I still remember very well how everything began. I had sold my first organic apples to a trader from Venice. A few weeks later, my mother called me to the telephone. It was a German tourist who was fascinated by my delicious fruits and praised me for them. I still don’t know how he got them, but he asked me if there were a possibility to get them cheaper. Because he had paid six German marks for a pound of apples. So I organized myself and thanks to the help of a very good colleague the second harvest was a big success. I delivered my organic apples to our cooperative that took care of the sale.

My mother liked my busy activities in the world of ecological cultivation but was ashamed before the neighbors because my orchards weren’t as neat as those of the other producers. And not everybody was delighted to work in the middle of nettles. In this sense, it was a very original organic production back then, but it also gave me a lot of pleasure. At the beginning of the 1990s, for example, we had no neem oil produced of the seeds of the neem tree that we now use against aphids. Today, we have more possibilities.

I see organic at the „Schlossgütl“ farm in Silandro as a family business with female leadership. My five daughters and my wife share my more conscious approach to nature in all its facets. One of them will take over my farm one day. She will then also have to take care of the animals at our farm: a few cows, calves, sheep, goats and hens. In summer, our cows are at the alpine pastures of the Malga di Mazia mountain hut in Alta Val Venosta. Their milk is used for the production of delicious cheese and butter that taste best with my wife’s home-baked bread. In autumn, when we harvest our apples, the cows come back from the alpine pasture. Then we celebrate the beginning of a new cycle according to organic principles.