LE LANGHETTE
Freshly-milked milk is transferred to the laboratory on the ground floor of the Armellino family’s house, which also hosts the shop where the dairy products can be purchased directly. The building is located on Provincial Road 439 (Strada Provinciale 439) between the provinces of Savona and Cuneo along the course of the Bormida river, and was inaugurated at the beginning of 2017. “My family is fully involved in the business – says Sara – My father helps us in all possible ways, offering us valuable advice, my mum is an excellent saleswoman, and my partner too helps us with the animals”. The grandparents also help out with Sara’s two children, Andrea and Giulia (when she took part in the “on-campus” course in the summer of 2016, Sara was pregnant with her firstborn child). Elisa’s father, too, whose family was originally from the Savona area, has a crucial task: he takes care of deliveries to the network of shops that sell Le Langhette cheeses in Mallare and Bormidain the province of Savona.
River Bormida
River Bormida has its source in the province of Savona and flows through the Piedmont provinces of Cuneo, Asti and Alessandria. It runs through the territory of Saliceto, the village where farm Le Langhette is located, just five kilometres away from Cengio, the last Ligurian municipality where the ACNA (Azienda Coloranti Nazionali e Affini, which means national dyes and related products company) industrial plant operated from the late 1920s until 1999. At the end of the 1990s, the Cengio/Saliceto site was declared a Site of National Interest (Sito di Interesse Nazionale – SIN in Italian) and its perimeter was subsequently defined by the Italian Ministerial Decree of 20 October 1999. Sites of National Interest are generally identified based on the quantity and hazardousness of the pollutants found on that specific piece of land, as well as on their impact on the surrounding environment in terms of health and ecological risk. More specifically, as regards the ACNA area, the site includes a large zone extending between Liguria and Piedmont, mainly falling within the municipalities of Cengio (Savona) and Saliceto (Alessandria). Planned activities on this site include the reclamation and environmental restoration of the partly-disused former ACNA industrial area, of an industrial waste dump, and of River Bormida. Starting in the 1980s, the municipalities of the Alta Langa have been actively promoting various activities to clean up and revitalise the river.
