Olive Harvesting, Italian style

As we finish our time in Italy and head to the olive harvest in Greece, here is what we’ve learnt about the olives, Italian style. There are many different varieties of olives, some for table use, others for oil, but they all start off green and turn black when ripe. They are either used for oil or for eating, though we’ve only been to places where they are used for oil so far. The smaller olives tend to have higher oil content, especially when ripe. Typically they get between 10% and 18% oil by weight.

In our picking so far we have been getting between 10 and 20kgs per tree, which equates to about a one litre bottle of oil. Given the amount you are likely to receive for a bottle of oil, albeit top quality, and then think about the costs of the maintenance of the trees throughout the year, the effort to pick the tree, the equipment needed, the costs of using the press, the bottle … clearly it is done for the love, not profit. Most of the small olive farms are run by old people, so it is dying out. Commercial olive groves have a large number of trees, may use some form of mechanisation, and may even mix their olives with those from cheaper sources, e.g. North Africa …

Before clearing

After clearing

The clearance team

Fixing the nets

During the year the trees are pruned to keep their height down and clear of inside branches. Ideally the branches should spread outwards and downwards with fruit as EU regulations forbid climbing trees to pick them! Just before harvest time the ground is cleared underneath them, probably just a mow on a well-kept grove, but strimming and bramble cutting on the worst ones (like the one we’ve been at!). Another reason for keeping the ground clean is that the fallen olives are caught in nets, and these shouldn’t get tangled up in the undergrowth.  Due to the number of brambles on our fields – even the bits left over from a good strimming – the nets get holes in them, so the first task before picking is to fix them, just as a fisherman would.

Using the "Tickler"

On the day of picking the nets are rolled out, one on each side of the tree. Then the picking begins with a choice of tools: hands are popular, but also what looks like a child’s toy rake, with or without a handle. These strip the olives off the branches very quickly. Another tool looks like hair tongs. When pulled down either side of a branch it picks up all the olives. For the highest branches there is the “tickle machine” – think of a long pole connected to a car battery at one end and having two plastic forks at the other. The forks vibrate and, when pushed against the branches, cause the olives to jump to their death. Fun but the olives fly all over the place, not necessarily onto the nets. And holding the pole up for a long period is very painful on the arms. Actually, all the looking up at the branches makes for a very sore neck at the end of the day. When the tree is done the nets are picked up and the olives are poured into plastic boxes, less a few leaves and twigs and insects that get picked out. Apparently Tuscan oil requires a few leaves to add flavour …

Emptying the nets

Removing the rubbush

The crates of olives are emptied into what look like bed frames – wooded frames lined with wire netting. This allows them to air and dry as it may be some days before enough olives are picked to be able to go to the press. They can last a couple of weeks if necessary.

Original press equipment

Modern press equipment 

The press has to be booked and requires a minimum of 300kgs at a time. We were lucky in being able to go to the press with our first load. Though you book a time to be there it is possible to wait for hours as it depends on how many olives the previous people have taken. Often people have to hang around for most of the night awaiting their – overdue – turn. Once the season gets going the press runs 24x7. Each person dumps their olives into a hopper from which they find their way to a conveyor belt taking them first to have excess leaves blown off, then washed, and then into the press itself. They don’t start this process until the previous person’s olives have been pressed and the equipment washed – it would be terrible to mix your oil with someone else’s! Eventually the oil starts dripping out a tap and into your containers. The final step is to pour some into a plate and sit down with some bread, garlic and salt for a tasting.

Our olives!

Our olives – and the others we saw at the press – were mostly green with a sprinkling of black, reflecting that they were the first of the season to be picked. The green olives give the oil a stronger, peppery taste. And the colour! Bright green like spirulina or some of those concoctions of kiwi juice. The colour does fade after a month or so.

Being washed

The result!

Where we are, in the hills above Florence, it is about the maximum altitude for olives. They are less affected by an insect that burrows into the olives and spoils many and being completely surrounded by forest helps keep other insects at bay. Now Italians think their oil is the best in the world. Tuscans, certainly, think their oil is the best in Italy (as does every other region!!), and our host here at Baronci believes her oil is one of the best in Tuscany. So, have we contributed to the best olive oil there is? As a comparison, the brother of our host, Mimmo, has given us a bottle of a very exclusive local oil that is normally exported to the US. We’ll report back later on what that is like.

