My First Olive Harvest

martedi, 10 ottobre

Today's adventure was my first day of olive harvest season.  I just returned last night from a 5 day trip to Tuscany with my cousin Angela and Oscar.  I will blog on that later but I have posted some things on Facebook for those following me there.

I have been looking forward to today for years. I have always wanted to experience the olive harvest from start to finish.  Today I did and what a great experience it was.  I will try to explain as best I can in words, pictures and videos.  

Angela, Luigi and I left around 9 a.m. and headed to the country land.  There are many areas of olive groves that need to be harvested. Today we will work on land that was owned by Angela's father.  While we were gone this past weekend Luigi and Francesco (Angela's brother and my cousin) started to work this part.  They did about half of the trees so today we will finish.  There is also land that Luigi owns that needs to be harvested, as well as the land behind my house - about 10 trees.  Angela's land, which is the old Gentile family land, will not be harvested.  She lost 40 trees in the fires of this past summer.  Many Gentile cousins lost trees in this area - it is so sad.  Angela can't bring herself to even visit the land to see the damage.  Another cousin lost over 100 trees.  Luckily the trees we are harvesting are nice and full.  What I don't know is if the damaged trees will ever produce fruit again.  

The first video is our short drive down the "country road" to the land.  This is maybe 5-10 minutes from my house.  Note as the car slows the road is washed out on the right side.  I always hold my breath when driving on this road.  I am always a passenger - I will never drive it!

https://youtu.be/PPYWCYmcb7A


Once there I thought - gee not a bad view from my "office" for today's work.  :)

The first step is to lay nets down under the trees that you will be working.  Note this land is not flat so attention is needed to make sure you are on solid footing.  

Once the nets are in place the work begins.  Angela and I work on the lower branches - literally picking the olives by hand - pulling them off the branches and letting them fall into the netting.  Luigi and Francesco use a machine that is like hands that grabs the branches and shakes and loosen the olives.  I did try my hand at the machine as well.

But Luigi and Francesco are the pros.  

https://youtu.be/dhg1-jdPXO4

https://youtu.be/ovCkkPp-xak


When a tree is done you need to gather the olives so you pull the netting so the olives gather in one spot.  You empty the olives from the netting into buckets and shake the buckets so the leaves, twigs, sticks will rise to the top. You want to pull out as much of this type of material before bagging the olives.  The remainder will be separated at the pressing plant but doing an initial pass is necessary.  Once cleaned you then empty the bucket into bags.  

While we were harvesting many others are doing the same thing - you can hear the sounds of voices and machines across the land.  Right next to us were friends of the family.  Interesting as they did not have the modern machine but were using the old fashion method of a long stick.  You take the stick and literally beat it in the tree to get the olives to fall.  Now THAT is a lot of work.

Once the olives are picked and bagged it is on to the press company.  It is a busy place these days.  Everyone is bringing their harvest for pressing.  And of course we run into cousin Antonio who is harvesting today too.

Upon arriving the workers take your olives - either from containers or bags and empty them into large square plastic bins.  These bins can then be lifted with a fork lift so they are weighed before the pressing starts.  They are also labeled with your name. 

When your turn arrives the olives are dumped into the machine for washing and separating the leaves, twigs, etc.  See the video below.

https://youtu.be/Y6-So5OLTHw


Once cleaned and separated they enter the press machine which is inside the building.  I am not quite sure how it works but this machine holds multiple peoples olives as they are processed. 

 As they are pressed they turn into a paste - see the short video - part 5

https://youtu.be/0UhzOK4vulk

When your batch is ready the oil is pulled from the machine into the containers that are then used to fill your smaller containers. 

https://youtu.be/RSP1d7ufVEg

 The whole thing is quite amazing and I am so curious as to how the large machines work.  I am going to see if someone can take the time to explain it to me with our next batch.  Today it was so busy I did not want to bother anyone.  Another amazing bit of information - check out the list of the different types of olives just grown in the region of Campania.  66 different types - who knew?

Today we harvested 7 trees, in about 6 hours.  We gathered 140 kilograms of olives - which equals 308+ pounds.  That then turned into 30 liters of extra virgin olive oil or 7.4 gallons.  

There are more days ahead of olive harvest.  I will say it is a lot of work but it truly is a labor of love for the people of southern Italy.  I can't wait to taste it!!