A Very Special Place

This is our village, it's name is Saturnia and it's location is in the southwest of Tuscany Italy. You may never heard of Saturnia, I can understand as I'm no expert on all the name of villages through Italy myself but Saturnia is a pretty big hitter within the tourist industry. Apart from being a pretty village and put aside the amazing Etruscan and Roman history of this place the main reason is for its special thermal spa waters. The sulphuric water is said to heal a multitude of aliments, with regards to the latter I tend to agree having suffered prior to moving here with terrible sciatica, after a few weeks of taking a regular do in the waters my aliments disappeared. Placebo? I chose to think not. The thermal waters of Saturnia exit from deep in the ground at a astonishing rate of 80 ltrs per second with a temperature of 37 c. However there is for me only one slight downside and that's a very concentrated smell of rotting eggs! With a great abundance of bars and restaurants for that summer sundowner the obligatory Aperitivo. All in all it's a great place to live and live here we do, just 600 meters down a white track is our working farm (Agriturismo). It's name is Fontenuova, meaning "new fountain". Set in 80 acres of natural park. The main produce for the farm are wine and olive oil. In season we also a number of different organic vegetables and salads. Now like many agriturismo within Italy we have a number of rooms and small villas that we rent out to tourism and holidaymakers. Accommodating up to 40 guests split between the main house (casale) and several self contained apartments within the borgo ( Hamlet). Working at Fontenuova for my partner (Sarah) and myself (Matt) is a rollercoaster of the physical and emotional. The physical is the long hours and toil involved in juggling the needs of the land together with the job of being a host to our many visitors from across the globe. The emotional? Well that's a by-product of the physical, creating great euphoric highs and the occasional lows which soon become tempered once we take in the amazing natural features and views. Our goal is to create something extraordinary a hell of a task when nature itself has already done a pretty good job for itself. Over the next few months it is both Sarah's and my hope that you will find the time to follow our updates on our day to day running of Fontenuova, sharing all of those highs and occasional lows. We will do our best to post on a weekly basis sharing our new projects with you, or learning curves, the successes and fingers crossed not too many mistakes.