L’Arcolaio – Frutti degli Iblei

In the area of Siracusa, there is an organisation that truly conveys its soul at its best and most inclusive: the social cooperative L’Arcolaio - the spinning wheel - that has been building routes for social and work integration for prisoners for almost twenty years, by producing Sicilian organic traditional products, sold under the brand name Dolci Evasioni.

In 2014 L’Arcolaio expanded beyond the prison walls with Frutti degli Iblei - Fruits of the Hyblean Hills, a social agriculture project launched on an area of 13 hectares in Piano Milo, which were bestowed on the cooperative by the Diocese of Siracusa. Frutti degli Iblei offers training and work to former prisoners, as well as immigrants and other people in need, through the farming and processing of typical Mediterranean herbs and the drying of fruit and vegetables sourced from small local farms.

The lands of Piano Milo, located in the heart of the Hyblean Hills, contain pristine treasures, thanks to the area’s distinctive biodiversity, which the cooperative is trying to preserve and promote. Apart from the organic cultivations of rosemary, sage, and oregano, the stretches of fields are speckled with carob, olive, and wild almond trees, thickets of mastic, bushes of thyme, cistus, buckthorn, hackberry, wild mallow, and much more. Between February and March, nature prepares to do its best here. One can admire the heather of the Hyblean Hills, with its candy pink blooms, the small orange suns of wild marigolds, the stiff stems of Mediterranean asphodel, the blue inflorescences of borage, the small, bright green tufts of wild fennel.