Monday 29th October

I can't believe how cheap olive oil is, when you consider how much hard work goes into harvesting the olives. Yesterday John and I worked non-stop for 8 hours and we got about 10 litres of oil from our 18 trees. However we know that most of our olives are the type grown for eating rather than oil production, and they have a lower yield. All our trees didn't produce this year, as they were cut back severely 2 years ago. They were easier to harvest than previous years though, as all the branches are low now. Previously John had to actually climb up into the trees. We used the traditional division of labour, John, the man, removed the olives from the tree, and I, the woman, sat on the ground and sorted them, taking out leaves and twigs. The method used is to place large mats on the ground underneath the trees and then the branches are 'combed' with implements rather like plastic rakes and the olives taken off. We had a good day for it this year, the weather is still very mild, in fact I was really pleased yesterday that the sun was a bit hazy as I was not in the shade for most of the time and I was really warm in T-shirt and shorts. We filled 4 sacks and John took the olives to a local press. At the moment the oil looks rather like a thick dark green pea soup. As it settles the 'sludge', pureed olives, will sink to the bottom. I use this in stews and soups, so delicious. It is nice to know that our oil is so fresh and pure, nothing added or taken away, AND straight from our garden. One of our trees has very large Kalamata type olives and I picked these a week ago as soon as they turned black, to cure and preserve. These need to be hand picked so that they are not damaged or bruised. Just think how labour intensive that is!
The early morning haze soon burnt off today and it was warm and sunny again. As I was continuing with the pruning, in shorts, T-shirt and flipflops it occurred to me that when we are back in England I will miss not being able to wear them for 9 months of the year. We decided to make the most of this lovely weather and take a walk down by the sea. I wanted to do some beach-combing to collect treasures for Bella and Archie for school projects, things that maybe they wouldn't find by the sea-shore in England. We got a big bag, lots and lots of sea-urchins, pieces of sponge and pumice as well as shells of all sizes and colours. We also collected some wild mushrooms which we fried up as an extra dish for our evening meal. They are a bit early, we don't usually get them until November, but now we know they have started we will certainly be looking for some more.