The Letter — No. 1 — 20 August 2026
Two farms in the Marche that take the enquiry themselves
This is the first Letter. It exists because of a gap we kept running into: the stays worth a week of your life in Italy are often the ones with no booking button, and no way to be found unless you already know the valley. So we started a register of them, and every Thursday two of the entries come here.
Both of this week's are in the Marche, which is the region we read first because it is the one nobody sends you to. Neither takes an online booking. You write, they answer, and the arrangement is between the two of you — we are not in it, and we take nothing on it.
One thing to hold in mind while you read. Both are labelled Found, not Confirmed. That means we have read their own pages and cross-read the public registers, but the Owner has not yet written back to us. We are asking them this month. When they answer, the label changes and you will see it change.
Fermignano, Pesaro e Urbino — Marche
Locanda della Valle Nuova
6 rooms · grain, fruit, vegetables, livestock, truffle · 17 April to 2 November, as published for the 2025 season · €95–160 per night
Twelve kilometres south of Urbino, on 185 acres that have been certified organic since 1983 — three years after the family bought the place. They grow cereals, legumes, grapes, fruit and vegetables, keep cows, chickens and pigs, and take truffles and herbs out of their own woods. Six rooms, all en-suite, plus three apartments if you are self-catering. The season runs mid-April to early November. What made us open the file: their own rates page says plainly that they would rather not offer online booking and asks you to write first. That is not an oversight, it is a position — and it is the whole reason this register exists.
Fiastra, Macerata — Marche
Agriturismo degli Alti Pascoli
4 rooms · grain, dairy, livestock, vegetables, wine · Open all year · €60–120 per night for a double room, bed and breakfast to full board
Eighty hectares at 830 metres above Lago di Fiastra, in the Sibillini. Sheep, goats, pigs, poultry and game, a working dairy, white and red wine, and vegetables. Four rooms in the restored stone farmhouse, and two apartments — four beds and six — a few kilometres off. Open all year, which at that altitude means the winter is part of the offer, not an apology for it. The site asks you to phone or email; there is no other way in. Their Italian is the only language on the page, so the enquiry letter on the entry is worth copying.
Next Thursday: two more, probably from Umbria or the Maremma, depending on who writes back first. If a region you are actually planning is missing, the region pages have a line where you can say so, and we read every one.
If you know someone planning Italy, forward this. That is our whole growth plan.