The farmhouse Il Focolare is situated inside the Natural Reserve of the low-Merse.
This Reserve was founded in 1996 in order to preserve a rare and uncontaminated ecosystem. It spreads up in a wide area that joins the stream Merse’s and the stream Farma’s valleys, half way between the “Metallifere” hills and the Maremma’s woods.
The rich, unspoilt natural habitat includes a large number of animals like the otter or the coyput, as well as a great variety of arboreous sorts like the mountain beech which have become very rare in other areas of Italy.
In the stream Merse’s plain it is possible to sight the kingfisher and different sorts of rare anphibians, like the emeraldine toad. It is also possible to watch the flight of birds of prey such as the brown kite, the buzzard, the kestrel and, if watchers are lucky, the big royal kite, whose wing span can reach two meters and whose peculiar tail is bifurcated.
In the Reserve’s glades it is possible to come across fallow deers which sometimes come out of the woods in the dark, as well as hares. It is more usual to find out hares’ spoors though, or the marks dug on the small trees’ trunks by their incisors in order to eat up the tender bark.
The wildboar finds his ideal habitat in the thick of the scrub where he feeds on acorns and bulbs but also on invertebrates, small reptiles or eggs.
The sparsest woods are home of the goatsucker, a curious bird that nests and rests during the day by crouching to the ground or on top of branches and trunks. This bird can easily camouflage thanks to his variegated brown plumage and is locally called “schiaccione”.
In the whole Reserve’s area it is also possible to sight foxes, badgers, porcupines, weasels, as well as beechmartens, polecates, martens, squirrels or pheasants.
The main vegetation consists of the Mediterranean bush called “macchia” and of ilex groves. The scrub includes ivy, ferns, holly and butcher’s broom.
A peculiarity of the area are the outscrops of serpentine, a dark green, sometime deep black rock. It was used to build the Siena’s cathedral and it can be found in most of the local romanesque parrish churches.