Pontepietra and the choice to be a farmer are a comeback for Eric. After graduating from school, Eric left Upacchi: “As soon as I finished upper secondary school, I spent a year in Germany doing community services, then I went to university in Perugia, graduating first in International Relations and then in International Cooperation and Development. I would have liked to work for a non-governmental organisation (NGO), but the various interviews I took did not go well, so I started a PhD in Economics, with classes in Rome and Florence. After a few years, however, I realised it wasn’t really my thing, because it would have meant spending most of my time in front of a computer, processing data and statistics”, he says.

Eric goes on to explain that something that had been nagging him for some time suddenly exploded on a February afternoon in 2016, marking the turning point: on a warm day, while he was busy studying applied econometrics formulas, he got a phone call from his father, who told him he was on his way to get some wood. “I, in my turn, was locked up indoors reading a paper I didn’t even understand” recalls Eric. So, he adds, “overnight, I decided to give up my PhD, and spent the next few months figuring out what I could do instead”.

The first stop was in Austria, in an alpine pasture, learning how to tend to cows and make cheese. At the end of 2016 he went back home. In 2017, in Sansepolcro – the most important town in the Valtiberina valley in Tuscany (some 15 kilometres from Upacchi), the ReStartApp ‘on-campus’ course was held, organised by Fondazione Edoardo Garrone in cooperation with Associazione Progetto Valtiberina. «That call for proposals seemed to have just found me, who at the time was considering what to do and where to go. The course was very interesting, it taught me how to write a business plan and then offered me the opportunity to do an internship at Aboca, whose farm grows medicinal plants and herbs, although on a totally different scale – it’s a whole different world” explains Eric. Aboca, based in Sansepolcro, is a local healthcare company that promotes health through safe, effective, 100% natural products.