Saturday, November 13, 2021

Expat life - An Old House Made New

The jackhammer's pounding on the floor above us rattled the ceiling, the walls and our brains. From the furthest points in the upper garden to the lowest level of the olive grove, there was no getting away from it.

The Stone House on the Hill

For two and a half days, the racket of those mechanical waves dislodging and destroying the massive centerpiece our living room, shattered the silence of this rural slice of Greece. It nearly shattered our resolve for the project as well, as we cringed, encamped in the guest room on the lower floor.

So painfully obnoxious was the sound, that our next-door neighbor said he'd been ready to start wearing his noise cancelling headphones inside his home.

The Stone House on the Hill

While I had once chuckled at the hilarious tales of stone house renovations recounted by writers Peter Mayle in France and Frances Mayes in Italy, I found nothing humorous about it now that we were experiencing it first hand at our Stone House on the Hill in the Greek Peloponnese.

If the sound didn't do us in, I was certain we'd be asphyxiated by the concrete and stone dust that filled the house. 

And had we succumbed to one or the other, we'd have had no one else to blame but ourselves. . . we had chosen this path of destruction and there was no turning back.

Time for a Change

The Stone House on the Hill built in terraced olive grove

Early this year, we had declared it the Year of Change at our spitiki, small house, in Kalamata olive growing country. The layout of our Stone House on the Hill follows that of our olive grove which marches down the hillside on steep terraces. Thus the three floors of our home are built on terraces that were long ago carved into the hillside to accommodate olive trees. Stairs lead to the house and stairs connect the floors of the house.

The early years look at The Stone House on the Hill

Our 15-year-old house (still an infant when viewed in the overall span of Greek history) felt and looked tired when we bought it. In the seven years we've owned it, there have been small cosmetic changes, but this year would herald a major makeover. It was definitely time for a face lift and body sculpting!

New closets were installed in July which provide more storage space, yet take up less floor space than the originals that came with the house. 

Our new front door 

That same month we gave the house its first facelift by replacing the original muted green windows and doors with energy efficient ones - their vibrant blue giving new life to the interior and exterior of the home.

Tile replaced flagstone on the front deek

With October's summer-like weather the third of four projects was completed. It was another facelift,  the installation of tiles on our outdoor deck to create more of an outdoor room than flag-stone paved patio. And it worked! The project brightens the deck and gives the feel of having increased the space. 

Tiled Outdoor room/deck at The Stone House on the Hill

Buoyed by the outcomes of those projects, we moved to the grand finale, or what will now forever be remembered as 'the mother of all projects' here. We were finally getting rid of the massive stone stairway that looked as if it belonged in the lobby of some grand hotel and not the small living room in our house. 

Dreams Undeterred

The original stone stairs in The Stone House

Throughout the spring and summer I would imagine a house without that massive stairway. Okay, so  maybe I was obsessing about it, but I'd grab my tape measure, or metro, and  I would measure the structure and announced to The Scout that we would create 'x-amount' of living space if we were just to get rid of 'those' stairs. In fact I announced it to every visitor who walked through the front door and to any poor soul who would listen to me.

The Scout, using that voice-of-reason tone that husband's often use, pointed out how miserable the project would likely be as we'd need to remove its stone and concrete base, read that: dirt and dust. Then we'd likely find more stone and concrete inside. (He was right, btw.)

His even more spot-on reality check was that we had no idea how to go about coordinating such a project and certainly didn't know of any stair contractors.  

The truck said 'stairs' - we were on our way!

Fate was with us (as it so often is in this expat life) as one morning we literally drove past the van of a stair building company working on a house in the village. One Greek word I know is skala, or stairs, and it appeared on the side of the van. By afternoon the contractor was at our house. We shook hands on his proposal and the project was underway!

Paniotis, the 'stair master' as we named him, returned a few days later with the men who would destroy and rebuild the living area. He set out the plan of action: demolition, rebuild of the wall and re-tile the space exposed by the stair removal. Like dominoes falling, those steps would be completed and then he could install a much more compact open wooden stairway. 

