Concrete responsibility
Open Hands
Welcoming is not only hosting.
CasaMatilda is not simply a place where people stay.
It is a place where relationships are taken seriously. Sometimes that means a blanket placed on a bed. Sometimes it means helping a person enter Italy legally, safely, and with dignity in order to work. Sometimes it means giving structure to an idea born from grief, so it can become something concrete and endure over time.
At the heart of it, the gesture is always the same: open hands, practical care, and responsibility toward people.
A wider community
For Anna and Fabio, community does not end at the edge of the property. It does not even end at the border of the village.
It begins with the land they work every day, passes through the guests who arrive, the people who collaborate, the families who meet, and reaches farther away, wherever a connection can become work, possibility, and dignity.
Here, hospitality is not only a kind word. It is a way of being in the world: creating real conditions, keeping relationships clear, and giving form to what might otherwise remain only an intention.
Jasimanà: the thread that comes down the mountain
Some of the blankets at CasaMatilda carry a story that begins far from the Langhe.
The story passes through Biella, a land of textiles and knowledge connected to wool. It then reaches Argentina, where a family from Biella, after the loss of their son Ermanno, looked for a way to transform grief into a useful gesture toward other young people.
From that desire came a project with the community of Jasimanà, in northern Argentina, in the province of Salta.
There, high in the mountains, some families lived from their work with llamas and wool. The project was not created to take raw material away and transform it elsewhere. It was created to help a community build value within its own territory.
The wool was sheared high in the mountains. It then moved down to another community, where it was washed and spun into yarn. Farther down, other looms made it possible to weave blankets and rugs. The work followed the mountain, village after village, hand after hand.
Fabio took part in building the project, helping give form, organization, and continuity to an intuition born from a mother’s heart. It was not a commercial initiative. It was not an image operation. It was a concrete way to connect Biella, Argentina, wool, work, memory, and the future of some young people.
Today, those blankets are not simply decorative objects. They are the visible sign of a relationship.
From the weaving of Jasimanà to the beds of CasaMatilda, the thread remains the same: to welcome, to preserve, to give form.
Work as a dignified passage
Another story is more recent.
When Kamal arrived from India to work in agriculture at CasaMatilda, he did not arrive through an anonymous relationship. He arrived through a legal path, prepared with care, with documents, responsibility, accommodation, and clear conditions.
For Fabio and Anna, it was not only a question of having help in the fields. There was also a more human question: how can one accompany a person who is trying to build a possible future for himself and for his family?
This is a quiet part of hospitality. It is not immediately visible in the photographs. But it belongs deeply to the way CasaMatilda understands work: not as a cold exchange between need and payment, but as a relationship that must remain clear, correct, and respectful.
Concrete responsibility
CasaMatilda does not use grand words to describe these things. It is about doing one’s part, when it is possible.
Land
Following the seasons without forcing the land or turning the landscape into scenery.
Food
Preserving what the season offers, reducing waste, and giving value to agricultural work.
People
Creating correct, clear, and respectful conditions for those who work, collaborate, or pass through here.
Culture
Keeping practical knowledge alive: wool, cooking, vinegar, manual work, and slow relationships.
An open project
This page gathers the stories and activities that express CasaMatilda’s concrete responsibility.
Some are already visible: the blankets, the agricultural work, the people who collaborate, the products of the land, the vinegar cellar, and the care given to guests.
Others will grow over time: meetings, collaborations, projects with producers, cultural activities, exchanges between territories, and new ways of connecting CasaMatilda to other communities without losing its measure.
Not everything has to become large.
But what begins here must remain true.
From CasaMatilda
The house, the land, the relationships
Open Hands is part of the same story told by Anna and Fabio: the house, the working farm, La Dispensa, and Asì delle Langhe are not separate worlds. They are different ways of giving form to one responsibility.
CasaMatilda welcomes guests, but it also holds relationships, work, memory, and possibility.