Cultivation of salt in the Culcasi Saline

As in other local and Sicilian production structures, the salt cycle begins in April with the preparation of the tanks, the cleaning and the separation of the water between one tank and another.

The salt pans have complex and well-defined structures to allow the marine waters to reach different temperatures and degrees of salinity in the various settling tanks and at the end of the cycle to evaporate and produce salt crystals.

The sea water through specially created channels enters the first tank, called fridda, where he stayed for about eight days. As soon as the water acquires an oily consistency, it is pulled from a mill through a channel that leads to the vasu cultivu. After another 8 days, the water goes to the pimp where the temperature here is around 13-14 degrees. At this point the water is passed into the next tank, called càura. This step concludes the first phase. Around the beginning of May, the waters in the tanks cauri they are slid, in 8-10 days, towards the last tank càura, called the sintina. In this phase the water has reached about 24 degrees, it is almost foul-smelling and reddish in color due to the development of a spontaneous microfauna. These are the signals that indicate to the salt workers the moment in which the water must be passed into the tanks of the salty waters. When it reaches 25 degrees the water stops for a day in the tanks ofmade water and topped up with more water if necessary. As the temperature increases, the first salt crystals begin to form and it is possible to obtain the first pure Baumé salt.

The passages between the different tanks take place through small wooden doors, i purtedda, which are expertly managed by the salt workers.

At the end of June, the first days of July, the first salt harvest begins. At the end of each cycle the tanks are not cleaned and sprinkled with salt (according to the local term it is "sowing salt"). The procedure serves to encourage thebumping of the salt in a shorter time in the next harvest. The collection cycle lasts approximately thirty days and the tanks come in the following week sown.

As Culcasi himself stated in an interview by Gesualdo Bufalino in 1988, during the year, in favorable weather conditions, the harvesting cycle in the Culcasi Salina is repeated approximately three times.