We like to think of the birth of Agrincontri as the beginning of a story, with all the fantastic and mysterious ingredients that a story has.
The protagonist of this story has his veil of mystery, a life divided between the “rigid” world of rational finance and the “imaginative” desire to play, between bank accounts and archery, office and forest, men of in short, business and peasants a “complex type” a Character, who in our story we will recognize with a fantasy name: Gibbì.
Well, Gibbì has wandered since his youth between dreams to be fulfilled, crazy and ingenious projects: the search for his way. But the beauty (or the ugly?) of Gibbì is that his secret dreams are always and in any case set in the COUNTRYSIDE.

And Gibbì’s first “rock-entrepreneurial” initiative, way back in 1970, could only be the breeding of hares for reproductive purposes with dizzying earnings forecasts, who knows perhaps precisely because of the exponential reproductivity of these little animals. And someone is fascinated by this project (probably by the alleged money, not by the hares) and a company is born which we will call “The Future in the Hare”. Time passes, not even much and many hares for Gibbì’s great joy and amusement, but money… Thus the first experience fades away with two messages for Gibbì: the countryside doesn’t give much money but it can bring play and a healthy life, entrepreneurial companies…: better alone!

So our “hero” searches, travels, observes, searches again, and asks friends and acquaintances, in short, he wants his place, the place that calls you, the unique place that the lucky ones sometimes come across, but which they often look for in vain.

Until… until one day Gibbì climbs the ancient Todi Orvieto road, a road traveled over the centuries by Popes and warriors, invading soldiers, bandits and beggars, merchants and pilgrims. At the end of a curve, on the top of a hill, a valley opens up and there, he hears the echoes of those who preceded him, of those who before him observed this panorama with a thirst for peace or conquest.
The hill with the medieval ruins witness to war and blood for the usual stupid desire to conquer a meter of land. The military watchtower and defense to which the manor house has embraced over the centuries. The little church of S. Maria della Neve erected on the occasion of a mysterious and for that time (1400 AD) disturbing event: snow in August! How strange that event must have seemed to the superstitious ancient people if they decided to build a church in the woods. And the peasant house on the hill, robust and essential, in stone, to defend its inhabitants from the cold and from the night… And the view

So we like to imagine Gibbì who after so much searching, when by now, who knows, he was resigning himself to never finding the desired place anymore, at the sight of all this he sits down in the shade of an oak tree, drinks the images transmitted by his eyes, listens to that silence broken only by the fauna of the forest, he breathes, savors the smell of the grass, the trees, the flowers, he knows he has arrived and… he falls asleep.
Gibbì sleeps, sleeps and dreams. He dreams of being able to buy (conquer?) this land that has so intrigued him, of using it to breed free and wild animals that drink in the lakes and eat this green grass. And go out at night with ancestral and loyal weapons: a bow and a quiver, a knife.
And he still dreams of sharing this experience with others, of showing, since it is not possible to tell, sight, hearing, smell.
And he dreams of meeting a rude(?) Maremmano cowherd and with this travel companion cultivate, raise, give new life to this ancient and uncontaminated corner of Umbria, organize gatherings of cowherds, run after wild horses…

And still dream, dream…… that one day a tribe of Sioux will come to Agrincontri (in the dream this is how he christened this place), and will hunt with them, will live their ceremonies, will build a village together in the woods and when the work is finished they will sit in a circle in front of the fire to listen to the great truths, to speak with the great Mother Earth…
And there will be the storyteller who will tell the stories of the people of the past in front of the fireplace in the manner of the old minstrels… and perhaps we will be able to exorcise that infernal black box they call TV.

He dreams of making arrows from stone, of being surrounded by deer, fallow deer, moufflons, wild boars. And that many will come to live this dream with him. Dream of years of life, of problems, of joys, of construction and of the difficulties of people who pass, who return, the growth of Agrincontri. How Gibbi dreams that day!

And then… he wakes up. He looks around, something seems to have changed, not really much. The usual oak, the same quiet, the usual unchanged landscape. The passing seasons.

But looking closer you can see something different. The hand of man, but here light, delicate. The protective fences for grazing deer and fallow deer, boxes for horses, a swimming pool, a field for playing, a few cars. Voices of a child, laughter and chatter, the usual Briscola with a new big friend (?). Yes, something has changed: the passing of time.
And Gibbì understands, and this saddens him a little but deep down he knows it’s the irony of life, he stretches, wakes up, smiles and calls himself a fool because he understands that it wasn’t a dream or if it was he was living it in very very real way.

Then a voice, a bit unpleasant and rough, but reassuring, Gibbì shakes himself, comes out of his thoughts, listens attentively to what is this one shouting? He half-smiles when, from the shade of his oak tree, a hundred meters from the house, he hears the “innkeeper” squawking: A TAVOLAAAAAAAA.