Visit countries and the valleys of the Montana Silver, walk the trails that cross their territory, reaching the watershed and enjoy panoramic views of the coast and the sea: this can not help but take a look at what the rural culture of the our valley has managed to create in his life thousands of years.
Going around roads and streets meet rural homes, with a courtyard in the sun, the hen house sheltered from the wind, the arbor homes that speak to us of our history and the hard work of farmers builders: they had stone walls and lime , floors and roof of chestnut wood and pine, slate roofing. They were isolated houses surrounded by small meadows, cultivated terraces, sometimes an orchard or a grove.
The fragmentation of agricultural property did not preclude moments of cohesion and socialization, as the nightly vigils, markets, festivities, become part of a rich folk tradition, also made of songs, poems, rhymes, proverbs. But everyday life was mostly work, a work deeply rooted in the ground and scitu, around which gathered all the activities of the farmer of these mountain valleys: the breeding of silkworms (one of the oldest), the culture of vegetables, potatoes and beans, the sowing of wheat and rye, the breeding of livestock (mainly cattle, but also sheep and goats), haymaking, harvesting fruits and olives, chestnuts and mushrooms.
A Sciarborasca (Cogoleto), near the “House of the farmer,” the Mountain Community has set up an eco-museum , open air path through message boards and photographs which tells the life and work of the farmers of the past, but also today.
Alongside the rural activities are to remember those of a pre-industrial, like the shipyards of Arenzano, active from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century, the lime kilns in Cogoleto, still visible in several places of the town, and the paper mills of Arenzano and apples, who have exploited for centuries steep slopes, streams rush and intense air currents of our territory.