly my context. But to a farmer, agriculturally, that's too much noise. And they come out here and they say, oh, actually, I can understand almonds, walnuts, boom, boom, boom, boom, straight lines, easy to manage. And so I like that what I see in a lot more of these projects that I think are doing quite well is offering that diversity of entry points. Yeah, sure. Different contexts. It's very important when you design, like, the biggest limiting factor is the human that is going to implement, is going to take care of the system, is going to have personal issues, economical issues, and successes, of course. I mean, to tailor the system around the farmer or the farm manager, it's crucial. Otherwise, I mean, I think most of the projects that fail don't fail because of lack of photosynthesis or the right biomass species, but either because they burn out or because they're in financial crisis, all human factors somehow. So try to anticipate and see yourself in. I think it's very valuable. So we're looking at a retrofitted peach orchard, again, maybe three and a half, four meters apart, and you've connected the trees now, which that presents some technical challenges in terms of implementation. It's harder to get equipment, machinery, subsoiling makes it more complex. And so what was the protocol here for starting at the reset of the peach trees and then soil prep, bed prep, planting? What's that look like? So here it was more challenging than the rest of the field. Here we decided to leave the peach trees for some more years. We don't think we will keep them forever, but at the beginning we wanted to have some production and to manage some adult trees, to also to test again the management, even the processing and see how the market would respond and so on. Is this quite a common situation to have people just having existing peach trees that they're interested potentially in retrofitting? Yeah. I mean, not specifically in this area, but I would say at least a third of the designs I work on, it's very common to have something pre-existing and they want to save the trees. And many times it makes a lot of sense. I mean, the trees are healthy or they could have a good life in front of them. And those are the most difficult designs always, because you have to adjust with something that exists. You would like four meters, but you have three and a half and you have to do a lot of compromises. I always say it's not politics, but agriculture, the science of compromise. Politics should be the science of radical choices like ecology. Agriculture is the science of compromises. So many times you have to get out of the ideal world and especially who attends courses and like to implement everything on contour lines or in key line and so on. When, for example, on a flat land, maybe what makes more sense is to adapt, for example, to the existing biological infrastructure such as trees. So in this case, we decided to prioritize the trees and we had three possible choices. Follow one direction, the other or the diagonal. And we went for the diagonal because it was the most similar to the other lines and the most similar to north-south orientation. Like this, we had seven meters and a half of distance between the trees and four meters between the lines. So we planted a system that is quite similar to the other one, but a bit stretched because the distances between the trees are like half a meter wider. And we have walnut trees, pecan trees, main support species, Russian olive and eucalyptus in this case. And we also went for seed pockets with malvar borescens, which is another very strong placenta here, very good for early shading and biomass production. What else? Some veggies, artichokes again. Here we went more for seeds to reduce, let's say, the planting costs, which is also very important, like plant propagation or seeding are choices that really matter according to the context. Transplanting is very satisfactory because you see the plant already there, the line is already green or, you know, there are the little sticks telling you that you did it. When you see it, it's like, ah, let's hope I did it. So far, we are very happy both with the transplanting and the direct seeding. And we want to go more and more for seeding, to be honest, especially in the biggest pieces of land that we are about to get, which are olive groves, around 12 hectares. And in these olive groves, we want to test some systems where you cannot invest much, both water and transplanting, also because of lack of water, like no irrigation at all. So there we want to go low cost, but more time. Of course, nothing comes with a golden card, you know, like you have to make a compromise again. There we will go waiting for the system to be more mature, but also lower costs and more selection management rather than transplanting effort. And it makes sense, probably degraded sites, accumulation, save costs, see what works well, and then the opportunity will be there if you want to, to go plant more things grafted. But this is a trial or an iteration before that, where existing peaches reset, some walnuts, pecans, a bunch of seeds, support species, and perennial vegetables without the huge infrastructure or the huge investment into grafted trees. Yeah. And also they are way more delicate. So the rate of failure with grafted trees is higher than seeding an almond and then grafted with your plums or your peaches. Yeah. Cool. Field grafting is something that you guys are doing a lot of? Yeah. Actually, especially in the burnt land, we had most of the almond trees resprouted vigorously. So we decided that since in the old field, we have very narrow spaces between the lines, because again, we had only a limited amount of land at the beginning. So we went for less comfortable management, but more quantity of plants. And then it changed in this field, for example. But there, one of the issues is the nets, which makes the harvest of the almonds a bit more time consuming. I mean, it's doable. This is one of the biggest concerns of olive growers and almond growers or whatever you harvest with the nets is, okay, but where do I put, how do I put my nets in a such diverse system full of shrubs and trees in between? We managed, we have harvested now for seven years with all these shrubs in the middle and it's fine. Of course, it's more time consuming. And in our system where we had an extra line in between the two almond lines, every net couldn't harvest two halves of trees. So it was doubling the amount of movement of the nets. So since we are expanding and this is our mission, like every year we are kind of doubling the surface, almost doubling the surface. We started 6,000 square meters, then 1 hectare point 2, then 2 hectare point 4. Now with the new lands that we just got, we are at six. So it's going to get very exponential with your management. So hopefully there's a good team of volunteers around to help with that. Yeah. We are also increasing the people and the machinery because also we want to demonstrate, okay guys, here is quite exceptional. There are many people, many hands, but we can do it with machinery. And I've managed this part of land with a flail mower and we are going for specific machinery that it's more appropriate to these systems, pre-existing one and pushing and stimulating engineers to produce specific machinery for these systems. In the end, we don't have to be afraid of technology. The point is to create the right leverage for the technology to be oriented to diverse and regenerative systems rather than simplified and degenerative systems. It's all a matter of demand that we want to find this help in the technology. We use drones, we use