“Like the pains of childbirth, one quickly forgets the olive picking pains. In childbirth you are on your own, while in the olive field the ordeal is endured in good company…In taking part, new standards of agility and dexterity dawn on one, and also an extraordinary vision of the good humor and patience with which this time-out-of-mind harvesting is done. Because the work is endless there is a strange feeling of timelessness among the trees. When you are most exhausted you suddenly find that your fingers have acquired eyes and are gathering olives on their own. The phenomenon of the second, third, fourth wind appears. Your mind is free to listen to a bird’s song or to the ceaseless conversation in the trees…It would be absurd to answer the question:what is the best oil? The oil made from the olives you pick in company with friends, then pressed by a friend in the village oil press, would be my answer.”

-Patience Gray, from “Honey From a Weed”

From the moment the local olive press opens in mid October it’s a race. A race against rain and strong winds, a race against the other harvesters to make sure your olives get pressed before theirs, and a race against the olives themselves, dropping as soon as they reach full ripeness. To make high quality olive oil, it’s nothing but a race to get the fruit pressed before it begins to ferment, ideally within 48 hours of picking. In this sense it’s not extreme to refer to the harvesting days as a marathon. Our marathon this autumn lasted exactly 6 weeks and 3 days, the fruits of our labor totalling almost 5000 kg of olives picked and 850 liters of oil pressed, the most our land has ever produced. Conditions were perfect for an abundant, long, joyful harvest.

As Patience hints at, you enter a time warp. Every morning you approach a new set of trees, rake in hand, each with their own unique characteristics, colors, grains, scents and stories to interpret. You are acutely aware of the movement of the sun and how many precious minutes of daylight remain before you call it a day, packing up the nets and crates and loading the car for yet another evening spent at the ‘frantoio’, the press. You dream that the blanket you lift over yourself in the middle of the night is a net full of olives.

Like the trees, every press you bring home (21 this year) has a unique set of tasting notes dependent on the olive type, when it was harvested, when the tree was pruned, what fruit trees are nearby. You can’t wait to taste a spoonful and compare it to the others.

And on the last day, when you have collectively decided that all the olives that can be have been dutifully collected,  the only thing you can think to say is ‘Thank you. Thank you again dear, old, wise, magnificent trees.’