Two weeks was the estimate from start to finish.

Out with the Old, In With the New

Provlima: wires ran through the stairs

The demolition was barely into its second hour when the workers called out, 'Ella! . . .Provlima!' (Come! Problem!).  Removing the wooden treads had revealed not only more concrete under the stairs but a major bank of electrical wires that ran their full length from the wall to the floor. 

Provlima solved - meeting of the minds

The team - stair builder, demolition duo, the tiler and the recently-added electrician -  gathered at the stairway that afternoon in a hastily called meeting. We took our places as spectators.  They scratched chins and  heads, pointed and measured. Voices sometimes raised, as is the case of most Greek conversations, options were discussed. 

After a time, Paniotis turned to us and said, 'Yes, we can do this.'  He drew a plan of action sketch, all viewed it, and it was taped to the refrigerator door as a handy reference.  

The plan on the back of an envelope

The meeting adjourned and  the jackhammer resumed its destructive percussion.

Jackhammer serenade resumed

What seemed an eternity later, the jackhammers were silenced, the space cleared and, our master stone mason began putting the wall back together, creating a niche for adornment and then floor tiling was completed.  We marveled at his skill in putting the house back together.

Stone mason magic

Much of the stair work had been done in the Kalamata workshop so installation required one very long work day.

The new stairs

Day 12 found us up to our elbows cleaning concrete dust that had escaped despite the best attempts at sealing off the workspace. Cleaning finished, furniture moved back into place and by Day 14 we were settled into our new Stone House on the Hill -- one that now has an enormous amount of space in the living area.

Footprint of the old stairway

Time to Travel

We are now back to doing what we do best: planning and packing for travel.  As Covid continues to dictate protocols and preparation for travel, countries on this side of the pond are open and welcoming travelers. 
Protocols and preparations begin for travel

Way back when we bought our stone house it was to serve as a launchpad for adventures.  It is time we start using it as just that!  We are off next week. . .and I'll tell you about it in upcoming posts. Until then wishes for continued health and happy travels to you and yours. Hope you'll be back and bring a friend or two with you! And as always, thanks for your time today. 


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Monday, November 1, 2021

In Greece ~ To Everything A Season

 To everything there is a season.  

In Greece, especially this Kalamata region, it is now the season of the olive.

Olive season has arrived in our world

The olive harvest season is upon us, heralding autumn's arrival. Brisk dawns and dusks open and close the ever-shortening days. The mighty wind that blows down from the Taygetos mountains this time of year has returned with its seasonal gusto. Some days it dances leaves and blossoms through the air and other times rips the awnings and hurls the sun-shade umbrellas out of their stands at local tavernas.

September's sunshine gave way to October's rain

When we set off in early September for a stay in our other world, Washington State, we left the lingering golden summer days of Greece behind us. We returned in early October to a much needed, but rather dreary, rainy stretch which served as the opening act of autumn. 

Our drought-stressed olives in August

As olive growers, albeit small time growers, compared to so many in the area, we welcomed the rain after a long, very dry summer. That summer drought and heat had turned our usually green olives into withered purple pimples on the branches.  'They just need rain', Taki, who owns the olive processing plant, assured us. Then he added, that while the rains plumped them up again, it also served to make them attractive to the pesky 'dako' as the olive fruit fly is known here. Those tiny winged terrorists can (and do) destroy crops rather quickly by boring eggs into the fruit when weather conditions allow. 

We didn't want to test fate with those inviting little olives remaining on the trees for very long, so we were among the first to be at Taki's olive processing plant when it opened for the season a week ago.

Olive Harvest

Friend Jean will attest to the hard work part

It takes a day to harvest olives at our Stone House on the Hill. It is a hard day's work, I think our volunteers would tell you, as we, like most in the area, harvest by hand. Olives are beaten from branches that remain on the tree and are stripped from those branches cut from the tree. Harvest and a first-round pruning go hand-in-hand here. 

Sorting the fallen olives from twigs is an important step

The olives fall on plastic nets, enormous carpets, that drape over our steep terraces. As each tree is completed we crawl on hands and knees raking them into piles and pulling out large twigs and branches. 

