Felice's Farm.

My father, my children's Nonno, was five years old when he started working the family land in the mountains of southern Italy. Not helping. Working. By twelve he was driving a truck for his uncle, going farm to farm at first light to collect milk from the neighbors and carry it to the caseificio, where it became cheese before the day was over.

In 1966 he immigrated to the United States. He lived and worked here, and in 1972 he bought our farm, the one our family still stands on today. He never really stopped being that boy on the hillside; he just did the same work on different soil.

His name was Felice. In Italian, felice means happy. He liked to point that out, and then prove it: happy by name and by fact, happy every day. That was how he carried himself, through the early mornings, the hard seasons, and the years far from home.

Going back to our home in Italy without him is painful. The land is still there, quiet in places where the family used to be. So instead of letting that silence settle, we decided to do something in his honor: restore the land into an olive grove, and give other families a place to keep someone's name alive the way we are keeping his.

That is what this is. A small group of founding dedications on Felice's Farm. Each one funds the planting and care of an olive tree carrying someone's name on a plaque beside it, for five years from the day it goes into the ground.

We would rather begin small and keep every promise than announce a thousand trees we cannot plant. If the idea resonates with enough families, the grove grows. If it does not, everyone who reserved a dedication is treated fairly under our published refund terms.