Forty one years ago, when I was a young boy we visited my grandparents during the olive harvest just before Christmas. During that visit we helped with the harvest. Me and my brothers, my father and his brothers with their kids, my aunties with their husbands and their kids went out to the orchards and spent the day in a chaos of activities. The older boys cut the highest branches that my grandpa told us had to be removed. We dropped them on the nets spread under the trees whacking the fruit off them with a stick and then put them outside the nets on the ground.
THE HARVEST
We all had sticks or bamboo poles of different lengths and everyone was whacking the trees trying to shake the fruit off but also trying not to hurt the branches as we were under the watchful eye of my father. We thought it was impossible to harm the branches but as we got more practice we understood the technique. As the fruit was thinning on the tree and the nets were filling the women were tilting the nets and moving the fruit into piles. Then they scooped the fruit into big burlap sacks. When the nets were free of fruit they moved them to the next row of trees so we could carry on whacking. Behind us the orchard was littered with half full sacks left by the women as they were too heavy for them to carry.
That night after my father, uncle and grandpa arrived back at the house they announced that we had produced nearly six hundred kilos of olive oil. We ate wild greens together picked earlier from the orchard, swimming in sublime color, peppery, almost bitter tasting, fresh from the press, olive oil with a goat soup. My grandfather taste tested our days product, rated it as “good” olive oil and we all raised our glasses to cheer to a good days harvesting. During this dinner I came to the realization that my family were olive oil producers.
