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Daily life and trades over the past centuries

For centuries, the local economy was limited to those traditional practices and cultivations that the climate and ruggedness of the mountain terrains allowed. The greatest resources have always been livestock breeding, forest exploitation for timber and charcoal production and the cultivation of chestnut trees. You can still find almost pure stands of these trees for harvesting chestnuts but now they are more frequently mixed with beech trees in coppiced woods.

After being desiccated in the drying rooms, the chestnuts would be taken to the flour mills powered by the water flows from the Brasimone and Limentra streams. Even the few grains that were harvested were brought to these watermills.

Sheep and cows grazed in the grasslands, even on high pastures, whereas pigs, the breeding of which was encouraged by the Lombards, were kept in areas close to the towns where they could forage for acorns in the oak forests.

In addition to forestry and agricultural activities, the inhabitants were also involved in a number of basic handicrafts, such as the processing of wool and cotton and woodworking activities for the production of household items.