Tasting hot off the press

More "before" photos ...

But after ...

Baronci

Bronci

After three of our five weeks here it is time to report in. This time you will find us weary, not our usual selves. The reason we are tired and sore is because we’re spending a lot of our time cleaning up the olive fields before the harvest. In a normal year a local chap comes in and mows/strims the fields clean, but not this year. There is a tractor that belongs to a brother but it has a broken accelerator, making it too dangerous to use, so we are left with hand strimming everything. The only “respite” is to get out the hand secateurs to cut off the brambles around the base of the trees at ground level. Anything sharp needs to be trimmed as it will catch on the olive nets and rip them. Consequently I have a very sore neck and sore hands and Vicki has sore hands from using a big pair of loppers every day. Role on harvest time! It is supposed to start in the next few days but the olives don’t look ripe enough. Normally they pick when half the olives have turned black so they only have to strip the trees once – yes, all olives start green and turn black when ripe. After almost no rain here over summer we have had a lot recently, often accompanied by thunder and lightning. This has slowed the ripening significantly so we are hoping to get some picking in before we leave.

One of the unused rooms, with 'inhabitants' ...

What makes up for it all is the location. The old house (which I have mentioned before) is part 14^th Century, part 17^th) and split into three apartments belonging to each of the siblings of an Italian diplomat. I’m sure Marina, our host, has the best apartment as it has a lovely balcony on which I am currently sitting – with a Birra Moretti in hand – in the sunshine looking out over the heavily wooded hills in this rather remote spot. Some of the old rooms have a few surprises, like a stuffed condor! We’ve had a couple of trips into Florence so far – it is about 25km away – and a promise of a few days there before we leave. Marina has a lovely apartment in a townhouse there, dating from the 1860s and once again owned by her family then split into three apartments for the children. Her one has very high ceilings adorned with frescoes and mosaics on the floor, still looking very original.

Marina's apartment in Florence

Florence. Beautiful. Those two words go together so well. It really is the city of art – there are numerous galleries and museums, statues and beautiful buildings everywhere: churches, palaces of the Medici and other noble families, so much history. And the gelato shops and the shopping. It may be touristy but there are great leather jackets and shoes and bags and other clothes to buy. Pity our backpacks are full – anything new we buy means we have to throw something else out to make room! The downside to all this wonder is that Florence is seen as being very expensive for Italy and it is full of tourists, mainly American and Asian tour groups following their leaders. We love it though so we’re looking forward to our next visit. We'll do a separate post on Florence later ...

The staircase to the upstairs apartments

Being up here at Baronci has become a routine. Each morning we get up for our breakfast while Marina just has her coffee. Like most Italians she can’t function without one. We either work in the fields or doing odd jobs around the house while Marina drives down to the local village of Santa Brigida to get the newspaper and fresh bread. As the bread doesn’t have any preservatives – nor salt – it really needs to be fresh every day. Lunch is often bread, tomatoes, various slices of salami and mortadella (Vicki, somewhat unkindly, describes it as tasty luncheon sausage), and a selection of local cheeses. All washed down with oodles of Baronci olive oil. Then it is back to work for a couple of hours before showers and relaxing, while Marina cooks yet another wonderful meal for us. She hasn’t repeated herself yet either!  Dinner is washed down with oodles of wine.

Mowing the flagstones ...

Baronci consists of several olive fields and overgrown gardens plus a decent amount of forest. The forest is mainly chestnut trees that have been pruned (”coppiced”) to produce several small trunks. They would normally be cut quite young to create good straight poles but there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for them now so they have been left and are pretty messy and useless. The forest has public access – people can take anything but not cut the wood – so there are always people wandering through it picking up chestnuts or hunting for fungi. We have been for several rambles through the forest with Marina looking for fungi. Luckily she knows which are which as there are so many different types and I keep picking up the poisonous ones! The black ones and the yellow ones seem to be the best.

