Winter 2005
Our
first olive harvest
This
year we faced our first olive harvest. We have twenty-six trees so we
begged and bribed our friends to help with the offer of lunch. Twelve of
us set about the job on a sunny December day, with temperatures around 13 or 14
degrees, perfect for picking, being neither too hot nor too cold.
We'd been watching our crop carefully this last few weeks, judging the right
time to harvest. The olives need to go black and swell, and soften a
little, although not too much or else they start dropping off the trees.
We worried about the weather, dreading one of our great hoolie winds that blows
up the valley, which could strip the trees bare in no time at all.
Fortunately, the weather remained calm. Large commercial enterprises may
use expensive machines to do the job but we did it the traditional way.
When the Spanish pick almonds they hit the branches with sticks, but with olives
they strip the branches by hand. We spread nets beneath the tree to
catch any that dropped.
The ladder looks a bit wobbly here, don't you think? I finally abandoned it and opted for the branch as a safer bet. I must say it was the first time I'd climbed a tree in years. It took me right back to my tomboy days.
We picked 210 kilos of olives in one long morning. To ensure that they would be classed as extra virgin, we loaded them in our trailer and took them to the cooperativa in the next village that same day. We joined the queue of trucks and trailers waiting to unload. Some people with just a few boxes in their car boot, other trucks with great hoppers on the back.
Poor David had to lift each sack, weighing about 25 kilos, and tip it over a grid onto a sort of platform. The weight of our load appeared on a computer in the office where we were asked if we wanted dinero (money) or aceite (oil). Since we aren't commercial growers we opted for the latter and came away with 35 litres of extra virgin oil. After weighing, our olives passed along a conveyor belt and were pressed, together with our neighbours' crops.
Each of our volunteer pickers earned two and a half litres of extra virgin oil, five per couple, in addition to an excellent, wine fuelled lunch, so there were no complaints. Not exactly an economic enterprise, but a fun day. Tiring, messy and hard work but most satisfying. David and I picked a further 40 kilos the following day from two trees by the pool, as they were dropping fruit and making a mess. This gained us a further 7 litres, so we have sufficient olive oil to see us through the next twelve months at least. And we only harvested about a dozen trees.
By the end of the harvesting season we'd picked over 600 kilos, some of it by our Spanish neighbours. Once we had sufficient for our needs we threw it open to Paco and his family who are putting their son through university and since he is registered with the cooperativa, can earn a bit extra this way. We're delighted with out first harvest, have now pruned all the trees and looking forward to next season.
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