After the “pick-your-own” tulip fields, the trend of “pick-your-own” cherries straight from the tree has now exploded. This is what farmer Nicola Micheletti, founder of the orchard that bears his name in Novate Milanese, has come up with .
The idea struck him more than 30 years ago, when Nicola turned a challenge into an insight that led him to start with 3 people picking fruit, then 300, and the number has been growing steadily every year.
Founded in 1985, the farm has expanded from 1 hectare to 35. For over thirty years, the Il Frutteto farm has carried on the work of Romano Micheletti, dedicated to selecting varieties of both ancient and modern fruit trees chosen for their quality and taste.
Il Frutteto today
Today, the farm has expanded and shifted toward self-service, and has also developed a line of processed products —including peaches and apricots in syrup, juices, compotes, purees, and spicy sauces—alongside a nursery business that allows customers to purchase varieties of plants tested directly in the fields.
The “you pick” business
Pick-your-own is a simple model: the consumer enters the orchard, picks the fruit directly, and pays only for what they choose to take home.
For visitors to the orchard, it’s not just about price or product quality, but also the chance to spend a few hours outdoors and personally pick the fruit straight from the trees. For the farm, however, self-picking represents a more sustainable model, especially economically: it significantly reduces production costs, particularly those related to harvesting labor, eliminates several intermediate steps in the supply chain, and allows the product to be valued through a higher selling price compared to traditional channels
How the project began and how it works
The new chapter in this story is called CiliegiaMi: a project born five years ago from the meeting between Nicola Micheletti and Matteo Locatelli, a farmer from Bergamo and owner of the Sant’Anna farm. The two met precisely thanks to the self-picking model developed by the Micheletti family, which gave rise to the idea of bringing this experience to the outskirts of Milan.
CiliegiaMi officially opened to the public on May 16, coinciding with the season’s first harvests. The simple, well-established format allows access to the orchard on weekends: after a brief explanation of the proper harvesting techniques to avoid damaging branches and plants, visitors can move freely among the rows. To participate, you must purchase an entry basket: the adult option costs 10 euros and includes about one kilogram of cherries, while a smaller version for children, containing about 500 grams, is available for 5 euros.
