Meet Daniela Baldoni
Daniela was born in 1952 and grew up in Castell’Azzara, in a farming family in a marginal rural economy where agriculture was arduous and many households relied on mining for supplementary income. Around the village there were few independent farms. The only substantial holding between Monte Nebbiaio and Civitella belonged to the Siele mining company, which mined the subsoil while leasing the land under sharecropping arrangements. Daniela’s grandfather took on one of these plots, roughly thirty hectares, large by local standards, but necessary given the land’s low productivity.
As a child Daniela saw wheat harvested by hand. The household kept three dairy cows, draught oxen and around twenty sheep. The oxen were harnessed to carts and later to a harvester that cut the wheat into sheaves. Even then, mechanisation required manual labour: a strip had to be cut by hand so the animals could pass without trampling the crop.
On threshing day the grain was taken to the miller, who delivered flour to the baker. From a quintal of wheat came about seventy kilos of flour and thirty of bran; payment was made in cash or in kind. In the 1960s and 1970s the family used Tonino’s bakery; one of two in the Castell’Azzara. Over time wheat cultivation was abandoned. A tenfold return on seed was no longer competitive: sheep were more profitable.
Daniela at her dining table
After the end of sharecropping under the Ente Maremma reforms, which did away with sharecropping, Daniela’s father reorganised the farm in line with technological change. Dairy cows were sold; with the purchase of a tractor, draught animals disappeared as well. The business pivoted decisively towards sheep farming, increasing flock size and switching from hardy Apennine breeds to the more productive Sicilian Comisana and the Barbaresca.
Feed had to be supplemented, mainly barley that was soaked to aid digestion. Initially sheep were valued mainly for wool, alongside meat and milk. Later, Daniela’s father realised that value lay further along the chain: processing the milk. Cheese production followed.
Daniela’s mother made ricotta, first in small quantities, then at scale—up to 100–150 litres of milk a day, using large cauldrons, sometimes five batches daily. The ricotta they produced soon exceeded local demand. Unsold produce was taken to the village grocery and exchanged for staples such as pasta, coffee, sugar, flour—or for household necessities. When it could no longer be traded, it was repurposed at home, often as ricotta fritters. Daniela disliked them as a child; today she would happily make them again.
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Daniela with part of her and her husband’s comic book collection.
Vegetables, rabbits and chickens were raised largely for household consumption. Daniela’s grandmother kept hens and sold eggs.
Daily cooking reflected an economy of reuse. Stale bread became soups: acquacotta, bread-based broths, bean soups, or cipollato, a slow-cooked onion dish with celery, courgette or chard, often finished with a poached egg. Beans were poured, cooking liquid and all, over dry bread; red beans were served with toasted bread, rubbed with garlic, oil and salt. Minestrone varied with what was available. There was no ribollita: kale was replaced by savoy cabbage, whose outer leaves went into soup, the rest into simple dishes with bread soaked in cooking broth.
Hand-rolled pici was a staple. Daniela recalls her grandmother making them so frequently that the verb appiciare—to roll pici—entered everyday speech. As a child she disliked them with the traditional agliata or with the industrial tomato paste, bought loose by the spoonful from the grocer. When fresh tomatoes replaced it, the dish was transformed.
In 1977 Daniela married Sinibaldo. They spent their first months together working a summer season in a pension in Castiglione della Pescaia—jokingly described as their honeymoon, though in reality it was a matter of necessity. Back in the village, Sinibaldo joined the agricultural cooperative CAF, founded after the mines closed in 1974, producing milk.
In 1992 they bought their own house; from 1995 they gradually acquired land, building a small farm, I Murceti. Sinibaldo focused on shepherding and a small dairy for cheese production.
For nearly three decades Daniela ran the village grocery—first as an assistant, then partner, finally owner. The shop provided a stable income and helped subsidise the farm. More than that, it functioned as a social hub: a place of conversation, informal welfare and mediation in a small community. She closed it in 2016, aided by a law that offered financial support for shop closures.
Antonello's family pictures
Daniela's Husband Sinibaldo
Daniela has always valued what nature provides, and the knowledge required to transform it. She makes jams: blackberry, plum (without sugar), apricot, chestnut, grape, quince (also as jelly) and green tomato. Preserving “how things are done”, she says, is a way of resisting dependence on industry. For the same reason she once insisted on home pig slaughtering, to retain skills - now lost to regulation.
That knowledge is still passed on. A grandson, now nearly seventeen, has shown interest in farm life and helps with the animals.
Daniela continues to cook extensively. She makes fresh pasta—maccheroni and tortelli—in large batches, sometimes using twenty eggs at a time, drying the sheets by the stove. Maccheroni are dressed with gorgonzola, tomato sauce or agliata tortelli are steamed until they swell, not boiled. They are filled with ricotta and chard, or nettle or borage, scented with cinnamon and herbs. She bakes Easter bread, sponge biscuits and cakes, experiments constantly, and fries and freezes summer aubergines for winter parmigiana.
The household also reflects a broader cultural curiosity. Daniela and Sinibaldo share an interest in art and comics; through a friend they met Milo Manara, who designed the label for their cheese.
For Daniela, cooking, producing and preserving are deliberate choices: a life structured around manual work, quality raw materials and shared memory. She remains active, rooted in the land and in the everyday discipline of making things by hand.
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Daniela’s savoiardi biscuits.