The Gold of Home-Cooking Flavours - A Journey to Salussola

There are many ways to spend a golden holiday. The most obvious one is to spend a lot of money to go to a luxury resort. We, on the other hand, decided to spend a weekend immersed in nature and the tranquillity of a farm stay, in an area famous for its gold deposits: Salussola, in the province of Biella, a stone’s throw from the Bessa Nature Reserve. Besides nature walks, the Bessa is known for its gold, due to the erosion and re-sedimentation, by watercourses, of the gold-rich moraine deposits carried by the expansion of the Aosta Valley glaciers, an event that occurred about a million years ago. Here there was an important Roman gold mine, and as is easy to imagine, the possession of this wealth was, throughout history, grounds for bloody battles since the most ancient times.

The gold deposit was conquered by the Roman legions around 140 BC, and as many as five thousand men were employed at the same time to extract the gold. We holidaymakers in search of peace and countryside atmospheres were instead decidedly fewer, only four of us, but the weekend we spent at the Agriturismo Gemma will remain a golden memory for us, even without having gone looking for the precious stones in the Elvo river. After the first heatwaves in the city, we could not wait to “land” in the green of the countryside, and in Salussola our expectations were amply rewarded. “In the area, even in the neighbouring municipalities, there are several interesting events during the year, for example Candelo in fiore”, Mrs Elena tells us, as she accompanies us to see the farm stay.

We admire the plants, the many types of tomato, and at the sight of the goats, all curious and very friendly, we all become children and immediately start taking souvenir photos with them. The cow greets us from the shade of her stable, and seems to say to us: “I am glad you have arrived, but don’t you dream that I will come out of here with this blazing sun”. We, however, do not take it easy like the sweet cow: hot or not, after settling into two rooms of the farm stay, we go to visit the town. A pleasantly obligatory stop is the Gold and Stone Museum-Workshop, which is actually much more than a museum. As its name suggests, it is a real workshop created to enhance the culture of the place, with several sections inside not linked to gold: there is even the Herbarium room, which helps you get to know the local flora, but also the Witch’s Room.

After visiting the Museum, we also admire the many frescoes, mostly made in recent times by contemporary artists, that adorn the walls of the houses. Among sacred scenes, or scenes of country life, we also find a tribute to the aurifodine of the Bessa. The Church of Santa Maria Assunta, built between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is of a unique beauty: it makes you dream, recalling the Franciscan atmospheres of Central Italy. Later, at dinner, as we begin to enjoy the farm stay’s home cooking, tasting the cured meats from the pigs raised by the owners, Mrs Elena tells us that in Salussola, several centuries ago, there was even an apparition of the Madonna. Our dinner continues with a lovely omelette, flavoured with herbs, and made with the eggs of the hens we had “met” in the afternoon.

“When we came here, a good fourteen years ago, this was a completely abandoned ruin”, Mr Nazario, the husband, tells us. “We fixed it up ourselves, would you believe that this outdoor area where we are sitting now was a sort of garage in a total state of abandonment. With hard work we managed to create a place where guests feel good, and this is also thanks to our daughter Ilenia”. After the abundant starter, we treat ourselves to tagliolini alla messicana, a house recipe, with peppers and slightly spicy sausage. A friend of ours decides instead not to give up ravioli with meat. We follow the first courses with a nice beef roast, while our friends opt for a leg of pork with a side of vegetables from the garden, all strictly local. We wash down this bounty with good Merlot, Valpolicella and Cabernet, all Venetian wines from Mrs Elena’s shops, an expert in the wine culture of Veneto.

We close in style, with the unmissable house desserts: the grandmother’s cake, with jam made from the fruit of the farm stay’s trees, and ice cream with rose petals. This short holiday in Salussola left us with a memory as beautiful and colourful as the frescoes we had admired on the walls of the houses. For now the goats wave goodbye to us and we wave back, sure that we want to return here on the occasion of one of the next events.

Francesca Bertha