A new website for the new year

We are celebrating 2012 with the first of a series of suprises for our followers. We have a brand new site from where you can easily book your holiday, arrange excursions, taste our products and much more. Regardless the Debtocracy we live in, in our opinion Nature rules all. Nature was, is and will be always on the side of People, this is our Democracy and this is to whom we open our doors. Etna vulcano is currently well fired up to impress our guests with its chimney during the day, and the fireworks at night. Subscribe to receive the very first news of the upcoming 2012 events. And do remember, you are always welcome here.

Getting ready for New Year’s eve Party

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We are launching the event of the year, so subscribe to stay tune on the latest news. In the terrace of our estate, covered in tensotent for the occasion. Music by DJ Vick to dance all night long under the blinking of the lighthouse till it is dawn. Sipping champagne and patisse of sea urcins in glamour. Dress Code: Eyemask only. Dancing till the first lights of the new year rising from the Sea and wearing your swimming clothes to dive in the fresh water of the new year before resting on the grass. Save the date and book by email. RSVP.

Primo Brussels

Diary of Board Year 2011. Primo Passo joins the European SME Summit, hosted at the European Parlament in Brussels. What could sound like a statement of pride, it is a message in a bottle instead. We send an SOS to this World (another quote, this time from The Police). Yes, having being hosted in more than 400 entrepreneurs in the hall where politicians take decisions on Regulations, financing rules, subsidies to the sick Europe we live in, it was an experience to share with our dearest subscribers. Here comes the message: YOU ARE NEVER ALONE when fullfiling your dreams. I did not expect so other highly motivated SMEs managing their markets over years, sometimes generation by generation DESPITE the difficulties. We are a silent productive community of spirits, there is no difference between us, we all have wanted and challenged our aspiration to the extreme, hence we succeed. As per Esra Pound, “What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.”

Prickly pears’ season

Yes, handle them carefully, they are all covered of micro stings and need to be picked up with gloves! Wash them in a bowl with plenty of floating water and peel them with forks and knives. If you do not know where to find them come to visit us, we might do the hard job for you! Oh here I give you a tip: collect them after the first rain fall post August and they.ll be juicy!

September morn

Like in the famous Neil Diamond’s song, September mornings have something special. We’ve spend long nights in the terrace under the starlight to discuss the same argument over and over. When you come back from your holiday, or even while your holiday are just coming to an end, a sense of sorrow and melancony takes over. People tells Summer is over, it is September, as if Nature should adjust to reflect our sentiments and our sollicited return to daily job routines. Did you ever hear your friends to say “I need an holiday to recover from my holiday”? Well, Nature does not feel like that, and every month is part of the overall masterplan of Nature, every month brings its own treasures. While we quietly sail the Sea to explore the beauty of the old forthress of Brucoli with the kayaks, Nature is still activily wrapping its fruits for the coming month, and in the hot dry weather it comes the first golden jewells, zibibbo grapes, from which it comes the sweetest Sicilian wine. Nature is wonderful in every month, every month brings the joy of Summer for the ones who are able to watch ahead.

Happy birthday to this blog!

One year has passed by and it is amazing to see the differences across the four seasons through the pictures of this blog. Every season has its own beauty if we just have the time to sit down to a large stone in the countryside and listen. Here my personal flashes of what I see at Primo Passo, month by month. I start from May because this is how we gentlemen farmers count in the calendar:
May BLOSSOMS, plenty of. June CAPERS, no doubt that once salted they are my Summer companions in the kitchen for next 360days. July, GOLDEN WHEATFIELD, when you think how many in this World still starve and kill for a loaf of bread, that field is both a God miracle and testimony of our human misery. August SEAURCINS, this month is to cooling off in deep water, feeding us and friends with such favourite fruits from Mother Sea. September HAIRCUT, yes, pruning the trees to tide them up in anticipation of Winter. October OLIVES, hand picking the just riped olives, squeezing one to breeth the will-be oil. November BABYWHEAT FIELD, the same field has changed colours gold-brown-green in just 3months, amusing. December CHRISTMAS BALLS, orange trees dressed to celebrate like we humans do; while elsewhere is all white in snow, here is orange and green. January PLASTIC FRUITCASES, of any colour, piled up in the plantations and in the open trucks that fill the roads of Sicily to distribute them in who-knows final destinations. February WHITE CLOTHES, the religious dresses of Saint Agatha celebration on the 5th, lasting 3 days and nights. You have got to see with your eyes, it is a feast for your soul, but not for your body. March HONEYBEES out, as soon as they perceive the scent of the first wild flowers they go hunting; it is their vital instinct and we appreciate it a lot, don’t we? April ZAGARA, such a beautiful view, such a stoning scent spreading from the country into every town.
Now if you have read all of the above, you will probably have the patience to listen to this interview as well.

