Franco Educational Farm
Tastings, farm tours and lots of educational games for children
From generation to generation
Fattoria Franco is a family farm in Longobucco, in the Trionto valley, where the art of cheesemaking is handed down from father to son. The cows are Pezzata Rossa (Italian Simmental), live in comfortable, roomy barns and eat Sila hay and straw and traceable Italian feed.
Their milk becomes caciocavallo cheese and aged ricotta. At the farm there are tastings and farm tours, and lots of educational games for children.
Puntadura
The Trionto valley was the main route between Longobucco, the coast and the Sila, and as early as the 17th century families grew vegetable gardens along its banks. Puntadura, whose name means “shield defending the place”, appears on a map of Calabria from 1620, and its fair, held every September, is one of the oldest in the region.
Near the farm stands the church of Santa Maria della Mercede, used for worship until the end of the 1970s, and the ruins remain of an old hydroelectric plant that milled grain and brought electricity to the valley. The house belonged to the Smurra family, one of the noblest in Longobucco.