Baronci in the forest

The other inhabitants of the forest (apart from squirrels and foxes) are wild boar. The hunting season is from September to October and seems to be every second day. These days start with dogs barking and guns going off from early in the morning. They always sound so close so we are advised to take a radio into the fields or talk very loudly. Often we see groups of hunters standing around their cars in camouflage gear waiting to start, presumably after the mandatory coffee. Given the racket that sometimes occurs they are either very bad shots or just excitable. Our fields are full of trails from the pigs so there must be a lot around.

The lounge and dining area

Highlights of the first four months

We've been travelling for four months.  A wonderful evening recently prompted me to say it was one of the highlights of our trip, which got me thinking about the other special experiences we've enjoyed.

Catching up with old friends and family - particularly those we had not seen for years or decades.

The oh-so-cute fishing villages of Cornwall, particularly Polperro and Fowey.

Roche Rock and Restormel Castle.

Stepping out of the Leadenhall Market and seeing the Lloyd's of London building.

Discovering the dilapidated Merther Church and graveyard, where two of my great-great-great-great grandparents are probably buried.

Truro Cathedral where the choir was practicing while we were wowed by the architecture.

Our night out in Kingston-upon-Thames to see Jon Bird's Big Band.

Pizza and iced coffee with a friendly English-speaking Italian owner in Sanremo.

New Zealand lamb and Italian veges roasted in an outdoor wood-fired oven - melt-in-your-mouth delicious!



Exploring the ancient hill towns of Italy.

Being rescued by Albanians when we were transportationally-challenged in Triora.

Being swept down the Aare River in Switzerland - an adrenalin-boosting and body-temperature-lowering experience.



The reaction of the children to my slideshow of portrait images from the Polly Glot Ranch Italian children's English camp. We showed it to them on the last night of the camp and they laughed and cheered and blushed and smiled!  You can see the shortened and silent version on Youtube. 

The festa (evening festival of food, wine, music and dancing) in Moresco, where we might have been the only travellers present.

Eating figs, warmed by the sun and fresh from the tree .... actually, eating many figs!!

Dinner at Corrado's place in Montebuono.  Corrado is an Italian friend of our host in San Giorgio and was very generous - taking us sight-seeing and creating interesting and delicious meals for us, served outside with twinkling lights, wine in crystal glasses, crocheted table cloth, and the occasional bat zipping around. He also happens to be very interesting and charming.

Well, that's my list.  Nigel will probably want to add a few others .... :-)

Roma

As the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t visited in a day. For a place with so much history and so many artefacts from the ancient Roman through the Renaissance to the modern era, it is impossible to do it justice in just a day. But we tried. Had to, as we have spent the last two weeks just 1 hour north by train. We started with a combined train/metro/bus ticket for the day for just 9 euros, about half what the equivalent ticket costs for London. But what to do? There is so much to potentially cover we decided on a wander past some of the Roman ruins, taking in a sprinkling of churches, fountains, statues and public buildings, and a meander around some alleyways. Not to mention check out a few shops and an essential revival at a gelateria. No time to add in the Vatican or queue up to tour around any of the main sites. We just accepted that we’ll have to go back one day and see it in more depth.

Our particular visit started with the Colosseum and it is a big impact introduction indeed! It is no longer at the centre of a roundabout, so quieter and more accessible. And enormous. It is also the centre of all things Roman, with the ruins of the Forum, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus, various triumphal arches and other buildings all nearby. It is also the centre of tour groups and getting your picture taken in a wedding dress. Very crowded, it must be horrendous in the peak of the summer tourist season. At least the Colosseum is so large it towers over everything and everyone else.

We chose to walk up and back along the Via Corso as many of the well-known sites lie a few blocks either side of it. A few of those sites easily visited (and free!) were:

San Pietro in Vincoli – a church that contained a glass box with the “original” chains that St Peter was locked up with in Roman times, plus a wonderful sculpture of Moses by someone called Michelangelo.

The Pantheon – the most complete Roman building, both massive and awe-inspiring. Thank you Marcus Agrippa. Check out the inside here.