Mary and Ulysses had at work

This year's harvest was made more fun by having a team of volunteer harvesters join us for varying amounts of time during the day. Our harvest team consisted of expat friends, Chuck, from Kirkland, Washington, Jean and Mic from Portland, Oregon and visitors to the area, Mary and Ulysses, from the Seattle area.  Coordinating the efforts were two local harvesters - the two who know how to harvest and directed the operation, I might add.

Fellow expat Mic at work


Real verses Imagined

I still laugh at the vision I once had of olive harvest, formulated in part by Frances Mayes and her 'Under the Tuscan Sun' book.  In my imagined world, the day was more of an outing punctuated by a lovely lunch served with wine, perfectly matched tableware under those magical trees. After a few hours toil we would enjoy a repast of fine food and wine that would fill the afternoon.

A quick break then back to work!

That couldn't be further from reality here as our volunteer crew will attest! We work about three hours; about the length of time it takes to be unable to raise our arms above our heads or whack the branch hard enough to loosen the olives any longer (we are all boomers, after all). Luckily we fade about noon. Then we gather for cold cuts, cheese and lots of water, served on disposable table ware. 

Nets drape the hillside and are slippery

The break lasts less than an hour though and it is back to the grove where the pitfalls of harvest include falling on your fanny because the nets are slippery or whacking your forehead into an unexpected tree branch and seeing stars for a few minutes. (Do I have you lining up yet to volunteer for next year's harvest?)

From Olive to Oil

Our harvest at the oil processing plant

Our harvest was smaller than had been expected as this was the alternating year in which we should have had a heavy yield. We harvested 294 kilos of olives - filling seven and a half 50-kilo burlap bags. Our crop produced 40 kilos (equivalent to liters which are close to quarts) of oil.  Some of which we sold to the processor, some we will distribute to friends and family in the U.S. and some was earmarked for our volunteer crew. 

And here comes the oil! 

For those new to TravelnWrite, when we bought our Stone House on the Hill on a rural, olive-tree carpeted hillside in the Peloponnese seven years ago, what we knew about olive oil would have fit in a table-sized dispenser of the stuff.  

As it turned out the property on which our stone house sits also had 17 olive trees - and unbeknownst to us at the time, a whole new segment of this expat world was about to open.  

Our Stone House on the Hill at the top of the grove

Slowly, slowly, or siga, siga, (see-GAH) as we say in Greece, we've come to learn about the seasons of the olive. There is the early spring pruning long before the trees flower, the cutting of the grasses after the wild flowers are spent. After the olives begin to grow we move into the spraying season (bio, we are told)  to combat attacks by those dakos. 

Harvest, the crescendo of seasons, begins in the lower elevations where we are the end of October and will continue through the end of December and early January as crops on the higher elevations ripen.

Our olives heading to press

Freighters are now marking time in the Messinian Bay, waiting to be loaded with oil that will be taken to countries like Italy.  Find that surprising? Well read this article from Epoch, pure Greece (there are others to be found on the internet, if you still find this a remarkable fact):

Is your Italian olive oil really Italian?

The world seems to love Italian olive oil, and many bottles of oil seem to be packaged to display their Italian origin.  But here comes the crunch, when you buy a bottle of oil that says Italian on the label, if you check the small print on the label you may see that what you are really getting is Italian oil blended with olive oil from other countries,  especially with premium quality extra virgin olive oil from Greece.

Italy uses and exports more olive oil than its farmers can grow.  Natural olive oil from Greece tastes just as good, if not better, than olive oil from other countries, but it is cheaper to produce. Italian brands buy Greek oil, mix it with their own and sell it to you, quite legally and stated on the label, as Italian product.  Greek olive growers grow and press more olives than home consumption can use and so they can sell their excess olives to Italy.

Our fresh pressed olive oil 

Thanks for being with us and welcome to our new subscribers! We've been busy changing our world in Greece the last few weeks and next week I plan to tell you about it. . .hope you'll be back then!

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