sensors, we have forecast station, pH meters and penetrometers. We use technology and we have to merge again the high-tech part that now is having more and more success in precision agriculture and so on with bigger connection with biology, which is the base of those very systems. Coming back to the growth of land, we will move the almond production in the olive groves. So they will be retrofitted into polyculture with probably olive trees and almonds as main production and then aromatic trees plus support species. But those will be way more simplified. And that's the conversation we've been having a lot of is as things do scale up, maintaining the right kind of complexity, but also simplicity for ease of management and harvesting, like you've pointed out. Let's go look at the old field where it's the opposite direction of that. It's tighter, it's a little more complex. The polonia are growing. Yeah, let's go. This area again is the most diverse where we have all kinds of fruit trees. So every line has typically two focus species with some exceptions because we are often gifted trees. So sometimes we just have to find a spot for them. So we have a main frame in our heads and then when there is a failure of a tree, we put it in. That's the reason why also we are putting a lot of effort now into mapping and having a digital map in a geographic information system where we can also add the status of the plant if it is in a good shape or if it is dead so that we have a good understanding and monitoring even in a very complex system. Here's something that we can see is for sure the cardoon. Beautiful spiky bastard. Yeah, actually this one has only the flowers that are spiky, but the leaves are totally smooth. So this is for eating. You eat a central part of the leaf and this is a variety that's kind of getting extinct. It's called a thousand leaves. So we are propagating it and this is also another layer of the project. It's also, especially this area, kind of a botanical garden for ancient varieties and special or rare plants that we want to promote the knowledge of because, I mean, nowadays we play with very few plants. If you think of a supermarket or a fruit shop, in the end it's like a few species and of those species very few varieties. Only this country, Italy, used to grow around 800 varieties of apple trees, around 900 to a thousand varieties of olive trees. Just this region used to have around 400 to 500 varieties of fig trees. So commercially cultivated and this is just a few years ago. So it's super important besides the design of the system to rediscover old varieties and crossbreed them to have new varieties more adapted to a new context and play what the rest of living beings do, which is co-selection of life. So this is very important, like often at least I see us as designers and passionate about systems and cool renderings of, you know, agroforestries. Sometimes we forget how important it is. For example, here it's not ideal for most of the apple varieties, like golden apple or tark or granny smith, they don't grow very well, they need more chilling hours. So here there are a couple of varieties, one is called Annurka, the other one Limoncella, that need way less chilling hours. They are smaller but they are super tasty and they grow abundantly, they produce abundantly in this climate. So we forgot these varieties because we selected a few areas that are super specialized in apples or, in this case here, olive trees and almond trees, but we could have back a local production of way more plants, much more abundant variety of food and or material for building or herbs to heal, you know, medicinal plants. And so it's very important this research of the varieties and also seeding and selecting what is growing the best so that we find the best adapted to an agroforestal context and every local need. So this is very important for us, that's why that's a symbol like of one of our efforts in the selection and just in saving genetics that are very valuable, that just got kicked out by the market, but I'm sure that they will get renewed importance in a very close future. As long as the work is continued to be maintained, like you're doing here, how does one do this, what you're doing in their own site, condensing all this important stuff about these ecological crises, you're looking at the economics of how do you do this farming, you're looking how do you preserve these heritage varieties, how do you actually like go about setting up the system so they're manageable, and how does one replicate what you're doing here, because I think it's quite inspirational. I think it's very important to be trained at the beginning, mostly for getting out of the fear of trying. What we try to do in our training is not to give the perfect knowledge, but a knowledge, practical knowledge, that passes by the hands and by the feet and not only the head, that allows to fail, I mean allows to make small mistakes. We need to avoid big mistakes, but we need to have enough of those small mistakes to start planting. This is, I think, the most important. We get enough confidence to start planting. I'm a perfectionist, so I was waiting and waiting and waiting before planting a big system, because I wanted it perfect, and then I learned that, of course, you need knowledge to avoid the big mistakes, but then you have to try it out. You have to start planting, accepting to have a bit more chaos, because you got a plant and you discovered that that plant that you didn't think could work so well, now it's one of your best shots, you know. So I think this is very important. Get enough knowledge to start, start, and then continue expanding in knowledge and in communication with other practitioners with other teachers, with other designers, and so on and so forth. So this is very crucial. And also something very important for me is become a local, become someone that knows the context out of the farm. This farm, without the olive leaves or the contact of Angelo Passalacqua, who is one of the best seed savers of Italy and lives close by, and gave us these rare varieties, this place would look very differently. So we tried to assess all the possible resources around, and we are still in the process of, and sometimes we say, why didn't I think of this, you know, like this source of organic matter, like today we got some wool for mulch, and every time it's a new discovery, but think of this process, assess what you have available, because this can change the project way more than if you place the plants four meters or three and a half, you know, like this makes the difference, you know, like I think it's crucial, yeah. Giuseppe, thank you very much. Thank you, man. All right, so this is a grafted plum on one of the almond shoots that came up after the fire. And here we can see the old tree, which was about 15 centimeters wide, the trunk, and then the sucker came up, then we thinned them out, and then the strongest, we grafted it in February with plum trees in this case, and we have grafted also with the peach trees, and with apricot trees. And this is because here the lines are two meters and a half, so we went for trees that you can harvest by hand without nets. Yeah, we are pretty happy about the vigorous growth, and this is very important actually to see the roots that you already have in the field, even though you want to change crop, sometimes you already have the rootstock for that crop, I mean, besides the fires, I'm not wishing fire to anyone. But working with what happens, working with the existing biology, existing crops, existing trees, existing vegetation, and constraints, fire happens sometimes. Hopefully only once. Love it.