Grafting is one of the oldest and most refined practices in the cultivation of woody plants: it consists of joining onto a plant that serves as a base — the so-called rootstock — a portion of another plant, either a bud or a twig, known as the graft or scion. The two parts, brought into contact at the correct points, merge through the formation of a healing callus and become a single individual, composed of the roots and trunk of one plant and the fruits of another. In Fausto’s vocabulary, this vegetal grammar takes on familiar and domestic names: the “mother” is the plant that is cut and receives the graft, while the cacchio is the shoot grafted back onto it. The union, he explains, takes time: during the first year the plant “recovers” and “begins to gain strength”, and only in the following year does it bear fruit again; this can be recognised first by the fresh tape still wrapped around the point of union and later by the scar that remains visible in the trunk.

Through this knowledgeable practice, Fausto reveals the expertise of someone who has turned the countryside into a laboratory. He grafts plum, peach, apricot, cherry and damson trees; he knows the affinities between species and exploits them to the point of imagining a tree carrying multiple varieties, with lemon on one branch and apricot on another. He selects and preserves the varieties that interest him: the presta plum, an early variety ripening already at the end of May; the green plum that he prefers to maintain year after year. Until recently, he extended the same custodial attitude to the self-production of vegetable seedlings: he raised seedbeds on a warm bed of sheep manure, protected by a screen of reeds and a cover, and personally conserved seeds — including those of an old tomato variety, “non-hybrid”, selected over many years. Thus, it is the profile of a farmer who does not simply cultivate but directs and transmits plant diversity.

The act of grafting also has its proper timing, intertwining technical knowledge with calendrical knowledge; Fausto grafts in February and “with the right moon”, that is, during the waxing moon, because during the waning moon “the graft does not take”: a belief deeply rooted in peasant tradition, according to which the waxing phase corresponds to a more active sap capable of favouring successful establishment, reflecting a specific way of living within the natural rhythm of vegetation.

Around his house unfolds the entire world that Fausto Iezzi manages largely on his own, with only occasional help from his wife and children: the olive grove, the lucerne grown for hay, the wheat, the meadows descending towards the road, the fruit trees and the vegetable garden. It is within this broader framework of family farming that grafting finds its fullest meaning: not an abstract technique, but a way of caring, year after year, for plants and for the place that receives them. Through this continuous work of observation, transplantation and selection, Fausto acts as an effective custodian of domestic biodiversity: he experiments with different kinds of plums wherever opportunity arises, and whenever a graft proves promising he relocates and preserves it, conserving the fruits he values most — the tastiest, the most resilient and the rarest, those endowed with uniqueness and therefore worth preserving and protecting over time — transforming the surrounding landscape into a living catalogue of plant varieties and virtuous botanical experiments.