Fishing for olives

The thing I like best about harvesting olives is gathering the olive-laden nets from under the trees. This feels like what I imagine a fishing boat crew experience as they haul in their catch and spill it on the deck. Although you have some idea how much an individual tree has yielded by looking at the carpet of olives on the nets, its only when you heap them together that you really know. Sometimes a quite insignificant tree produces two or three crate loads while a big old brute that you were relying on disappoints. A bit like life I suppose.

Erminia started asking me last week when I was planning to harvest the olives. “Next week” I said, “if the weather is OK”. Well the weather was OK, so yesterday I launched myself at our olive grove, armed with our olive harvesting machine – basically a small petrol-driven compressor which powers a pair of vibrating combs on the end of a long aluminium pole. After two days I have gathered four hundred kilos of olives, which I will take to the Mill tomorrow. A feel a bit tired and bit stiff, but the effort involved is as nothing compared to our first year here when Sue and I harvested by hand, with the help of friends and the guidance of Erminia and her late husband Paolo. That year Sue and I gathered olives for four solid weeks and lugged a thousand kilos to the mill. It was all a big adventure then and the olive harvest seemed a magical and mysterious thing.

Now some of the mystery has gone from what is actually a very simple process – you prune the trees in the winter and the spring, you harvest the olives in November and take them to the Mill where they crush them to make oil. And yet some of the magic still remains. When you are harvesting olives you feel part of a tradition going back thousands of years. In the Mediterranean the olive tree is revered above all other crops. Not only does it provide oil for cooking, but also before electricity the same oil could light your home and the wood from the pruning is perfect for the oven and the hearth in winter.

The harvest is in Erminia’s genes and each day she comes out to check on my progress and to remonstrate with me for leaving too many olives on the trees. Today she also picked some olives and helped lay one of the nets just to keep her hand in. At one point I caught her frowning at the middle distance, thinking perhaps of her husband Paolo who loved tending olives like no one else I have met. When people are working in the fields it is also Erminia’s instinct to feed them, so today for lunch I got a big bowl of pasta and chick peas with a large cube of belly pork buried in it and a bottle of her fruity red wine - Good peasant grub for a hard-working pretend peasant.