How Le Pradine of Anna and Francesco Soncini Sessa began.
130 years of history of the estate, from its origins to today. A story that helped us better understand the area and bring the Natural Oasis of Le Pradine to life..jpg)
Le Pradine Natural Oasis Agriturismo, with about 170 hectares oe land, is part of an old estate bought in 1872 by Great Grandfather Carlo Sessa, a Lombard businessman well known for having started industrial alcohol and artificial ice production in Italy, and for having spent a lot of money promoting the use of silk and hemp textiles.
The estate, called ‘Sessa’, made up of 550 hectares of land, was the property of the Morardet Family, and in 1700 became the property of Cardinal Pompeo Aldrovandi, with a total extent of about 1000 hectares. The houses, about twenty in all, were hard to reach and in bad condition, but they all had a cowshed. Drainage did not exist, meaning that some parts of the land were under water for much of the year, and were only accessible by boat. Much of the land was sandy, having already suffered one of the first breaches of the river Reno.
Carlo Sessa, followed by his son Rodolfo and his grandson Luigi Sessa, invested heavily to carry out a project of land drainage and improvement, cutting down woodland and putting a new system of land use into place. In 1875 house building and reconstruction of old buildings began. In the following years, new houses and cowsheds were built. Given the difficulty of getting hold of bricks, in 1883 a brick kiln was opened. This closed in 1911. In 1878 a silk mill was built to work the silk, because on the property there were 6000 well established mulberry trees along the side-tracks. The leaves were used to feed the silk-worms. The running system of the agricultural business at the time of purchase was cropsharing with 19 cropsharing families. This became 22 in 1915, with an average of 25 hectares per family.
Each family were responsible for managing the income of the property. The cropsharing houses consisted of living areas, a cowshed, a barn, a wood store and a tool shed. In the cowsheds were romagnola cows, used for ploughing, sowing, levelling and harrowing work. The animals were only replaced by machines at the end of the second world war.
The Estate was provided with a Business Centre, made up of a large room for training courses for employees and sewing courses for women, a sub-centre of insemination, a wine cellar, five chicken coops, a store room for keeping raw materials, two store rooms for keeping agricultural machines and a cowshed with 38 milking cows and calves.
