Visits to the farmstead

Among the rice farms in the Bassa Novarese Cascina Grampa of Riso Testa is special and different, as here an ancient mechanized hydraulic system has been recovered and reactivated.

The machinery is driven by an old water mill that since the 1600s until the second half of the 1800s has been the only type of plant used for rice husking (polishing).

At Cascina Grampa today you can see an old machine by now disappeared in Italy or still existing only for demonstrative purposes.

You stay hypnotized by the movement of the big wheel, pushed by the waters of the Crosa Canal, and by the old ingenious gears that operate, at the same time, the millstone (“la molazza”), the stone rice mortar (“la pista da riso”) – to remove the husk from the grains – and the helixmachine for rice polishing.

This super green and traditional system, even not very different from the more modern ones, will be gradually adopted by Riso Testa for all his rice.

It’s a  perfect example to show how craft and tradition can coexist with modernity and new technologies.
You can also visit the old stables as well as the spartan dormitory of the “mondine” or rice weeders, the women who hand removed the weeds in the rice fields.