Crocks and olives

The overriding themes of this week have been the two of us feeling like a pair of old crocks, and, well, olives.

Monday

We were both up early on Monday morning so that we could let the cats out, let Reggie have a run around the garden and dispatch a bowl of cereal each before jumping into the car and heading down the hill to the Phillips house (and olive grove) in time for 8.30am. We started the morning with a good cup of coffee with Chris and Sue before following them out and up into their olive grove for the day's work. This was the start of Chris and Sue's second week of olive picking this year, but for us it would be our first ever experience of an olive harvest.

Last year, the olive harvest across the whole of Tuscany and large parts of Italy was a disaster - there basically wasn't one, and most of the olive presses didn't even open. The reason was a pest: olive fly. The previous winter (2013-14) had been a mild one, and while that may be good news for people trying to collect enough firewood to keep warm over winter, it certainly wasn't good news for olive farmers. The larvae of the olive fly overwinter in the soil and if the winter is mild, this creates ideal conditions for them - a harsh winter is welcomed in these parts as it kills off a good proportion of the pests. While there will always be some olive fly, there is a magical percentage (a low one), below which it is deemed a good crop and worthy of picking and pressing. Last winter was cold at times (I distinctly remember the inch-thick ice on the goose pond), but overall it wasn't particularly harsh, so everyone was wondering whether or not it would have been enough to kill off the fly - it turns out that, in the main, it was, and this year there seems to be an exceptionally good crop of olives.

Of course, olive picking isn't exactly rocket science and after a quick demonstration from Chris and Sue, we soon got into the rhythm of stripping olives from the branches that Chris was periodically throwing down from the trees as he combined pruning with picking. Despite a head full of cold and a lingering headache, it felt lovely to be out in the fresh air in amongst the olive trees with good company. We continued stripping branches until around 12.30pm, at which point Sue and I took the opportunity to dash to the olive press in order to collect the crates they had left there after their first pressing over the weekend. It was my first experience of an olive press - we literally only stuck our heads in to pick up the crates, which were right by the door, but even with a nose full of cold the smell of olive oil was incredible! All being well we should return to the press this Saturday with the olives that we have helped pick over the course of the week, and we will be able to see the whole process for ourselves - definitely something to look forward to!

A morning's work.

After dropping the crates back off at the Phillipses, I left Stuart in the care of Chris and Sue and trundled back up the hill so that I could get Lucca and Florence safely in, let Reggie out for some fresh air in the garden, and check my emails and do a bit of office work. Once the light started to fade, I put Reggie in the car and drove back down the hill to go and collect Stuart. Reggie and I both went up to the house to say hello, before we all left for the river to give him a very brief stretch of his legs. Darkness seemed to descend very quickly though, and poor Reggie's short walk was cut even shorter - it hardly seemed fair to call it a 'walk' - so we headed back home to light the fire and cook some dinner. Poor Stuart seemed very tired after his day's picking - but it was at this point that he suddenly realised he had forgotten to take his thyroid tablets in the morning, which was clearly having knock-on effects.

Tuesday

With Tuesday being the day of our weekly Italian lessons in Vellano, we'd decided we wouldn't go to pick olives but instead Stuart would spend the morning working with David, I would spend the morning working in the office, and we would both go up to Vellano for our lesson in the afternoon. That's pretty much how the day went. Stuart seemed very tired today, and I was still suffering with cold symptoms, but we made it through the day and managed to take Reggie for a slightly longer walk (our usual one along the river in Pescia) after our Italian lesson, managing to squeeze it in just before the daylight faded.

Wednesday

Likewise, we'd planned not to pick olives on Wednesday, with Stuart spending the morning working with David again, me working in the office again, and then me having my weekly Italian lesson with Samantha in the afternoon. Stuart took Reggie for a good walk while Samantha was here, in order to give us some peace and quiet, as Reggie still hasn't worked out that Samantha is a friend! Poor Samantha gets treated to a volley of barking every time she comes to the house. We think that inviting her to join us on a dog walk might do the trick, as Reggie seems to bond with people when he goes on walks with them, so one week we will have to have a lesson while walking the dog and see how that goes! The day ended with both Stuart and I feeling drained - my headache having returned with a vengeance and Stuart still feeling over tired - but the plan was for us to get back to picking olives the next day. We duly retired to bed at 9pm, talk about rock and roll!

Thursday

During the night, we received a message from Chris and Sue - it seemed they were taking pity on us pair of old crocks and told us not to come to pick olives. Not only that, but it was Henry's birthday today, so they themselves were planning to dedicate most of the day to birthday celebrations. I have to admit to feeling enormous relief as my headache was still in full swing when I woke in the morning, and Stuart still looked exhausted - despite having had 10 hours sleep.

Stuart's first task of the day was a mercy mission to drive into Pescia and get me some more migraine tablets - although strangely, by the time he came back I was starting to feel slightly more human, if still a little fragile. Over breakfast, we decided that since we were both going to be around for the whole day, we would take the opportunity to make this the first day we let the chickens out of their house. We duly shut Reggie indoors to minimise disruption while we headed up to the chicken enclosure to give the chickens their (relative) freedom - hoping that they wouldn't take flight (literally) again!

