Reforestation and hedgerows

Since 1998 we have planted 15 hectares of new woods, bringing the total wooded area of the company to 45 hectares. The new plants have been conceived by favoring the essences already present and acclimatized in the area. We planted mainly two types of oaks, the downy oak in the drier areas and the English oak in the more humid ones, alternating them with patches of hornbeam, ornellos, holm oaks, turkey oaks and inserting isolated walnut and cherry trees.

The reforestation was completed in two years, thanks to funding from the European Community. The first year we had to deal with a severe blow, produced by the unexpected intervention of porcupines who plundered a quarter of the oak species. Once the failures were replaced and the new plants protected, reforestation developed very well in the following years.
Since 2019 we have begun to cut the first surfaces, we thin the English oaks to bring them to tall stems and we start the downy oaks in coppice.

We also planted a mile of hedges again with local essences. These serve various functions, such as those of ecological corridors, boundaries from roads and conventional neighbors, increasing biodiversity and reducing erosion phenomena.

Wood Chips

A few years ago we began to work on the evolution of forest cutting techniques, thanks also to the collaboration with IVALSA, the CNR body based in Florence and which deals with wood technologies. We have equipped ourselves with a forestry trolley with crane and a chipper, a machine that cuts wood into chips that can be used in boilers, with which we recover wood of essences that are not appreciated by the market, but present in all the spontaneous bush that arises for energy purposes. in plots no longer interested in cultivation, such as willows, poplars, elms, acacias. The chipping and reuse of these woods allows us to cover part of the environmental maintenance costs, otherwise inaccessible to the farm.