Olive Harvest: Part III

In which I realize this little job has been dragging on way too long and if we don't finish today, it won't happen for another week...thus, we decide to get serious and be done with it.

As so often happens to the Great Procrastinators that we are, we made this decision just a little too late.

Here's a photo of the mountains up the valley...



Yep. That's snow there on the top. Of course that is much higher than we are, we didn't have snow. But, it is an indicator as to what's happened to the temperature in general. It fell much faster than our olives did. F$%^&ng cold. Brrrrrr....



Let me remind you what the weather was like when we STARTED this project...



No one to blame but our-lazy-selves but it still hurts.

Of course, I must add here again that cold is relative...my pal Jay in Minnesota spent his weekend putting an ice skating rink in his back yard. Different kind of cold.

Back to Maberga...

SO THEN, last night there was a rain storm to end all rain storms. This has two implications for the olive harvest:
1. The trees were covered and dripping with ice cold rain water this morning, making the one by one, individual picking that much more enjoyable (sarcasm).
2. Whilst picking the ice cold dripping wet olives one by one, individually the mind wanders to what would have happened last night in the wind/rain storm had we had nets under our trees. Yep, mother nature offered to do most of the work for us...had we done that prep-work. Realizing this adds to the picking pleasure (more sarcasm).

Oh, I forgot to mention (what should have been "Olive Harvest: Part II.5" had I written it yesterday), that the chopping limbs off to pick them didn't really work as planned. (No, Mette, David didn't cut down the whole tree - however, as you mentioned in the comments, that would have made the picking much easier next year). The chainsaw method would have worked like a charm had we actually picked the olives when we cut the branches off instead of putting them on the side of the house where they sat for four days with the olives shrivelling up. I'm no expert on these things but common sense would tell me that shrivelled olives render less oil than non-shrivelled ones. I did include the few I picked yesterday in with all the rest...do you think the people at the olive press will notice?



Anyway, back to Part III -

David decided to employ the "beat the tree" method today since I was on the only ladder and was wearing the only work glove I could find in the house (NOT the only PAIR, just ONE - luckily it was the right hand. Honestly, some times I wonder how we are able to feed ourselves). Also known as "the big stick method", the "beat the tree" method is the one where you, well, beat the tree with a big stick.



Then the olives come tumbling down into your neatly lain nets, and there you go!



Olive harvest finished!

Can't wait to see how much oil this will get us. Stay tuned.