Bruno's Farm Goes Bankrupt and His Partnership Ends

Bruno's farm bankruptcy and the end of his partnership with Lara turn their shared mountain project into a choice with lasting personal consequences. The collapse is not presented as a sudden financial accident alone: the business had been losing ground for years, while Bruno and Lara grew further apart over whether to change course. Their farmstead, once a home and a source of shared purpose, became the place where that disagreement could no longer be contained.

Mounting Financial Pressure

During Pietro's summer visit, he saw that the farmstead's cheerful domestic life gave way, when his mother was away and Anita was in bed, to the harder reality of a business in the red. Lara explained that the money from cheese-making did not cover the mortgage repayments. Revenue passed through their hands without leaving anything to spare or reducing what they owed the bank. Summer living on the mountain allowed them to be nearly self-sufficient, but winter brought stable rent and other expenses, forcing them to take out another loan to meet existing debts.

The difficulty was not simply that the farm earned too little in one season. Its costs and repayments formed a cycle that left no room to recover: income did not clear the mortgage, winter expenses added pressure, and further borrowing paid for old obligations rather than creating a way out. The couple had also put themselves in a demanding position by trying to keep the farm and their life there going without enough financial margin.

Attempts to Keep the Business Going

That summer Lara tried to improve their earnings by cutting out the distributor and selling cheese directly to shopkeepers. The change brought more work rather than relief. Twice each week, she left Anita with Pietro's mother in Grana and drove out to make deliveries, while Bruno stayed behind to manage the farm. Hiring someone to help would have added an expense they could not afford and, as Lara saw it, put them back where they had started.

The arrangement exposed how the practical burden of keeping the business afloat fell unevenly. Lara took on the deliveries and the effort of finding a different sales route; Bruno was left to manage alone, and the couple increasingly argued over money. When Bruno asked to change the subject because they seldom saw Pietro, Lara answered with sarcasm about breeding yaks. Their exchange makes the financial dispute personal: the subject Bruno wanted to set aside was, for Lara, the problem governing their daily life.

Bankruptcy and the Farmstead's Closure

The strain continued until autumn 2013, when Bruno declared himself bankrupt, shut down the agricultural business, and handed the farmstead keys to the bailiff. Lara went to live with her parents with Anita. The closure ended the enterprise in concrete terms: the farm was no longer theirs to run, and the family ceased living together there.

Pietro received the news through his mother, who was especially worried about Bruno after the collapse. She described him as having lost everything and being alone, and asked whether Pietro could do anything for him. Her account conveyed more than sadness; it made Bruno's isolation an immediate concern. Pietro responded by calling from Kathmandu, something he had never previously done while in Nepal. The bankruptcy therefore changed not only Bruno's material circumstances but also the distance between the two old friends: it prompted Pietro to reach out when he understood how completely Bruno had been left on his own.

Why the Partnership Ends

Lara later explained the separation as the result of choices that, in her view, had been available before the final collapse. Two or three years earlier, once it was clear that the farm was not viable, they could have sold the cows and rented out the farmstead while both finding jobs. She believed Bruno could have worked on a building site, in a dairy processing unit, or on the ski slopes; she could have been a shop assistant or waitress. She was willing to accept a more ordinary life temporarily, until their circumstances improved.

Bruno would not consider those alternatives. Lara understood his refusal as a judgment about what mattered to him: she came to feel that neither she nor Anita, nor what she thought they were building together, counted as much as his mountain. By the time the farm failed, she said, she had already imagined a future with her daughter but without Bruno. In her account, the relationship ended internally before the formal separation; leaving was the consequence of recognizing that he would not make room for another life.

The accounts preserve a difference in emphasis. Pietro's mother believed Lara had decided to leave and Bruno had then surrendered to failure; Lara described the more gradual recognition that the farm could not continue and that Bruno would not change direction. The narration does not resolve their disagreement by choosing one version. It records the bankruptcy and Lara's departure as the shared outcome, while allowing the causes to be seen from two positions: abandonment of the farm as defeat for Bruno, and the end of a relationship for Lara.

The Cost of Staying

The episode sets economic survival against Bruno's refusal to imagine a life away from the mountain. Lara's proposed alternatives were specific and practical, but they required treating the farmstead as something that might be rented out and their mountain enterprise as something that might end. Bruno's resistance made the conflict larger than a business decision: to Lara, it showed that their family and shared plans could not compete with his attachment to the mountain. The farm's bankruptcy thus closes both an agricultural venture and the future she had thought they were making together.