TERRITORY

The Marquisate

There is a place in Calabria where the gentle and harmonious hills lean against the mountains on one side and on the other turn into waves of the sea. Hills with intense pantone colours during the winter and the spring rains, turning to a golden yellow in summer. Situated on them, individual trees like warriors scrutinize the landscape. A place of great historical value even at the time of Magna Graecia, the Marquisate, a current province of Crotone, stretches into the Catanzaro and Consenting areas. It has also been an area of grazing and has ancient settlements of significant historical importance such as Santa Severina. Nature, history, culture and myth have shaped this territory that is still home to pastures and farms, which offer products with great flavour. Here is where Shepherds even to this day descend from the mountains followed by their flocks. The beauty of the landscape hides a special variety of native trees. We can find ryegrass, clover, chicory, Sulla, alfalfa. In addition to all of this, the climate is suitable for the seasoning of the product.

TRANSHUMANCE

As in a fairy tale full of colours and the story that is nearly a myth, it happens that even on the threshold of modernity, as in the past, the sheep farmers continued to lead their solitary existence following their flocks. Looking like fauns, dressed in animal fleece, armed with an inseparable axe to face the harshness and the thousands of dangers of the mountain, at the end of summer The Cosentini went down to the Crotonese marina, as it has been from immemorial time, followed by their flock. Here they stayed for six continuous months in conditions that permitted the birth of strong ties between the population of Crotone and that of the Cosentini. Thus the transhumance, that made possible a rich production of milk and allowed the cattle to survive, created and stŕenghthened at the same time important social and economic ties that find their high point in the ancient fair of Mulera`. And it precisely here that the important buying and selling of the "pecorino case"pieces and ricotta took place.