Piazza Navona – containing three separate fountains of glorious statues.

Numerous churches – as long as you dress appropriately you can just wander in – at least they were mainly open – and see wonderful paintings and sculptures and religious artefacts.

The Trevi Fountain – absolutely enormous, but it really is a waterfall, not a fountain.

The Spanish Steps – not sure what the attraction is here as they seem to be just a place to sit.

Gelato shop – Essential. Pistachio and Coffee is my favourite.

All the buildings! – beautiful, colourful, textures ….

So, a great day out for us and one with so many beautiful things on display the 33C temperature was rarely noticed. Did it live up to expectations? Beyond. And we only saw a fraction of what is on offer and none of them in-depth. Yes, we have to work out how we can stay there to spend days wandering around …

Heading west …

We have now relocated from the east to the west coast, to a house set on a few acres at the edge of a small town called San Giorgio in the province of Lazio, about an hour by train north of Rome. Firstly we’ll rewind to how we got here …

After three great weeks on the east coast in the La Marche region it was time to move on, and time to give our livers a rest! Our hosts Tim and his three teenagers were always fun and always interesting and we learned a lot about life in Italy by meeting their friends from the ex-pat community and hearing about their day-to-day issues with work, schooling, transport and Italian bureaucracy.

Like our first HelpX stay in northern Italy, and like our current one in Lazio, the area is full of small medieval hill towns, and having access to a car made visiting them on our off-days so much easier. Though, as anyone who has driven in Italy will tell you, driving is always “interesting”! Speed limits, not using cellphones, overtaking and parking restrictions are apparently more of a guide than actual laws. And the risk of being caught anywhere near lunchtime would be remote indeed.

We took the bus across country to Rome as there is no direct train route. A very modern clean coach, even if it still runs to Italian time, i.e. it was 20 minutes late and we were only the second stop. It contained a driver and a barista (though he might have had other duties - baggage handler and second driver). Travelling cross-country was an opportunity to see the hinterland. As we crossed the Apennines it was very mountainous, lots of tunnels and national parks. Beautiful views of Gran Sasso (2,912m), the highest peak in Italy south of the Alps.  We arrived at the Rome bus station, a short walk then to the train station – Tiburtina – which we found very confusing as it is undergoing redevelopment: huge new empty floors with no one around. Luckily we found one stall selling cappuccini and brioches. A regional train then took us north for an hour to where we were picked up by Pauline (another Inglese), our new host.

Our new home in San Giorgio, Lazio

We are now in the province of Lazio and it is quite rural. Plenty of attractive medieval villages and pretty countryside, but I suspect that it is lesser known due to its location – between Rome and Umbria and Tuscany. Tourists pass it by, hurrying between the better known regions. 

Plenty of these to visit!

So far we have had one trip around the local medieval villages and they are just as attractive and neat as elsewhere, though we’re back to stone rather than the brick of the eastern parts.  

And this is the best way to see them!

Tomorrow we are off to Rome for the day so there will be more to report soon.

And to finish this post here is a typical day here:

Start work around 9:30 am. It is definitely a little cooler in the mornings now as we head into Autumn, though it is still warming up to mid to high 20s C later in the day. Work for the last week has involved solid strimming and mowing. This lasts until 11am when coffee is ready. After a half-hour break it is back into it until lunch is served around 2pm. Lunch is a leisurely meal of several courses, cold meats, salads, bread, fruit, left-overs, and all with the property’s own olive oil on everything. Wine is mandatory, especially as we're operating machinery after lunch …

Work then continues for another hour or so until heat/exhaustion takes over, and then it is a dip in the swimming pool to cool off followed by a shower.  Then it is time to relax until dinner where the vicious eating/drinking cycle continues …

And in case you weren't already jealous enough ...

The view out of our bedroom window

A short dissertation on Italian food

I’ll happily confess to knowing next to nothing about Italian food but here are a few observations that I have made recently. I might add to this as we get more experience …

Italians eat Italian food. Though we have seen McDonalds in the cities, there don’t appear to be many foreign chain or ethnic restaurants anywhere else. Getting a slice of pizza from one of the many small pizzerias take care of the quick fill-up, elsewhere local food is to be savoured. Slowly.

