Tag: Piedmont

Between rice and blueberries, an experience in the heart of the rice fields   We are in Tornaco, in a unique place immersed in the rice-growing countryside of the lower Novarese area, on the border with Lomellina. Here a historic farm, the Vignarello Farmhouse, produces rice in the surrounding rice fields and many (but very many!) blueberries and small fruits in the internal orchard. The old family farmstead, made up of different structures, was renovated in the 2000s respecting the traditional country house style: in the rice field house, they created the guest rooms, in the stable a large restaurant room, in the manor house the processing, packaging and labelling laboratory. All around, the agricultural production, which is the heart of this place, is now well known for the combination of "rice and blueberries". Rice and blueberries are the fruits of the experience of an otolaryngologist who has decided to return to the grandparents' farmhouse, to take up the cultivation of rice and, after a specialisation in phytotherapy, to take a road that was still little travelled, that of berries and medicinal herbs production. Thus was born this productive oasis. The experience in Vignarello An experience in Vignarello begins with a walk among the rice fields, which in this season are still flooded but begin to colour green with growing plants: here you will discover the paddy ecosystem, made of water birds (herons, egrets, storks and so on), amphibians (frogs, tree frogs and many others) and insects (from dragonflies, very colourful, to mosquitoes, which thanks to the presence of dragonflies and frogs are less numerous). After a short pause to taste the nectars and small fruit jams, from the world of rice to that of blueberries: hundreds of plants, in the "historic" blueberry orchard and in the "young" orchard, produce