Working Farm. Tuscany.

A Working Farm is what Italian law and Italian tradition call agriturismo, a working agricultural property that has converted part of its accommodation for guests, where the family or estate is still actively farming the land. In the Exclusive Tuscany collection, the bar is set higher than the legal minimum: we look for properties where the agriculture is the point of the place, not a cosmetic and where guests are welcome to participate.

What that means in practice varies. On the olive estates above Greve, you can press your own oil during the autumn harvest. On the dairy farms in the Crete Senesi, you can be in the cheese room at six in the morning watching pecorino come together. On the chestnut farms above Lucca, you can spend a day collecting and roasting in early November. On the cattle properties in the Maremma, you can take a horse out with the butteri at first light.

These properties are usually the most reasonably priced in the collection per bed, because the agriturismo licence comes with constraints, the rates are regulated, the meals (when offered) must use estate produce, the marketing is supposed to be moderated. We treat that less as a limitation and more as a guarantee of authenticity.

Working Farm villas sleep six to fourteen. They are the strongest category for families with young children, where the rhythm of a farming day, early up, long lunch, late afternoon outside, dinner with whatever the land produced, happens to be exactly the rhythm a five-year-old runs on naturally.

Tell us the dates, the size of your party and whether the category fits. If we have a house that holds up, we will say so directly; if we do not, we will tell you that too. Replies come from the founders, usually within a working day.