The transformation phases are essentially two, roasting and milling. It is the right drying temperature and the correct balance in percentage of the ingredients, that is barley, chickpeas and salt, which allow to obtain a balanced product. The raw materials are stored in jute bags to preserve their organoleptic characteristics.
Barley is an ancient cereal present in various parts of the world, the characterization of the one present in the south-east area of Bari and Putignano is given by the clayey soil rich in iron oxides therefore red in color, by the temperature and the angle of the sun's rays during the natural drying phase of the ears which gives them an intense and unique aroma and taste during the roasting and milling phase.
The other fundamental component of farinella was the rustic chickpea, a type of legume that is very strong and resistant to adversity. It did not fear the cold winters typical of the 372 meters above sea level in the area and, not even afraid of drought, it was never or almost never irrigated. The cultivation cycle started with the sowing in October and ends with the harvest in July. During these phases it did not need much care other than the weeding and tamping of the young plants.
The native agricultural tradition in the first half of the twentieth century provided for the biennial alternation of wheat and barley cultivation with that of legumes, including chickpeas. The surface cultivated during the flour year included 70/80% of durum wheat traditionally used, at home, for bakery products (bread, friselle, taralli, etc.), 20% of the Senatore Cappelli variety for pasta. fresh and 5/10% of "world barley" for Farinella. The overall harvest was crammed into sacks and stored in its whole grain form to then be milled from time to time in relation to the weekly / monthly needs of the family.
In the town there were two different mills, one for durum wheat flour and one for farinella.
The history of those years tells that the average consumption per capita of a family of 5 people was 5 kg per year per person with very strong differences between the consumption of those who went directly to work in the fields (peasant men) with those who remained in home (women and young children).
The popular revolt was provoked by the conditions of extreme misery and exploitation in which the poor population, putignanese and not, poured into it in the last decades of the 19th century. It was made up of land workers, mostly peasants, "peasant" fathers, grandfathers and great-grandparents. .
At the trial that followed, the same judges of the Court of Bari, who certainly did not side with the Apulian laborers, wrote verbatim the reasons for the revolt "of squalid desolating poverty and pauperism ... In which today the class of dispossessed of Putignano, because of the "enormous inefficient imbalance between work and wages". to their indignation and anger against the small class of big landowners and rich bourgeois who got fat with the hard work and misery of the land workers. The protest was also directed against the tariff, an inequitable and exorbitant indirect taxation system that weighed especially on poor popular consumption.
Only for food was there a duty on the importation of wheat, the food base of the popular classes, to keep the price of the local product high; there was the duty on food products that came from the countryside to the city for trade or for family self-consumption and also the scarce food that many peasant families were able to produce for their own livelihoods had to pay the duty.
This was also the case, for example, for the fruit of "gleaning", when the women and children of the poorest families, after having asked the owners for permission, gathered, under the scorching sun, the few ears of wheat or barley that it had fallen to the ground and abandoned during the harvest leaving a part of the poor harvest to the landowner at the end of the work. Then, when the wheat was used to go to the mill to transform it into flour, the duty on the land, the hunger tax, had to be paid.
A few months after the aforementioned dramatic events, during the City Council of December 27 with the agenda "Abolition of the consumer duty and abolition of the duty belt", the Marquis Giovanni Romanazzi Carducci, declaring himself in favor of the abolition, had to admit that duty "concerns only the poor". He certainly could not add that this was done in order to avoid imposing a fair taxation on landed property and on the goods and incomes of the wealthy classes, even if he implicitly admitted it "accepting on my behalf any tax that could be imposed only on catkins." abolished towards the end of the year 1902. Except to restore it at the first opportunity, so much so that it remained in force until the years following the second postwar period.
Interesting is the point of view on the life situation in which those concerned, expressed a few years earlier, by an impartial observer, the French father Alessandro Dumas: "While the gentleman feeds his dogs white bread, people live on roots and herbs, with the addition of an inefficient amount of black bread.The lord shelters his horses in well-paved stables and sheltered from the wind and rain.His peasants live in damp and unhealthy hovels, open to all winds , without windows, without roof.The whole family sleeps on a single straw mat, in the same room with the mule, the pig and the chickens.
The concept of food community is understood as a group of producers and processors who, historically linked to their territory, quality linked to a single work philosophy, ensuring production to the indigenous, respect for planetary and environmental sustainability.