What exactly is a Fattoria ?
 

We are selecting an agriturismo in Tuscany and some of our favorites have the word
Fattoria in the name or description. I think I have noticed that most also produce/sell wine and olive oil. What exactly is a Fattoria?

Thanks for my vocabulary word definition of the day!!!

I think it means factory in Italian.

Farm, farmhouse, or farm building, depending on context

It's the Italian word for factory. It just means that your agriturismo sells products that they make onsite.

"Fattoria" is not factory.

Fattoria is the Italian word for farm, as far as I know.

I posted the meaning of "fattoria" above: farm, farmhouse, farm building (where work is done). It's NOT a factory. Weadles is correct, too. It's one of those words called a "false friend" because epeople mistakenly think it must mean "factory," since it seems so close.

well, well, well.

I tend to translate as "we make it here"

fare = to make
fanno = they make

We get our word "factory" from some derivative of "fattoria" but the image of smokestacks and assembly lines would be misleading for Italy. Many "fattoria" are operations run out of kitchens.

A factory is a "fabbrica." Factory and fattoria are derived from "factoria," but while the sense of making something is common to both, the words developed differently, and "factory" and "fattoria" do not mean the same thing. People who have print dictionaries can check them, but, if not, you can try the online dictionary ( www. garzanti.it ).

Means small farm according to two of my translation programs.

Hi all, the translation of fattoria means a farm.

"fattoria" is an Italian word meaning "farm" , as cmt and loveitaly have said. Yes, It is a "false friend" and is one of the words I use in my class to illustrate what "false friends" are.

It's the opposite of a weight-loss program.

Harzer

Never trust false friends ;)

Whatever it is, we really enjoyed the one we stayed at in Monteriggione a few years ago. Ours was a luxury B&B and they sold home-made olive oil. Probably this year they will be harvesting their first grapes to make their own wine.

Summing all this up, I guess we got a good defition at a small place where we asked exactly what it meant. Their explanation?
It's anyplace where they make and sell a food related product. It could be an estate vineyard. It could be the making and selling of olive oil. It could be cheese, it could be anything -- so long as it's food related and it's made or processed there.

If they make leather products, they won't call it a fattoria.

Regarding the definition as being "a farm", are some of you suggesting that a family who lives on a farm that simply grows wheat they sell to market for example, and they don't make or process anything would still be called a fattoria? I don't think so.

In reading and conversation, I've encounted fattoria used as a general word for farm, even one that just sells for market. In practice, of course, most family farms do process their own food products, at least on a small scale, but I don't think that's a prerequisite for being a fattoria. For example, large industrial livestock producers that don't do any processing, which would be "factory farms" in English, are often called "fattorie industriali."

It seems like azienda or azienda agricola is used only for farms that process their own goods, but I could be wrong. And then there's podere and tenuta, which historically referred to particular types of smallholdings, but increasingly have become quaint terms to make agriturismi sound wholesome (kind of how upscale restaurants call themselves osterie).

Do you know of a word for farms that sell only to market without processing anything?

It would be so much simnpler if everyone would just refer to either an Italian-English dictionary in print or an online dictionary, such as the one available on www.garzanti.it. I knew what the word meant, but I checked my dictionary (print) at home to be extra sure, just in case my memory had failed me. It just seems so odd that there should be all this speculation and debate over a word that appears in every Italian dictionary.

Here's the url of an nonline dictionary: http://www.garzantilinguistica.it/