Honey goes online! Reserve your jar by email: info@mulinoprimopasso.it

After a year of long waiting, we are happy to introduce our honey, courtesy of the happy bees living in the organic farm in Sicily. After a winter and spring feeding themselves with nectars from every kind of herbs, April offered the bees a full load of zagara blossoning, which kept our bees pretty busy. Now it is time for us to collect the extra frames full of fresh honey and natural wax. This is happening while we speak. Contrary to what you often see if you have had the joy and fortune to be an apirist, we are not collecting all the honey, but only the extra layers, so to leave our generous bees all the honey stock they need to spend a comfortable winter in their cosy hives. According to the permaculture’s principles in fact, we refuse nomadism as a way of breed our bees. They work hard in the warm Seasons and so we grant them a restful Winter. We believe happy and healthy bees make superior honey and superior honey means more vitamins and minerals which prevent human beings from requiring doctor’s prescriptions. Final remark: a spoon of honey instead of chemically bleached sugar for breakfast can save you from flu in Winter. Do you not believe it? Have a try!

The Gospel of the Lord

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ (Matthew 6:25-31).
I do believe. No I am not a dreamer. I do believe in what I see. And what I see is a beautiful dress on an otherwise dry bush. Its name is Glicine, its colour is so unique that is a well known wall painting pattern, so next time you paint your housewalls, think about us first. And what I see is Lavanda, which is neither a soap nor a visage cream, it is a beautiful herb which we store in buckets to refresh our drawers. And what I see is dill, or wild fennel, which we use to make delicious recipees, and it is a wonderful painkiller for stomach too. I do believe in what I see, and you do not have to believe. Come for a visit with your eyes open without prejudice. You will find your belief, and you will never be worried about tomorrow.

Zagara

Every season has its own colours, we all know this. But April and May in Sicily have an unique scent too. It is the scent of zagara. Orange and lemon blossom across the whole countryside makes the town nearby refreshed by an intense unique breeze which can make tourists dizzy without sipping any alcohol. Zagara is the beautiful flower that will turn into Christmas balls later in the season across every orange and lemon tree. For now it just wear the tree a white dress. Zagara is also the flower of sicilian weddings, the white petals resembling the purity of the bride, yet capable of giving birth to delicius fruits, the sicilian pupils. Finally zagara is the major source of joy for our honeybees, which are stocking in feast more and more honey in their hives. Driven by the Mother Nature generosity of zagara blossoming, honeybees cannot refrein to overstock their supply. We add more ‘floors’ to their ‘houses’; by the end of May we will be ready to collect the additional honey frames (i.e. the ‘floors’) so that we all could benefit from the golden juice of Zagara, made it by courtesy of our hardworking and precious bees. Now let’s toast and raise our… spoons!

Nuclear is renewable, not Green

The picture here shows the rotten connection point of a perspective 5MWp solar farm, another Primo Passo project currently halted by the latest unprecedent Italian regulation restrictions on Green energies. It is meantime with the utmost sorrow that we write this post. A whole nation is in danger, Japan, and yet it is not Mother Nature but human forces that scare us the most. Whenever we pretend to dominate Nature, we exposed ourselves and our future generations to greater risks. If we escape a nuclear disaster, we should call ourselves blessed, not brave. On the same days a wild debate on nuclear prolification is spreading the Countries. Pro Nuclear activists claim the need of National independency from other oil rich yet belligerant Countries. Nuclear power as renewable energy to provide wellness to people, is actually threatening a whole Country for the years to come. On the very same days, Italian government has drastically downsized its incentives to Solar energy plants, claiming the energy bill would otherwise escalate too much at the expenses of its citizens. This is absolute blind madness. We are casting our vote to death sentence to our Planet Earth. We are deciding to proliferate nuclear sites across the Globe as if Natural disasters are predictable in time and magnitude, hence Nuclear disasters avoidable. We are also not considering to account for the radioactive waste stocking costs, damage and contaminations. There is even more. Nuclear plants are highly expensive and concentrated in the hands of few; as they favour a few, a few can return large favours. On the contrary, harmless solar energy farms, which do not even create magnetic radiations, would be spread over a moltitude of people. If government incentives favour everyone a little, no big favours can be expected to our politicians in rewards.
This is a message in a bottle, I do send an SOS to the World. Let raise our voice loud and say NO to Nuclear, YES to Solar. At any economic costs, but not at our own future generation cost. Not again please, in the memories of who suffered and will suffer from radioactive contamination to save our lives. Comments welcome.