I can’t comment on breakfast as we have been staying with non-Italians so far and keep to our fruit-and-muesli staple, though recently the fruit has been fresh figs off the tree. Lunch appears to be the main meal as everyone stops work and goes home for lunch. Most shops shut from between 12 till 1pm and don’t reopen till 4pm. That’s an 'Italian' 4pm, i.e. when they get round to it. And those lunches can really take three hours as we have found out!

The evening meal may not be such a big meal, maybe just some pasta, unless you go out, in which case it might be huge! But both lunch and dinner include wine which is probably another reason a siesta before returning to work is a good idea.

A couple of things that normally happen in Italian restaurants outside of Italy but not here (except some tourist ones) is the serving of bread sticks and the coming around with the big pepper pot. Also, garlic bread is slices of bread, slightly toasted, served with a clove of garlic for you to rub into it.

A typical meal would be a course where you help yourself to cold meats (salamis, prosciutto), followed by a pasta dish, followed by the cooked meats. If there is a salad then it is eaten separately, not everything loaded on your plate at once. Fresh bread too, just in case the pasta wasn’t providing enough carbohydrates.

As I write this we are lucky enough to be in a wine-growing area so wine is plentiful and cheap and you can fill your own five litre bottles. A local delicacy is vino cotto. This is wine that has been reduced by boiling, often to one third of the original volume, which makes it stronger in alcohol and flavour. You only need a very small amount and I can’t say I liked it, usually.

A new friend, Jean, invited us to her Italian husband’s family home for lunch.  He makes his own vino cotto (and normal wine). He has a large barrel and, once it is drunk down to halfway, they top it up with a new brew. In that way there are traces of every previous year’s vintage. His one has traces from 250 years ago, though in homoeopathic quantities! The barrel gets handed down through the generations. It certainly tasted better than the restaurant brews, and it was a real privilege to be offered it. Candido also makes world-class salamis and prosciutto; he came second in all of Italy for his prosciutto and it has been served at Buckingham Palace. The family lives in a converted convent with numerous floors, containing a shop, his business, cool stores (with lots of security as the product is so valuable), living apartments, and floors in various states of decay. The foundations are Roman, the rest slightly newer. Next door is the Count’s “palace” – we saw him looking very scruffy getting into his beaten up Fiat to go and see his farm workers … but I digress. 

Top quality prosciutto hang, covered in fat to stop the weevils getting in, for up to 3 years before they are ready to sell. So a typical lunch with this family (three generations) was a selection of his top quality meats, his own wine, fresh bread, followed by a simple pasta dish, then pieces of veal and mutton chops. Then a homemade tart for dessert, plus one we’d picked up from a patisserie. And the special vino cotto.

We haven’t seen a lot of livestock in the fields apart from the local sheep with shepherd and dogs in tow. I suspect a lot of them are kept inside. It may explain why meat isn’t that cheap in Italy when other food items tend to be.

Vicki would like to add a bit about sausages.  Up until the time we left home I avoided eating sausages.  In England I found they could be pretty good - certainly very edible.  But in Italy the sausages are fabulous!  They're tasty and meaty.  A gourmet treat compared to the rubbish we usually find at home.

Return to paradise

View from the house

We’re living in a lesser-known part of Italy, about halfway down the east coast, up on a ridge-line with a 180 degree view that takes in the Adriatic (allegedly you can see Croatia on a clear winter’s day), modern and old villages, and some serious mountains. We’re lucky to be staying in a big house where we have our own apartment downstairs. And out the door is a 25m infinity pool! Luckily the temperature has been on the high 20s ever since we arrived.

Vicki is helping out for a week at an English-language camp for children run by our hosts. It is held at a local “agritourismo”, a working farm set up with accommodation. She isn’t getting much sleep due to the rowdy boys! I have the easy job of spending my days strimming, hedge-cutting, and driving around dropping off our hosts' kids. And testing out the pool.

