Sunday, October 21, 2007

Olive Picking

Yesterday we went to church to help out with the olive picking there. It was quite an interesting experience. As you can tell from the pictures the weather has really turned chilly here in the mornings.

Here is a picture of Fra Giovanni getting down the nets from the shed.



These are some of the 150 trees that need to be picked.


And here are some of the many thousands of olives. They are mainly pressed into olive oil.


The first step is to spread out nets underneath the trees to catch the olives.


Here is a shot of the nets spread around two trees. The trees are now ready for picking.


The tools used to pick the olives resemble plastic sand rakes. The way they work is by combing the branches and raking the olives off the branches onto the ground.


As you can see they work quite well. Some of the olives on the nets.



After the tree is cleaned we loaded the olives into the cart.



We went through the olives by hand and picked out the biggest peices of banches and other debris. Look at all those olives!



Lastly we dumped the cart full of olives onto tarps to allow them to stay cool and dry until they're pressed in a few days.



One other picture that doesn't have anything to do with olives is this picture of the Kiwi vines. They're loaded......and ready for picking as well.

4 comments:

Barbaranne said...

What a process- how very informative. I know you'll never look at another bottle of olive oil the same again; I sure won't! What about the almonds? Wasn't that going to happen in September?

DelGrosso said...

That is so cool that you guys got to do that!!!!

Aggie said...

What does the church do with the olives? Do they press them there or sell the olives?

Very neat!!!! I bet the priory was glad to see you guys all show up.

Anonymous said...

Ok, professor as u can clearly see I'm reviewing your blog as I stayed home sick... I'm getting dizzy picking out my favorites-- and I'm also trying to be inconspicuous ---the shot where u r working like opening the box from Ikea and here picking the olives, well, I like them because it ctaches your serious side and somber mood and it's quite candid---yea-- call me nuts but that's how I am... or perhaps it's the fever doing a number on me-hahaha! You know two can play this silly game of hide and seek-- just so you know-hahaha!