How to:
Following you will find a copy of our adoption contract for
adoption packages to be sent to the USA. Here we invite you to
adopt one of our sheep and collaborate with us in our work to
maintain the pastoral culture of Abruzzo. In order to adopt a
sheep please fill out all of the information outlined in the
contract. You can indicate on the contract when you would like
to receive your adoption package and we will include all of the
products as well as your adoption documents and a photo of your
sheep at that time. You can return the contract to us via fax,
email or standard post, as you prefer.
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Email:
info@laportadeiparchi.it
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Fax: (0039)
864 49595
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Address: Porta
dei Parchi, Piazza Roma 11/A, Anversa degli Abruzzi (AQ),
Italia
We appreciate
your support of our project!!
The Initiative
The awareness raising campaign that our organisation, based in
Anversa degli Abruzzi in the heart of the Parchi d’Abruzzo is
conducting, is aimed at involving the entire population on an
important problem: the abandonment of the mountain habitat and
environmental degradation.
Stock farmers are more and more
alone in the protection of mountain areas, and the concepts of
productivity, efficiency, and profitability are becoming more
important also in political and operational decisions of our
local administrations. The safeguard, protection, and
conservation of nature and of the culture that has led to
utilise and enhance it down to our own times and claims to have
established the oldest National Park in Europe as well as other
newer parks and protected areas, is a value that is increasingly
threatened by extinction, as semi-wild stock-rearing gradually
disappears.
Few people know and acknowledge the importance of high quality
semi-wild stock-rearing both for the nutritive value of its
products and for its role in protecting the environment by
preventing fires, protecting the hydrogeology of the land, and
guaranteeing biodiversity.
Our initiative, "Adopt a sheep and defend nature", is meant to
invert this serious trend, and propose naturalists,
environmentalists, and gourmets, the distance adoption of a
sheep, that in exchange of maintenance and rearing expenses,
will yield its fruits (lambs, milk, cheese, ricotta, wool,
manure) as well as protection of the portion of land it defends
together with the rest of the flock. Stock farms taking part in
the initiative guarantee their products, including biological
products, with quality marks, and among other things offer
agritourist accommodation. Therefore the person adopting the
sheep will be able to stay at the chosen stock farm and
periodically follow the farm activities: grazing, lambing,
milking, sharing, and transhumance. All this in full respect of
the animals’ needs and habits, as dictated by the regulations of
biological production.
The initiative will be regulated by a
written agreement, in great seriousness, correctness, and
transparency, and everything will be appropriately recorded,
invoiced, and documented with regular book-keeping according to
law.
The advantages of the initiative "Adopt a sheep and defend
nature" to the user are the following: a saving of over 12% of
the market value of the products obtained, products that are
certainly genuine, the option of using products derived
exclusively from the adopted sheep (at the discretion of the
user), since the adoption is nominal apart from the cheese
products that need the milk of a number of sheep, which would
still be guaranteed by being reared following the same criteria.
Considering the continuous reduction in the numbers of those
who, though heirs of the millennial knowledge of sheep rearing,
that is part of the pathway of human civilisation, are masters
in the skill of managing domestic animals through the use of
environmental resources without altering them, on the contrary
conserving and enhancing them, we feel obliged to launch this
initiative.
- Adopt a
sheep
- Help
the survival of a millennial culture
- Protect
the environment
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Guarantee the preservation of transformation techniques
that have given our civilisation that infinite range of
cheeses, which together with sheep rearing are
threatened by extinction today
- Treat
yourself to the honour of contributing to relaunch such
an ancient and noble trade
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Guarantee yourself a supply of healthy genuine products.
It
has been documented from a number of sources that sheep rearing
is the first link in the chain of environmental balance, that
guarantees the mowing of pastoral essences and therefore the
permanent presence of smaller avifauna, the cultivation of
inaccessible and inhospitable areas, the conservation of poorly
infrastructured land, the continuity of the food cycle for the
conservation of the large carnivores such as the Apennine wolf
and occasionally the bear; the protection of wood fires and an
active garrison also of difficult areas less exposed than others
to the influence of man.
Furthermore, stock rearing, and in
general, country life are closely related to ethical values that
support and materialise the harmonious union between man and the
environment, indispensable opposition to the "technological
culture" that is so popular today.
To lose these ties means
to lose one’s identity, to deny history, the origins, the
traditions that have made our civilisation so important.
The
initiative of offering our flocks in adoption is meant to
attract the public interest and attention on problems that are
greatly felt by persons who, like us, perhaps against the
stream, have decided to dedicate their lives to the safeguard of
activities, so noble, though difficult and painful.
Moreover, the attempt is aimed at bringing together persons who
can understand and feel the environmental and cultural problems
of the pastoral world today, who appreciate its rich values,
sensations, sentiments, material actions, and rural humble
gestures.
The third objective is to offer certified
biological products directly to the public, without expensive
intermediaries, and also to guarantee the consumer the
possibility of a direct control of production and rearing and
transformation techniques, by closely following the process in
each of its moments.
The rearing stages can be controlled
from a distance, by e_mail or by conventional correspondence,
and a periodic bulletin with articles on the important phases of
production, the selection of the reproducers, coupling, milking,
shearing, transfer to the summer mountain grazing fields, litter
composting, participation at fairs, and so on, will be drawn up
and sent.
Over the Internet it will be possible to take active part in the
life of the farm with suggestions, indications, or simply with a
request for information.
The contribution is only an advance
capital, which will be returned with interests, in the form of
products.
With an annual contribution of $180.00 we will be able to count
on a capital that will help us by anticipating the shelter and
feeding expenses and encourage us in carrying on our activity.
Upon signing the convention, the "adoptive parent" will
establish whether and how to collect the products, how to assign
them, and how to benefit from them.
Special concessions,
discounts or promotions for all the events and shows related to
pastoral life will be reserved to those who join: the shearing
festival in April – May; the transhumance festival at the end of
May – beginning of June; the guide to the flocks at the summer
mountain pastures on foot or on horseback in mid June; guided
excursions in high altitude pastures in July - September;
thematic evenings on production, pastoral activity, and taste
laboratories, according to a calendar that will be updated every
six months.
Identity documents are available for each sheep ready for
adoption, as well as an illustration handbook on the project.
To take part in the project or simply to ask for further
information, it will be sufficient to click on the
contract or contact:
Dr.
Fabio Lofoco,
Project manager, Piazza Roma, 11/A 67030 Anversa degli Abruzzi
Phone and Fax +3984649595 – cellular phone 329/3805852;
E-mail
info@laportadeiparchi.it