The Adriatic, as seen from the house

This is the Italy of several decades ago – not known by tourists as there are no particularly famous sights and it is a little isolated – Italians will flock to the beaches further north (Rimini) but the rest is blocked off by mountains. The locals are keen on promoting it further but won’t as that would require an effort – and the 3-hour lunches get in the way! Everyone stops work and comes home for lunch – even the school kids finish their day in time for an, albeit very late, lunch (mind you, they go to school on Saturdays too). We’ve had some good lunches, usually with wine, but one of the most memorable was sitting outside in a small medieval town square under a café’s gazebo looking out over a wonderful view of valleys and hills and other old towns. Warm sunshine, the only people around, two huge slices of pizza and a bottle of water, all for 3.40 euro (about NZD $5).

As usual we're not getting much practice with the language as we’re again staying with native English speakers. And most of their friends we have met are ex-pats – Mike the English physio whose hobby is growing some of the world’s hottest chillies, Dwight the American ex-surgeon who now makes very expensive wine full time, Jean who teaches English and is married to a local, and Peter who has retired here. They all speak great Italian.

Moresco, as seen from our house

At the festival

Many of the old towns around here have an annual festival. We went to the one in the nearest town, Moresco, last Saturday evening. The main square was filled with trestle tables and food tents. For 5 euro you got a good meal of local delicacies and a glass of wine. A live band started up with a few Italian songs and mostly 1980’s English-language pop songs. It kept up till midnight and all the young kids (pre-teens) were still dancing – children stay up very late here.

As we have the use of a car we hope to do some exploring next week. We’ve had one full day out so far when we explored several of the local old villages. Quite different from those of northern Italy though still built on hill tops for defence. The buildings seem to be mostly of brick and in very good condition, so it is hard to tell the 12^th Century ones from the 18^th Century ones. The towns are very clean, no rubbish nor graffiti, only a few abandoned houses, flowers everywhere. It all looks very prosperous, few old cars, but the locals seem to spend a lot of time (during their 3-hour lunches) discussing how bad things are, the dreadful state of the economy, and how there is no hope for Italy. Apparently the tax rate can be 59%, which would be crippling if anyone paid it. There is a big grey market and some shops have two tills. But it makes it very difficult for small companies to employ someone.

There are plenty of good swimming beaches on this coast. Mostly pebbles and a mixture of private beaches (deck chairs, toilets, bars) and public ones. There is a very short season for tourists (August) then the place is pretty quiet. Our local beaches at Pedaso stretch for kms and have breakwaters, which makes the swimming very good (and still nice and warm now). There are showers on the beaches to. The only slightly disconcerting thing is the frequent trains whizzing by as the train line runs down the coast next to the beach. But it is made up for by the presence of La Tentazione – perhaps the best gelato in the home of gelato? And open till midnight …

Filing up the wine ...

Other local food is very good too, and cheap. We fill up flagons of organic wine from a local shop for 1.20 euro a litre and get fresh milk from a farm (butchery, cheese-maker, and restaurant) for 1 euro a litre. a tiny village across the valley, Campofilone) has 10 pasta makers!

Montefiore

This is one of those few places in the world like NZ where you can go skiing and swimming in the sea within a day, not that you would. The mountains near here are seriously large and easy to see as the air is so clear – there are no cities or large industries in this area so little pollution.



The countryside is so interesting as it is a patchwork of very diverse fields, typically turned over earth, grass for hay, olives, grapes, vegetables, little woods, solar arrays, fruit trees, corn and many other crops. There are even sheep! The local flock is looked after by an old shepherd and his vicious wolves sheep dogs. He seems to spend his time sitting watching his flock or moving them down the road to other fields. But he isn’t popular here as he probably poisoned our hosts’ 2 dogs and some other local ones. The trials of rural life.

I was just reflecting on how we arrived in rain but every day since it has been hot and very sunny. But I am told they get a lot of heavy snow here in winter and there are about four miserable months of snow and rain. Snow tyres have to go on in November.

Vicki has just arrived back from her week at the language school looking very, very tired. No doubt more about this on the next post …

Ciao for now!