Family Farmhouse in Garda Preserves 300 Years of History and Traditions
“It’s a piece of history kept alive within a family, which serves as a living witness,” reports Mr. Renato Mombelli, partisan, ancient history scholar, and archivist of the Duomo di Salò. We are talking about the farmhouse ‘Fornaci’, in Portese, just a few meters from the border with the Comune di Salò.
They say that the yellow bricks used to build the Salò Cathedral were made here. “Down here, towards the lake – says Giacomo Zambarda – there was an earthen house where tiles and bricks were once made.” Mr. Zambarda, who runs a small farm business in partnership with his brother Roberto (in the locality of S. Felice), is the heir of a family whose members, over three centuries, have operated in this 1500s farmhouse.
For 117 years, descendants of the same family have lived and worked here. “My grandfather Giacomo — he continues to tell us — moved here from San Felice at the age of six, in 1883. He had ten children, and until 1991, my family worked here as sharecroppers: in the past, besides the harvest, we supplied the owners with sixty eggs and twelve kilos of chickens.”
Cultivation and life in the farmhouse
Vineyards, olive groves, some cereals: these are the typical crops of the land around Garda, grown by the Zambarda family, who also have some animals — pigs, two cows whose milk is used by the family, chickens, rabbits, and the inevitable farm dogs.
The land has always been owned by the Cominelli family, of the Fondazione di Cisano, which also owned the campsite (now closed) adjacent to the farmhouse. “My father — recalls Mr. Giacomo — helped build, with pick and shovel, the beautiful ‘darsena’ of the campsite.”
Since 1991, they have a lease agreement whereby the family keeps all the harvests, with no payment, but also without any rights to the property. “This contract expires in November 2000,” adds his wife Ines, “and we hope it will be renewed so we can repair the farmhouse and provide for our farm necessities; otherwise, we will have to leave.”
The Zambarda family and wartime memories
The current Zambarda family comprises Mr. Giacomo, his wife Ines, and their three children (two girls, one of whom recently married, and a boy, Nicola, who is an agrarian expert and wants to continue the family’s agricultural tradition). Until a few months ago, the grandparents also lived in the farmhouse; Domenico Zambarda and Maria Baldo, who have now moved to their other son’s house due to health issues, but remain just a few hundred meters away.
Nini, one of the grandfather’s sisters, also worked as a custodian at the Torre S. Marco in Gardone. Mrs. Maria recalls: During the war, we fed the animals with leftovers from the Americans. They went fishing in the lake and also cooked polenta.”
She continues: “We used to wash clothes in the lake, and here, below, we found the water warmer. It was said that the lake water had healing properties, and when we got hurt, we would go to soak in the lake.”
