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The landscape you see before you is no longer representative of the traditional economy that shaped the area for centuries, apart from a few testimonies such as the dry stone walls of the cultivation terraces and this small flat-roofed building where straw was stored: the "pagliaghju". These areas, now covered by scrubland, were largely devoted to cereal crops, the basis of the diet: wheat, barley, oats. The yield per hectare was very modest, requiring extensive cultivation in a climate where low rainfall and the impossibility of irrigation offered no other alternative. This culture required a lot of labour from sowing to harvesting, and was also one of the mainstays of community life. Summer was the time for harvesting and unloading the sheaves, which was done using a technique widely used in the Mediterranean: mules or oxen dragged a heavy stone, the "tribbiu", with the help of an iron chain, over a stony surface, the "aghja" (threshing floor), this stone rolling over the sheaves separated the grain from the straw. These threshing floors are always located in places exposed to the wind because the wind was essential to complete the operations: by lifting the mixture of straw and grain with a fork, the wind carried the light straw further away and a pile of grain was formed at the feet of the men. Occi has two beautiful threshing floors, one at the southern exit of the village and the other overlooking it on a small spur. Animal husbandry was the other activity essential to the survival of the communities. At the beginning of the 20th century, Lumiu had more than 25 shepherd families with more than 2000 head of sheep and goats. It was in Lumiu, in 1893, that the first semi-industrial dairy in Balagne was founded. Finally, the olive tree occupied the remaining spaces (10% of the cultivable surface of Occi in the 19th century), its extension and its supremacy in Balagne dates from the 18th century with an incentive from the public authorities in the first half of the 19th century. Thanks to these efforts the olive oil was even nicknamed "acqua di Balagna (the water of Balagna) by the Corsicans. The return to Lumiu is along a path lined with dry stone walls that joins a small plain where the chapel of the "Stella" stands at the foot of Mount Bracaghju (556 metres). On this rocky spur was a fortified castle which in the Middle Ages controlled the western part of the Balagne region, the stronghold of the fearsome lord Malafede Savelli Pinasco. It is possible that Occi is partly linked to this stronghold, to which it could serve as a "relay village" with the plain.

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