For everyone is Peppino and speaks slowly, especially when it comes to his wheat and land.
He has the face of Calitri, a splendid country of Alta Irpinia in the heart of the Ofanto Valley, a few steps from the ancient compasa a few kilometers from the mefite, where Virgil placed the entry of the underworld. Joseph, for all Peppino, is 50 years old and his bright eyes, the face marked by the rhythm of a life that unfolds by supporting what the sky decides. He is an entrepreneur even if he prefers to define himself as a farmer who comes from the earth and lives. His is a special wheat because the unspoiled valleys and the fields are born.
Although technology can continue to advance, it is always the sky that dictates and the laws of heaven are merciless, it does not escape.
Wheat is like a child who must be born, it takes patience, care and love.
A parent is waiting to see him come into the world his son, he goes to the gynecologist, controls if the child is healthy, he takes care of the mother who brings the fetus to the womb. With affection it takes all the possible precautions to give birth to it healthy. The same goes for wheat, with love and patience you do everything to bring it to maturation in the best possible way. Also because what really looks for is this, are the emotions that you feel to see the fields change, the wheat mature.
For everyone is Peppino and speaks slowly, especially when it comes to his wheat and land.
Many times you can also have 10 machines, but if it rains it is useless.
I can say I have been given birth to the earth, I make the same life as the ground. If the bad year comes, you accept it, you have to accept it. This is the truth, you have to know how to accept it. Because it's not your fault, but bad vintage is like a disease: you have to face it. This is the peasant life, that thing that affects you humility, teaches you to live, teach you to accept your limits, to respect time and the sky, teach you to be a friend of God, to make you the sign of the cross in the morning, because you have to start, and in the evening because you managed to finish the day. This is what this life is sighted: patience, care and love. Above all love, which is the thing that makes you go on.
The sacrifices in this world have made the previous generations, we are now helped by the machines. They ate bread and onions to buy 2 or 3 hectares of land. And it is a generation that even during old age continues to cultivate the earth, instead of enjoying the pension, has another vision of life. But despite the machines now the children flee from this world, from this tiring beauty to look for their dreams elsewhere, often dreams of nothing. In this world it is difficult to transmit that love ... but let's go on, we do not give up and we will not surrender until the world returns to travel as it once was, which now seems that it turns the opposite!
It is true, the world continues to travel on the contrary but we cannot surrender, we have the duty of the obstinacy, the duty to seek a way out.
There is no longer any attention for this type of work. We sell with the euro as when before it was sold in lire, for example if a liter of milk cost 700 lire we sell it today at 35 cents. But we pay the raw material at full price, oil. But there is also much more attention to production, thanks to reality like Syngenta, people who work to produce greater quality.
In these soils there is Trufflio and Favino. These serve for next year to cultivate wheat, rotating with fodder. In this way we give the nitrogen to the ground, we use less fertilizers and the grain cultivated on these soils is of excellent quality because the ground rests, it is not plowed. So there are fewer diseases. And then there are companies that try to improve you, to produce more, so you earn better. If in a hectare of land we produced 10 quintals now we produce 30-35, even 40.
It must be said, however, that not all wheat is the same. This is called Pietrafitta, it is a quality of wheat that has selected things, in these areas it has excellent production and gives many proteins.
"A farmer never knows what to expect from his own field. It's a bit like when you declare you to a beautiful woman ..."