We opened the door and... nothing happened. There was no stampede and cloud of feathers as the chickens fought to get out the door. No, instead they all stood still, before slowly a couple of the braver ones made their way to the doorway, where they stood, looking out. Occasionally one of them would put a toe on the ramp as if thinking about coming out, before pulling it quickly back in again and standing in the door, staring out.

Don't all rush at once...

This clearly wasn't going to be a rushed affair, so Stuart and I turned our attentions to the olive tree that stands in the corner of the chicken enclosure. Theoretically, at least, the chickens could jump up onto the branches and from there flap their way over the fence and out of their enclosure, so we knew we really needed to cover it in something. Before that, though, Stuart decided it would be a good opportunity to prune the tree - it was one that didn't really get a proper pruning early this year because the former inhabitants of the enclosure, the now deceased geese, were, shall we say, not overly friendly and not very tolerant of having people interfering in their enclosure. We are already learning that chickens are an altogether gentler, friendlier, more docile species, which meant that we could spend half an hour pruning the olive tree in peace - and as we did so, one of the chickens even made it out of the door and halfway down the ramp!

After the tree had been pruned we attempted to cover it with some old netting that we had lying around, but the piece wasn't really large enough or the right shape, so we left the tree half covered and plan to go and buy some olive netting to cover it properly at a later date, hoping that the chickens don't get too adventurous in the meantime.

After doing a little office work, while Stuart continued work on the shed, I felt like having some fresh air, but with my head still feeling on the delicate side, I didn't want to do anything too strenuous. Stuart came up with the suggestion that I pick our own olives!

Our poor olive trees are still in a state of slow recovery. We are told that several years ago, a man lived in our house illegally and he cut down all the olive trees to use as firewood. This is not only a crying shame, but olive trees are protected in these parts, so doing so would have been illegal in itself. Anyway, the result of this brutal behaviour is that the olive trees on the terraces above the house are very slowly struggling to recover, with shoots having regrown from the stumps that this chap left after his olive massacre. While our predecessors were kinder to the trees, we don't think they gave them a proper pruning, so it wasn't until Stuart did it early this year that they started to get some TLC. The massacring and the lack of pruning combined mean that we are very low on fruit - although this year was markedly better than last year, with 5 of the 40 or so trees that we have access to bearing fruit. (We have many, many more olive trees - probably at least another 40-60 - but these are still buried deep amongst the bramble on the terraces that we have yet to clear; our mission is to gradually clear up to and around the trees, gradually increasing our olive tree count. The one good thing about the trees that are still embedded in bramble is that it seems that the olive tree massacre didn't make it that far, so they are all larger and more mature than the ones on our cleared terraces - so when we do finally reach them and prune them, we hope they will be healthy and bear fruit.)

I therefore spent a couple of hours carefully picking the olives from the two trees either side of the steps that lead up to the upper terraces - with a notably better crop on one of them than the other. The other few trees that bore fruit really only had a handful each, so I collected those too. By the end of the afternoon I'd amassed more than I had expected. The bag weighed in at a little over 10kg - which should be enough to make around a litre of olive oil... Of course just one carrier bag full of olives is not worth going to the press with (there is a minimum pressing cost of the equivalent of 300kg), but we plan to take our small offering and add it in with the olives we pick at the Phillipses so we can say we have pressed our own olives this year!

10kg of olives from our slowly recovering olive trees - that's about a litre of olive oil!

Mid afternoon we had a visit from David and Sarah who called in for a quick catch-up and to see the chickens. By the time I took them up to the chicken enclosure all five chickens (the four hens and the cockerel) were out and about, cautiously exploring their surroundings. They viewed us with some suspicion and kept their distance, but didn't seem too startled by our presence and certainly not aggressive in the way the geese would have been!

Stuart made some good progress on the shed on Thursday, having finished laying concrete for the end section of the shed that will house the new water tank, gas cylinder etc., attached the plywood layer to the roof and also put in a section of flooring for the other end of the shed - it's really starting to take shape now and will look really smart when it's all finished (especially when all the tools and bits and pieces from under the tarpaulin are moved into it and hidden away!)

The shed taking shape

Flooring now down at either end.

Friday

We both awoke on Friday feeling a little fragile, but I for one felt better than I had done for the rest of the week, so we headed off into Pescia to the Phillips olive grove once again, arriving at 8.20am in time for a coffee before heading to the trees.

Olives in a hessian sack - how Tuscan can you get?

We all picked until lunchtime, at which point a rapidly flagging Stuart left to go and get the cats in, take Reggie for a walk and run some other errands. I stayed for a delicious lunch with the Phillipses, before heading back out to the olive trees in the afternoon. It was a particularly cloudy, misty day today and the light started to fade at around 4.30pm, so we called it a day and Stuart came to pick me up after collecting some felt roofing material from Frateschi's and a car load of pieces of wood from the wood yard.

Since we were in town, we decided to bite the bullet and do the supermarket shopping - neither of us felt like doing it, but we knew it would be good to get it out of the way to free up more time at the weekend. By the time we were leaving Esselunga darkness had fallen and it was 6pm by the time we got home.

We spent a cosy evening by the fire, happy in the knowledge that the weekend was upon us - not that we have plans for a relaxing one, with still more work to get done on the shed in order to try and get it watertight before some rain is due next week, various other tasks to do around the place, and an olive pressing to get to on Saturday!