History

La Bellotta farm was established in the early 1960s when a family of textile entrepreneurs with no agricultural background purchased around 400 hectares of land and built the farm structures from scratch.

The farm is situated in the foothill plain North-East of Turin, between the national park of la Mandria and the Stura river, in the municipalities of Venaria Reale and Robassanero. The land is a mix of arable and mixed broadleaf woodland.
The farm’s original perimeter fencing still stands today.

Over the years the farm has been expanded with the construction of livestock buildings, but in essence, the farm remains virtually unchanged.

Evolution

La Bellotta was founded as a mixed farm and has undergone radical transformations in its 50-year history. Livestock production began with dairy cattle (consisting of a model herd of 200 milking cows), it changed to beef cattle in the 1980s (around 1000 bullocks) and currently centres on poultry farming (9000 hens for organic egg production).

Agricultural production respects the general setup of a mixed farm, and consists of autumn/winter cereal crops (wheat, barley, oats and triticale) as the main crops, alternated with fodder crops (ryegrass, permanent meadowland) and leguminous crops (soya).

The farm also cultivates numerous other trial crops such as sugar beet, sunflowers, flax, sorghum, field peas, rape and other minor crops.

In the 1990s, under Council Regulation 2080, approximately 30 hectares of land were allocated for quality wood plantations (more than 100,000 plants including sessile oak, cherry, ash and hornbeam) for the production of timber.

Since the 1980s the farm's 100 or so hectares of coppice are selectively cut for firewood and for the renewal of the woodland itself.
Today the farm can be defined as an mixed-energy farm with widespread forestry.