La Fageda, a great little world in a nature reserve

About 250 Friesian cows live on our farm, from which we get a part of the milk we need to make yogurts, desserts and ice cream. The rest of La Fageda’s milk comes from the cows on the nine farms of the Lletera de l’Empordà Cooperative, of which we are members.

All ten farms take care of cows in a very similar way and have the Welfair™ certificate of animal welfare, which confirms that they are well fed; they rest and move in comfortable spaces; they are in good health; they are sociable, and have a positive emotional state.

During the guided tours of the Els Casals property we walk around the farm and meet the cows and the heifers; we learn how the milking robots work where the cows enter when they want to be milked; we get to see the fans that comfort them when it is hot, and the scratchers that automatically turn on when they stop for a rub. Also, if we listen carefully, we can hear the classical baroque music that the cows listen to.

At Els Casals we have a large grazing area for our cows in the shelter of the Sierra del Corb. At the La Coromina farm, which we bought in 2017, we grow all the barley, all the grass and much of the corn we need to feed the cows. In turn, the dung of the cows, which we collect on the farm in an automated way, allows us to fertilize the fields of La Coromina.
This is how we move towards the circular economy. From the land to the cows and from the cows to the land.

These are the spaces where we make all our yogurts and desserts, ice cream and jams.

We send the milk of the cows from the farm through underground pipes to these facilities; we store the raw materials there; we have a laboratory from where we do all quality controls; we have a pilot plant for creating new products or improve the current ones, and from here we ship the products for distribution.

The house, which gives its name to the property, has the kitchen-dining room on its ground floor, and has two more floors for the Occupational Therapy Service, from where we serve the people most in need of support. Around it there is a landscaped area and also a health park for touching nature.

We grow seasonal food in the greenhouses and in the outdoor gardens that we can then buy ourselves in the in-house store La Fageda Pantry. Horticultural activity plays a very important role for people most in need of support.

Visitors are welcomed onto the premises by the Visitor Service, equipped with two multipurpose rooms and a shop. There is also a children’s playground and a picnic area outside.

The social-labour area of La Fageda, as well as the departments of finance, management and development of people, sales and marketing, ICT and others are located in a building annexed to the factory.

Next to the factory are the maintenance services and the biomass boiler that, since 2014, produces much of the energy we need for our industrial activity in the form of steam. This represents a significant saving in propane gas consumption.

This is a physical-chemical and biological plant that we launched in 2019 and whose main objective is to eliminate the organic matter present in the 250 cubic metres of water that we generate on average every day in La Fageda.
This water comes mainly from the manual and automatic cleaning systems of the machinery of the factories, but also from the milking robots on the farm, from the cleaning of the tanks that store the milk and from the toilets at various points on the farm.

We have two residential centres that offer continuous care and where more than thirty people live: El Caliu, in the centre of the city, and El Cassés, in an emblematic farmhouse, ceded by the Felix Llobet and Nicolau Foundation, in the neighbourhood of Plan de Dalt in Olot. In addition, four people live, more autonomously, in an apartment that we have rented, thanks to the home with support service.

This is located in premises of 1,500 m2 in the district of Sant Roc in Olot which we acquired in 2019.