Agriculture

Casa Caponetti stretches across 125 acres of rolling valleys and fields in Central Italy’s Lazio province and but the latest incarnation of a millenia-old farmland.


The area has been a fertile production ground since the pre-Roman Etruscans devised forms of irrigation through underground tunnels, which paved the way (literally) for the first crops to come to harvest. Since 1992, Lorenzo Caponetti and his family have maintained the farm, primarily cultivating olive trees for small batch production and international distribution. Most of the trees are 50 years old or more, and the yearly harvest is still performed by hand and ground at a communal mill in nearby Bagnoregio.

 

The farm is much more than its olive groves however; through an entirely organic system using no pesticides, large scale industrial machinery or modification, the team plants and harvests crops for consumption throughout the year.

 

The foundation of this system relies on crop rotation, so that the same seeds are never planted in the same place twice: instead, the nutrients used by crops that can deplete the soil are replaced seasonally by different crops that use other nutrients, so that the soil is damaged as little as possible. The result is a vibrant yield of over 20 types of tomatoes, 15 varieties of peppers, and a number of other crops both indigenous to the area and imported from heritage seed libraries around the world. These crops supply the farm and restaurant with the bulk of its food supply. For more information about our agricultural program and products, contact us at info@casacaponetti.com

 

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