A journey in pink through the lands of the Pavese from Oltrepo to Lomellina - Part I.

Once upon a time there was a territory shaped like a bunch of grapes among whose gentle hills planted with vines, lapped by wide rice fields and interspersed with barley fields, green meadows and orchards, there arose so many castles as nowhere else in the world. This enchanted place, extremely rich in history and attractions for slow tourism in contact with nature, is the Oltrepo Pavese, located a short distance from Milan and the other big cities of the North. Where there are many castles, you also expect the presence of as many princesses, and in a certain sense here it's exactly like that: during our holiday we discover six rural realities, all female. A group of friends very good at their work, enterprising and creative, genuine guardians of the nature, culture and traditions of the Oltrepo Pavese.

Aware that unity is strength, they have joined together in the business network Tra le Terre, a formation that allows them not only to make their activities known more effectively, but also to create projects together. Projects often with noble aims and in favour of other women less fortunate than them, as for example in the case of Ife, "the wine of women for women" presented at Expo, the first experience of no-profit participatory winemaking by women in Italy. With the creation of a thousand bottles of a wine of character thanks to the expertise of the Cantina Montini, the Ife project, a word that in Nigerian means love, made it possible to finance an initiative for the Nigerian widows of Lagos, helping them learn to cook street food and offer it on the market so as to be able to make themselves economically independent.

There are many tasty initiatives of the women of Tra le Terre, such as for example the creation of food and wine products like Erbi, the whole salt steeped in the aroma and essential oils of various aromatic herbs gathered fresh on the high hill, far from sources of pollution.

Red and black grains: with Cristiana in the lands of organic rice

If once this territory was crossed by the salt road, today it's a crossroads of roads not only of flavoured salt, but also of many gastronomic excellences, from wine to rice, from fruit and vegetables to ravioli, right up to the renowned cold cuts of Varzi. Our journey in the name of taste begins from the Lomellina, an area whose life is historically characterised by rice cultivation, which in the past involved a very large part of the female population. The life of the mondine has also inspired several local artists such as the Sannazzaro natives Michele Mainoli and Pino Zanchin, who dedicated a series of paintings to the theme, entitled "Le Lomelline". In the centre of Sannazzaro De' Burgondi is the "Monument to the Mondina", a sculpture by Domenico Reali, and even the cartoonist Andrea Bianchi has paid homage to these historic female figures.

Today the mondine are no longer there; among the rice fields of Olevano di Lomellina, a town that boasts a nice medieval castle, we instead meet a very good rice producer, Cristiana Sartori. A graduate in agricultural sciences with a technical-economic specialisation, Cristiana, who is a genuine forge of ideas, boasts several firsts as an organic rice grower. In 2015 the Second International Conference on Organic Rice Production Systems, begun at Expo 2015, took place at the Tenuta San Giovanni of Cristiana's family with the participation of sector experts from all over the world. Cristiana produces Venere black rice and Ermes red rice, all organic and certified by their respective supply chains, and of the Ermes variety until 2016 she was even the only producer in Italy.

They call her "the woman of the seven currying passes", a title acquired thanks to one of the techniques - currying, indeed - that she uses in organic rice cultivation. It involves removing weeds several times before they take root. The other technique Cristiana is experimenting with is mulching, carried out by laying on the field a biodegradable sheet based on maize starch and sowing in the little holes, all with a single pass of the tractor. Thanks to these innovative techniques Cristiana's business was selected to take part in the "Riso Biosystem" project in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy of the University of Milan, which already looks toward the horizon of the third world conference on organic rice growing that in 2018 will be held in Brazil.

Cristiana's desire to do doesn't stop there: she is now enrolled in the second year of the International Master in High Performance Coaching (MICAP), in the context of which in the first year she passed incredible tests such as surviving in a wood or facing a marathon. The next test will be that of writing a book. Cristiana already has the title and it perfectly sums up the spirit with which she carries on her business: "Donne, Riso, Impresa", published by Mondadori and out in October, her favourite month since it's the month of her birthday and also that of the harvest.

to be continued...