DAY 7 | 10/06/2017–Travel Diary
Finding oranges still hanging on the trees in Sicily in June usually requires a stroke of luck. When we wake up in contrada San Filippo, near Ficarra, that luck is on our side: two rows of late‑ripening sweet orange trees are still heavy with fruit at perfect maturity. We help ourselves generously while waiting for Vittoria Piccolo to return from her house in the village.
“It’s a variety of orange that’s very common in these valleys and especially late”, she tells us when she arrives. “It keeps good company with the minuta olive trees”. Her dog hops into the back seat of the Panda with us, and we drive back up along the eastern bank of the Naro stream toward the Fratelli Borrello farm. On the gravel bed of the watercourse, we spot a group of horses roaming free, and I can’t help lingering for a moment, watching them with a hint of envy for the life they lead.
Over the span of about seventy years, the Borrello family has turned what was once a simple family trattoria into one of the most successful agricultural enterprises on this side of the Nebrodi. Pippo is one of the brothers who took over the business in 1982. We set up the visit by phone a few days earlier, and this is the first time we’ve met him. We can hardly blame him if, with an apparently stern manner and a reserved attitude, he struggles at first to relax in the face of our curiosity and questions.
Although Sicilians are naturally gifted with an unmatched sense of sociability, they have also learned to be wary at first. This instinctive caution is often attributed to the way they were treated, historically, first by foreign invaders and later by the much‑maligned “government” after the unification of Italy.
Speculation aside, a conversation and a clear explanation of the reasons and goals behind our journey are enough for Pippo to feel at ease and show us the farm from top to bottom. Two hours later, back in the trattoria, he himself serves us his black Nebrodi pork, grilled personally for us, in a gesture of friendship that resonates deeply with my own Nebrodi roots.
Pippo walks us through the milking rooms, the dairy, and the aging cellars for cheeses and cured meats. “We have seven cows, thirty sheep, and thirty‑five goats. Our flagship products are Provola dei Nebrodi, a Slow Food Presidium, and pecorino. Provola is a stretched‑curd cheese typical of our mountains, made using traditional methods. Here, tradition dictates that provola is mainly eaten aged: we call it ‘provola sfoglia’ because, having lost much of its internal moisture, the cheese flakes when cut into thin layers, almost like leaves”.
“About thirty years ago, we began working on the recovery of one of the six pig breeds officially recognized as native by the National Association of Pig Breeders: the black Nebrodi pig. This breed was declared at risk of extinction by the European Community in 1997, but was fortunately saved thanks to a regional project that involved us farmers as well. After years of experimental studies on reproduction, husbandry, and meat processing, today we have around a thousand of these pigs on the farm, raised in a semi‑free‑range system known as en plein air”.
Pippo and his brothers’ farm supplies directly the trattoria they own on the opposite bank of the Naso stream. It’s a true farm‑to‑fork experience, and many of their products are also sold in the adjoining shop. From cheeses to cured meats, from hazelnuts to honey, the Borrello family has drawn on the best of local agricultural traditions and production to build one of the most successful businesses in the area. Both Provola dei Nebrodi and black Nebrodi pork products are certified as Slow Food Presidiums, a recognition that attests to the farm’s commitment to biodiversity conservation, responsible animal husbandry, and respect for traditional processing methods.
There’s a cheerful, convivial atmosphere at the table, with Pippo joining us and bringing over remarkably generous portions of black Nebrodi pork. As so often happens, once the initial shyness and reserve of certain Sicilians has been overcome, it becomes genuinely hard to stand up and say goodbye.
We part with a promise to return at the end of the journey, before making our way back among the olive groves of contrada San Filippo. It’s here that we spend the rest of the afternoon, listening to Vittoria Piccolo’s stories. Monumental in their grandeur, the gnarled trunks of these trees twist and writhe as they defy time—hundreds of years old, some perhaps even thousands. “They’ve been here far longer than my family,” Vittoria says.
And yet the Piccolo family was already here at least five hundred years ago. A true dynasty, once owning much of the land in this valley, whose history is impossible to reconstruct fully in the short time we have. What we do learn is that one of Vittoria’s great‑great‑grandfathers was a progressive politician, a member of parliament for five legislatures, a special envoy to Eritrea, and a trusted associate of Crispi. Despite descending from figures of such stature, Vittoria did not leave her job as a graphic designer in 1996 to return to Ficarra out of any nostalgic pride in a noble past, but to rescue the family’s minuta olive trees in contrada San Filippo from oblivion.
