Greece ~ A Time of Harvest, not Halloween

The olive harvest season officially got its start in this part of the Greek Peloponnese on Oct. 26th, St. Dimitrios name day. At The Stone House on the Hill, harvest took place a few days later on the day commonly known as Halloween back in the States. (I am happy to report the U.S. hasn’t yet exported that holiday to this region; there wasn’t a ghost, goblin, costume or party anywhere to be seen).

Here, the olive and its harvest take top billing this time of year.

I’d been envisioning this harvest since last December when we purchased The Stone House on the Hill with its olive terraces that slope down the hillside on which the house sits.  There are 15 olive trees on the property some estimated to be a 100 years old, plus one we planted after taking ownership.

My daydreams about the event (thanks to Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle whose tales of  Tuscany and Provence inspire such adventures) had us harvesting under blue skies, surrounded by friends, drinking and eating and making it an event worthy of a book about our lives here in Greece.   Reality quickly set in:

The wind didn’t just blow the weekend of our harvest, it howled. We had to interrupt harvest for an hour to allow a rain squall to drench the trees and ground. No singing like Zorba. No eating like Frances. No drinking like Peter.  It was work. Hard work. (But you know? It was also fun!)

We’d had the good sense to hire our gardener and his wife to assist us since we didn’t have the slightest idea of how to harvest olives. Ares and Donika came with equipment loaned to us by our friend Yiannis who runs the family restaurant at the foot of our hill and who also owns 1,000 olive trees.

We had some of the easier tasks: Joel hauled the cut branches -- from which we had beaten off the olives -- to the burn pile. While Ares ran the automated olive-shaker-offer and cut branches, I helped beat those fallen branches so that the olives were released onto the enormous nets spread below the trees to catch them.  Donika and I would then get on our hands and knees to sort the smaller branches from the olives. We’d all roll the nets and put the olives in the burlap bags.

The grove, like the house, had been neglected for the past few years – trees hadn’t been trimmed, olives not harvested and weeds grew as tall as the grove’s terrace walls. So even the TLC we bestowed in recent months, we didn’t have a bumper crop but that didn’t detract from the fact it was ‘our’ olive crop and we were in Greece harvesting it!

 

It took a full morning to harvest our small crop. We were ready to quit but to begin preparations for next year’s crop Ares returned in the afternoon for the first round of trimming the trees. They’ll get another cut in February.

That afternoon at 5 p.m. we watched our olives become oil. Let me tell you that in life’s magic moments, this ranks right at the top of the scale! That’s our crop I am standing next to, we were the next order up:

And then there they went! Within minutes our first harvest had come to an end. . .or so we thought.

I posted a real time report on FB Saturday evening while we were at Yianni’s restaurant for dinner. But a few hours later we got a call saying they’d sent us off with the wrong oil (mysteries of oil production) so the next morning we returned those two cans and left with our olive oil:  4.5 gallons of oil (shown in the photos below).

A number of you asked after seeing the FB post about what one does with that much oil.  There are options of selling it to the processor or leasing out the grove to others who will manage it, harvest and then provide you a portion of the oil. We didn’t produce enough this year to worry about it.

The proof is in the pudding they say. . .and let me tell you, this oil is nectar of the gods! Wish all of you could sit around our table breaking fresh loaves of bread, cutting chunks of feta cheese and smothering both in big servings of olive oil.

Hope you’ll return for more tales from our adventures in Greece.  We appreciate the time you spend with us and look forward to your comments!  Safe travels to you and yours~

Linking up this week:
Travel Photo Thursday – Budget Traveler’s Sandbox 
Our World Tuesday
Travel Inspiration – Reflections En Route
Mosaic Monday – Lavender Cottage Gardening
Mersad's Through My Lens
Photo Friday - Pierced Wonderings
Wordless Wednesday

‘Twas the Season in Kalamata ~ The Olive Oil Season

Trees and buildings were decked out for Christmas, but it was the mountains of olives that gave a real seasonal feel to the place. Our mid-December arrival in The Mani put us smack dab in the middle of olive harvest and The Olive Oil Season. 

Decorated tree surrounded by olives - Village of Nomitsis

The home we were there to purchase in Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula is an hour’s drive south of the city of Kalamata.

“Kalamata, isn’t that an olive?” we are asked.

“You bet – the olive!” we answer.

Lots of olives. . . tons of olives . . .and their oil.

Kalamata olives

Seems everyone is familiar with the table variety called the “Kalamata olive”.
In this area of Greece the olive varietals are far more specific: a Myrtoya (hearty in areas of drought), Mavroya (early maturing), Kalamon (the classic table variety) and Mastoides (local oil variety of medium-sized with a pointy shape). That middle photo is one of our olives which I suspect is the Mastoides type.*

In everyday conversation around here olives are simply referred to as ‘oil’ or ‘salade’ varietals.

Oil containers on sale at Katerina's Supermarket

Olive oil is serious business in the Messinia region, with some 15 million trees producing 60,000 tons of oil annually.*  Oil storage containers are for sale far and wide. The photos above are of those for sale at our local supermarket.

