Aper. August 23rd, 2016

Today we start recording a path, but the path has not started here. It’s hard to trace back a path at all, but if I have to choose a moment in time where it all started, I would choose a coffee break, somewhere in autumn, 2008.

Some Welsh customers were discussing about a TV Show, called River Cottage. This guy who started his own farm intrigued me, and I managed to get a copy of the show and watch it here in Italy. I immediately bought his book, and started changing altogether my approach to food. I can’t say if Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall was a pioneer in what he did, but he certainly was a pioneer in my life.
That show germinated inside me. I started desiring some aromatic plants, for instance (and managed to kill quite a few, actually) until I almost gave up the idea.

Then I met Strix, my lovely wife. Our romantic evenings were a reharsal of the whole River Cottage show. We re-kindled the flame together, we started eating more consciously (as she is a much better cook than me when it comes to vegetables and fish), then the idea came back. A farm, our own vegetables, our own chickens and so on.

Since wyrd has its way of unfolding, one fateful night we discussed the topic with our tattoo artist (a very talented man, Edo Van, you can find his works on Facebook), and he told us about an old Japanese guy who invented a new way of approaching agriculture. Do Nothing.
Reading “The One Straw Revolution” from Masanobu Fukuoka was the final changing event.

I took it with me during a surprise business trip. An afternoon our CEO decided he wanted me to talk with a customer about a liquidated damages claim and he informed me he was sending me over to meet him. In Tokyo, in two days time. I had to leave office immediately, leave for Rome, sleep in Rome and take the first plane to Tokyo, only to get back by nightfall.

At 3 A.M. I was talking over the phone with my customer from a toilet seat in Rome, finding a solution that enabled me to get back home without flying all the way across the globe. In the time breaks, I was reading how another life was possible.
Now we are ready to try. To learn. To make mistakes.
Maybe we are doing everything wrong. But we need to try. We need to find a better way to live our lives.