About us
Our story
Avamposto Agricolo Autonomo is an ethological donkey farm and agricultural business that provides outdoor educational services.
We founded Avamposto in 2020 in a rural area called ‘zoccolà’ in Santa Caterina dello Ionio, in the lower Ionian area of Catanzaro, then in 2022 we moved to ‘suvari’ in the same town, to a 10- hectare plot of land that had been abandoned for over 50 years. Our project had grown! We needed more space for our 8 donkey companions and for everything we had imagined around their bodies and their braying.
Today, we have regenerated most of the hectares of this corner of the world, which is part of the thousand-year history of Caterisana peasant civilisation. There are 4 palmenti rupestri (rock wine presses) in Avamposto, which is another reason why the area has a great archaeological and cultural value. There is a new olive grove, a new fig orchard, a small crop of wild artichokes and a small field for the preservation of ancient fruit varieties. We also grow vegetables seasonally.
The donkeys of Avamposto live and roam freely on a hill of about 4 hectares, coexisting with everything organic and inorganic that makes up the farm in ethology! They have beaten their own paths and opened their own trails in an environment that has been completely renaturalised. We are their guardians, not their masters.
For us, the countryside is a multifunctional place where it is possible to do business, promote socialising, and experiment with ecological and inclusive practices.
For this reason, alongside new agricultural production and trekking with donkeys from the ethological donkey farm, our nature education project for children, adults, families and refugee migrants has flourished. Today, this educational aspect, which draws on forest pedagogy , is the beating heart of our activity.
When we met, we were two student-workers, Sofia and Raffaele, who were looking for a place to live in Via Broccaindosso in Bologna, where we could live according to our principles, putting into practice the most fascinating things we had studied in the pages of geography and philosophy books. In the end, that place wasn’t far away. All we had to do was follow the map home, to the village where Raffaele grew up, in Calabria in southern Italy.