Wednesday Oct. 24th 2012
I hand picked olives today for 5 hours. It's a very pleasant way to spend a day. It's calming. The olives are very pretty to look at. We have 12 varieties. Some are all green. Others are half green fading into a violet hue. Some are dark red like cherries. Or purple like grapes. And of course there are the black. Today I learned one of the 4 ways to get the olives down from the trees. We do not wait till they fall and pick them off the ground. The way I learned today is to take a net, place it under the tree where you intend on getting the olives and use this comb to comb through the branches to pull the olives down on to the net. Then gather the net together and put them into the 14L bucket. #2: The baby trees I pick by hand because they are fragile and only have a few olives being it's their first harvest. A third way to get the olives is to get Franco to climb the really big trees and have him whack the olives free from their branches so they fall onto a net or have Gianni just goes around with this long stick and also whacks the branches freeing the olives to fall onto the net. The 4th way is to call Antonio. This is how you get Antonio to come and VIBRATE the olives free.
Gianni: "Hello Antonio. Can you come next Thursday to get the olives?"
Antonio: " But I have to put oil in my machine". "Call me tomorrow night".
__________ This conversation has been going on for 6 nights now._________________________
Antonio: "I'll be there after 8. (shows up at 10)
Italians do not like to work.
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The reason you don't wait for the olives to fall and then pick them off the ground is: by the time they fall off the branches by themselves they are already probably too ripe(rotten). And this makes for a nasty tasting oil. And if by chance you puncture or slightly break an olive exposing the inside to air, you don't put it into the bucket. Oxidation occurs very quickly which also contributes to a bad tasting oil.
To attract a certain fly from eating the olives, a "sardine" bait is used very effectively in bottles hanging in every tree.
GROWING OLIVES IN A NON-ORGANIC WAY
Many olive farms around Gianni's have perfectly groomed grounds under the olive trees. There are NO weeds or plants of any kind. It looks pretty. Not as pretty as having fruit trees or veggies or flowers but the dirt looks very rich and clean. It is that way because the ground is treated with poison to dissuade any growth of any kind. There are no weeds. All there is, is poison in the ground that the olives eventually fall on to and get mixed in with making for a very chemical laden olive harvest. No nets to catch the olives. No person to take the olives from the branches. Just wait for the already too ripe olives to fall and get covered with the poisoned dirt. The next step of collecting the poisoned olives is something I will get to see but not until the upcoming weeks. But I was told that when they take these olives mixed with the dirt and process (press) them into oil, it is called "lamp oil". At this stage that is all it is good for---LAMPS. So they process (filter) the lamp oil to get it to look like the oil we buy in the supermarket and call it 'Extra Virgin Olive Oil". Pretty amazing. Hard to believe.
Gianni's olives are not pressed. There is a closed system the olives go through so no olives are exposed to oxygen.
I will get to see this process possibly as early as Saturday of this week.
An orange and white Tom Cat found me in the olive orchard today. He had a lot to say.
Gianni grows a specific olive that is only used for therapeutic purposes for babies. The pharmacy in town buys this olive oil from him. 2 drops in milk given to a baby for specific ailments is the cure.
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