Reviving crops of the past: a young couple has invested in saffron.

RECOVERING AGRICULTURAL TRADITIONS 

Recovering ancient traditions, from kitchen to craftsmanship passing through theagricultural activity, It's the first way to not waste. And indeed, to give value to history, perhaps by modernizing the good things we have done in the past, declining it towards the future and changeHow did they do it? Enrica Gherpelli and Alessandro Piana, who moved from Genoa to Cremolino, a small Piedmontese town of just over a thousand inhabitants, recovering methods and models of the production of saffron, which here dates back to the seventeenth century.

ALSO READ: How to grow saffron in a pot or in the garden

YOUNG PEOPLE WHO ARE DEDICATED TO AGRICULTURE 

Their migration to Piedmont was a real life choice, animated by the belief that the land will be able to guarantee them the protection that their parents' generation received from their employers. Idealists deep down, despite the difficulties in starting their business, they are convinced that the quality of their life has made a leap forward even if they sometimes had to adapt to more modest standards of living. Start “The Rienca", this is how they wanted to name their company, giving it their soul (it is, in fact, an anagram of the name Enrica), it was absolutely not easy: due to delays by some suppliers in delivering the machinery, they were forced to start with an 18-month delay and the land on which the company is built was used as collateral for their bank loan, along with the homes of some family members. Today, inside a five-hundred-square-meter greenhouse, they host a aeroponic cultivation of saffron, that is, without soil and by spraying the nutrients.

GROWING SAFFRON 

The choice to focus on this plant is strategic: "We didn't come here to relax and observe nature," they stated in an interview. "We also want a source of income." And they found that source in saffron. Every year Italy imports twenty thousand kilos of it and produces only between five and six hundred.. One more element in favor of Enrica and Alessandro's enterprise, who moved to the hills of Monferrato, beyond which lie the Cottian and Pennine Alps, with their two children, who will grow up in a healthy environment, surrounded by a sea of ​​purple flowers: those of saffron.

FOUR PRECIOUS SAFFRON-BASED RECIPES:

• Pasta with courgettes, saffron, and curry: a summer recipe that combines nutrition and flavor.
• Asparagus Recipes: Vegan Pasta with Pistachios and Saffron
• Aromatic biscuits, the recipe with saffron. Ideal for a nutritious and healthy breakfast.
• Saffron jam, a delicious recipe perfect for filling cakes and biscuits.