Preserving Your Family Land When Everyone Around You is Selling

Did you read about our Sarda feast? While we were eating on the Pinna family’s farm in Sassari, we learned all about the beginnings of their agricultural family.

As it turns out, Carina, the matriarch of the family,  did not want her children to become farmers. But, luckily for us, they did anyway and took over their father Sebastiano’s business. The farm has been theirs since the 1940s. Today, the three siblings, Antonella, Gavino, and Leonardo, are our exceptional oil makers. They make our Antichi Uliveti Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  But, they are also exceptional simply because they actually stayed and continued to cultivate their land when everyone around them sold and left.

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Back in the day, the Pinna farm was surrounded by other farms. But today, the Pinna family is one of the only families who has not developed and sold their land to real estate/tourism corporations.

The care that the Pinna family has for their land and the environment is what makes Antichi EVOO so special. Antonella, Gavino, and Leonardo harvest their olives when they are just ripe, around October/November. The olives they cultivate are a local variety called Bosana. To harvest, they use an umbrella rake technique with the help of just two people. Talk about slow food! They have their own olive mill on their farm and after they press their olives they use olive pits to produce fuel. So cool!

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The Pinna family goes above and beyond to care for their land. On the land surrounding their olive trees they raise sheep (remember, Sardegna is famous for pecorino!). We are so proud to work with the Pinna family. They have said no to quick and easy money in exchange for something priceless. The opportunity to work and live off their land.

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