Bags of olives awaiting pressing at one of the village presses

By day, the olive groves that carpet this part of The Mani were alive with harvest activities. Many of the workers come from neighboring Albania; the country providing agricultural labor much as Mexican laborers do in the United States.  Messinia has some 300 olive presses and more than 40,000 are employed in the olive oil industry.*

Saturday Night at Takis

While we love the idea of growing olives and producing olive oil we had no clue how it was done, we told our friend Giannis’ while dining at his taverna, just below our house on the hill. Turned out the olive press nearest us is owned and operated by his uncle, Takis.

So, Giannis encouraged us to stop by and visit the operation any time. . .

Saturday night at the olive oil press

Unlike in America, where security would likely have stopped us at some distant gate, we walked into the production facility one Saturday night to find the place a beehive of activity: as one pickup load of olives was emptied another would pull up to unload.  The brain-rattling loud machinery didn’t make for conversation, but it did make for photo-taking.

It wasn’t until we were leaving that we met Takis.  I started to explain who we were and why we were there but he stopped me,

“But. . .of course, Giannis told me. You are the Americans. Come. Come with me where we can talk.”

(“But. . .of course. . .” is how so many sentences begin in Greece.)

A feast for the soul

He led us into a side room that served as a kitchen and break room with a small enclosed office in one corner. There he told us to sit and proceeded to pour us glasses of rose wine and cut thick slices of bread which he served smothered in olive oil . 

“This is old oil,” he said as he handed us the plate.“It is three days old.” He then zipped back to the press room, leaving us alone to savor the taste and moment. That thick emerald green liquid was simply an elixir for the soul. Absolutely unmatched by any oil we’ve ever tasted in Tuscany or Spain or France . . .

Bread smothered in extra virgin olive oil

We’d cleaned the plate and emptied our glasses by the time he returned. So the glasses were refilled and this time a large chunk of Feta cheese was put on the plate with two more slices of bread.  He took the plate into the press room, and returned with oil that was minutes old.

Minutes old olive oil

He then poured himeself a glass of wine, raised it toward us and said, “Welcome to my country! I hope you will be very happy here!”

“But. . .of course!” we thought, “We will be happy here. . .we already are!”

Note: Facts referenced with an asterik * in this post come from a report issued by the University of California’s Cooperative Extension Service in Sonoma County.  The map below shows the areas in Greece where olives are grown.  As always the time you’ve spent with us is appreciated.  Hope you’ll come back soon and until then Happy Travels.

(Crete – that large island at the bottom of the map – in the 1990’s was producing 30% of Greece’s olive oil, followed by the Peloponnese, the land mass that looks like an open hand, at 26%.*)








This week we are linking up with the fine bloggers at:
Travel Photo Thursday – Budget Traveler’s Sandbox 
Our World Tuesday

Travel Inspiration – Reflections En Route 

Mosaic Monday – Lavender Cottage Gardening

 

Greece: Trimming the trees on Christmas Day

While many of you were gathered around your gaily trimmed Christmas trees unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning, we were busy ‘unwrapping’ the gift we had given ourselves this year.  We were trimming, quite literally, our olive trees in Greece. (Still can’t quite believe they are ours, but they are!)

I ’ve had fantasies about owning an olive grove since Frances Mayes in her “Under the Tuscan Sun” book planted such a notion a couple decades ago.

It sounded so Mediterranean. . .so exotic. . .so just. . .well, . . . just plain wonderful!

The 15-tree olive grove that terraces down the slope in front of this stone house were a selling point.


 I get to experience that ‘Frances Mayes’ life’ and Boy-of-the-Chelan (Washington State)-apple-orchard gets a return to his roots in a manner of speaking.

We knew it was an unloved, untended olive grove even way back last summer. What we didn’t know but have learned in the 10 days we’ve owned the place, is that our lovely trees are sick from their recent neglect.

Our grove

“Cancer.” The diagnosis no one ever wants to hear, even when it is a tree. “We call it olive cancer.” explained our friend, Yiannis, somberly as he looked closely at one tree.

“This will have to be taken to here”, he said of the cutting necessary on my favorite old tree at the corner of the house.



Prior to Christmas Day our friend, Vagelis, had done an inspection of the trees in the grove and in a similar grave tone, told us the trees needed sunlight, they were too dense. And as a result a fungus-like growth was growing on large trunks and small branches. The growths are as large as the olives.


Olive harvest and pruning runs from late November to February in this part of the world so we are here at the right time to supervise such an activity. And Christmas Day, turned out to be the time the workers were available so our ‘tree trimming’ was rather unconventional and quite literal this year:

Trimming the trees Christmas Morning

With agility that defies comprehension the two workers climbed into the trees, cutting, sawing and cleaning out old growth.

The trimmed tree, we were told, should look like an upturned baseball glove – waiting to catch the sunlight.

In six hours the trees were trimmed

The two workers came with a ladder between them and in six hours had trimmed our trees and burned the branches they had removed. We decided not to harvest this year’s crop of olives.

Branches are cut and burned during the season such burns are allowed

Our ‘tree trimming’ made for a most memorable Christmas and has enticed us to return for another Christmas here next year: we might actually be harvesting our olives!

Thanks for stopping by today and to our many friends and followers we wish you a Happy New Year! Your comments, emails and messages mean a lot – especially as we embark on this new adventure in Greece. 

We really do appreciate having you join us at TravelnWrite and hope you’ll continue traveling with us in the coming year!

And to those of you who’ve requested more garden and house photos. . .they are coming, we just have a bit more work to do before the Phase I unveiling.