Freedom and Self-sufficiency

I want to give the floor to a person who, in everyday life, strives to bring freedom into his life and into the lives of those who live around him. This is an interview to Francesco Angelo Rosso, born in 1985 and one of the youngest entrepreneurs in Romagna.
Life has led him to live personal and work experiences in search for freedom, true freedom. The kind of freedom that is not without rules but can also be experienced without rules, that becomes freedom when it is linked to self-sufficiency. – By the editorial staff of Vivi Consapevole in Romagna.

Do you feel free?

Unfortunately not. I continually realise I rely on patterns, conditionings and rules that imprison me. And I realise it even more after feeling free for a few days.

Heaven on Earth

What we sow today, we will collect it tomorrow

From an early age I tried to imagine what would have been the most beautiful job in the world. Initially I thought I wanted to be a lumberjack. Then I changed my mind, I wanted to become a forest ranger. I enrolled in the Professional Institute for Agriculture and the Environment with this intention, but after 2 years I changed my mind again. At the age of nineteen, I decided to study Tourism Economics because I liked the idea of traveling.
However, at 20 years old, I found myself managing the family business, so I convinced myself that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and started studying for this. At the age of 24, I bought 70 hectares of land with my family and decided I would become a farmer. Today at 33, I’m an entrepreneur, a farmer, a lumberjack, I manage a farm and everything that I had thought of individually exists at the same time. I love what I do but even more I love the idea of designing the most beautiful place in the world.

San Piero in Bagno

Located in the valley floor, along the river Savio and the European Road E/45, San Piero in Bagno is part of the municipality of Bagno di Romagna, a small town with construction, forestry, metallurgical and clothing activities, along with services, restaurants, hotels and facilities for leisure and sport.
Built in the thirteenth century as “market” for the castle of Corzano, the town developed especially under the long domination of the Republic of Florence and even today the Wednesday market is still a place for meeting, exchanging and chatting for all the inhabitants of the area and the surrounding valleys.

Who was Emilia Hazelip

We have already talked about synergistic agriculture in a previous article, but today we would like to take a deeper look at the life and aspirations of its creator, the Spanish Emilia Hazelip (Barcelona, 1937 – Carcassonne, 2003).

She was born in 1937 in Barcelona, while World War II bombs were falling on her hometown. When she turned 18, she decided to leave Spain, embarking on a path that led her to challenge the Establishment of that period. During the ’60s Emilia experienced community life at the beginning of the hippie movement, soon realizing how the practices of ploughing and cultivating on an uncovered land were absolutely against nature. At the same time, Emilia wanted to find different ways to live in contact with the land, respecting the laws of nature and reintegrating the human being in the cycle of life.

Self-sufficient health

Human beings, like the earth, need balance and biodiversity to live fully and achieve the best of themselves

Most of the life forms on Earth are experiencing a phase of constant weakening and, among these, human being is certainly the one who is suffering the most, even if we are not often aware of it. People who live in Western countries are constantly and chronically ill, both physically and mentally, but most of time they don’t realize it. Medicines developed by drug multinationals relieve symptoms, reduce pain and keep sick people alive for a long time. The prestige of modern medicine is often based on the statistics of reduction of mortality and diseases after the industrialization of a country, but these numbers are mainly due to the increase of quality of life and diet and the adoption of elementary measures of hygiene. Sewage systems, clean and sanitized water, having 3 meals a day and washing dishes have had a much greater influence on improving health and life expectancy than the complex methods of specialist care.

Water in Permaculture

Strategies for a water-rich soil

Water covers 70% of our planet, even though we can only use a minimum part of it, since 97% of water is salted. ¾ of the 3% of fresh water are in the form of ice and 50% of the remaining water is around 700 m under the ground, enclosed in rocks and not usable. Overall, fresh water available in lakes, rivers, groundwater layers and the atmosphere represents only 0,375% of total water.