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New blog from mountain writer Tamara Griffiths

13.07.2016

Tamara Griffiths is a ‘mountain writer’. After completing her master’s degree in Sustainable Mountain Development at University of Highlands and Islands Scotland’s Centre for Mountain Studies, Griffiths became engaged by The Huffington Post, reporting on mountain issues, focusing on mountain foods. Her most recent blog, “Food That is Feeling”, tells about Roberto Di Mulo, a maker of mountain food who is working to preserve certain traditions of cheese making and to share the experience of these mountain products with park visitors. Griffiths writes:

Mountain food represents a cultural value, an emotion and if you are lucky a shared experience, too.

Milk and cheese producer, Roberto Di Mulo, based in the Monti Sibillini National Park, Central Italy, explains what this means:

“Being located in the mountains is a real advantage in that the image of mountains, the feeling of mountains, makes people think purity, health and traditions. In mountains like ours, you have food that is connected to belief.”

When I ask him to elaborate he has a lot to say:
“Everyone has to work together to see our reality through the lens of tourism. I don’t only have a high quality product but I offer an emotion. That is what families want their children to experience when they come to mountains.”

Griffiths, too, lives in the Sibillini Mountains where Monti Sibillini National Park is located. In her blog, she goes on to describe an initiative started by the park to build connections between producers like Di Mulo and local restaurants:

Last year the park launched an inspiring project - Menu of the Sibillini - to educate consumers and forge links between food producers inside the park and local restaurants. Chefs were challenged to offer one or more dishes made with food from the park. Despite being a great concept it has had no impact on sales for Roberto. Only one local restaurant occasionally buys his mozzarella. He thinks the problem stems from lack of publicity/awareness and lack of networking abilities.

“The only way businesses in the mountains can make it work is by doing everything themselves,” Roberto explains. “We produce the hay, we produce the milk, we transform it into a range of products, we distribute and we are a point of sale.”

Even though Di Mulo faces certain obstacles being located in the mountains, Griffiths writes that Di Mulo remains committed to tradition and to acting as a steward of heritage mountain breeds that are no longer used in industrial farming:

Recently he’s acquired ‘anti-economic’ autochthonous animals. These species are no longer raised because they are not productive in industrial farming practices. At present Roberto has a heritage breed of rabbit and two types of heritage chickens, kept outside for visitors to experience, representing added value.

As he says: “If we don’t save these ancient breeds who will? This is what visitors expect when they come to mountains.”

“Food That is Feeling” and other blog entries by Tamara Griffiths are available at HuffingtonPost.com. With a background as a script writer, having had her plays produced professionally in London, Berlin, Los Angeles and Toronto, as well as five film scripts shown on television, Griffiths is now concentrating on mountain writing with the publication of her book, in Italian and English, “Walking in the Sibillini, A Celebration of a Distinctive Mountain Culture” and she is currently completing her second non-fiction book, “Oaks and the Apennines; truffles, heritage foods, wellbeing and sustainability in Italy”, while teaching ‘Eco-gastronomy in the Apennines’ and ‘Culture and History of Food in Italy’ to undergraduate students at the University of New Hampshire in Italy. She is also the translator for the Monti Sibillini National Park.

Photo: The Huffington Post