Olives and bonfires

(This blog post covers the week 13-19 November 2017.) 

Just like the Ronseal advert from the early-mid 1990s ("does exactly what it says on the tin"), this blog post covers exactly what it says in the title: olives (lots of them) and bonfires (actually one very large one).

This year is the first time we have thought about picking our own olives in earnest. When we arrived here, our olive trees were all in a pretty sorry state and only three of them bore fruit. The story we have been told is that, several (tens of) years ago, someone cut them all down for firewood, and since then the trees have slowly been re-growing (and are therefore very small and spindly compared with many others in the area). Of course, since being here ourselves, we have done our best to give the trees some TLC - clearing the grass and bramble from around them and giving them an annual pruning. We have watched them slowly start to gather strength and, after counting 17 trees bearing fruit last year, we were delighted to find that almost 30 trees had some fruit on them this year. We knew that we wouldn't have enough for our own olive pressing, but were keen to pick them anyway, to gain an idea of just how much we had.

Our friends David and Sarah were in a similar position - the trees at their house had been given a hard prune this year, and didn't seem like they were bearing enough fruit for a pressing from their fruit alone. 

And so it was that a plan was hatched with David and Sarah to combine forces in a joint olive picking and pressing adventure, with the aim to pick their olives, our olives, some olives from a holiday house that David and Sarah look after in the village of Marliana, and then see whether we needed any topping up from a variety of other possible sources available to us.

Last week David and Stuart had gone to the olive mill to book a pressing for 5:30pm on Friday, and to pick up some olive crates - so the plan was to pick all week, and go to the mill on Friday.

The week didn't get off to a great start thanks to rain (some of which fell as snow as nearby as Vellano) and strong winds on Monday - but we decided we would be OK to postpone the start of picking until Tuesday, and on Monday we sat indoors feeling relieved not to be facing the elements outside, which were doing their best to knock off as many olives as they could from the trees.

Picking started in earnest on Tuesday, when we wrapped up warm and headed up to David & Sarah's house where we transferred to their car and headed on to the village of Marliana, just over the top and on the other side of the hill from Vellano.

We knew that there were only 4 trees at the property in Marliana, so we thought we would have finished the picking there by lunchtime. Come 2pm we were still picking olives from the first tree we had started. The trees were burgeoning with fruit and it almost seemed as if every time we turned around more olives would magically pop out on the branches.

We had a quick change of plan and once we had filled three crates worth of olives (roughly 75kg) from just one tree - and in doing so had run out of empty crates into which we could load olives - we decided to call time on Marliana for the day, head back to David & Sarah's for a spot of lunch and start picking there in the afternoon.

The magic Marliana tree.

Thanks to the strong wind it felt perishingly cold first thing in the morning.

While Sarah quickly put together some lunch, David, Stuart and I laid the nets out under the first couple of trees and picked a handful of olives, before heading indoors for a delicious and well-earned lunch. We then headed back outdoors and picked olives until the light started to dim, at which point Stuart and I hopped in the car and dashed down the hill just in time to let Reggie out to stretch his legs before it got too dark. After a full day in the cold and open air, we both felt ready for bed at 6pm, but we managed to stay awake until a more respectable bedtime, and went to bed dreaming of olives.

Was Reggie dreaming of olives too? Probably not.

Wednesday morning would usually be our joint Italian lesson with David & Sarah, but this week olive picking took precedence so instead we met our fellow pickers at their house at 08:30 and picked up breakfast en route to Marliana, arriving back with the bountiful trees just after 9am.

Once again, we spent the whole morning picking, and were surprised to find that by the time we finally finished the job, having picked all olives from the 3 remaining trees, it was once again nearly 2pm.

This time, Stuart and I headed straight home, and while Stuart put some pasta on for lunch, I took Reggie out for a walk in the woods. We then wolfed our plates of pasta before heading back to reconvene at David and Sarah's house to spend the rest of the afternoon picking their olives. This time we were also joined by Paul and Kathy, and the six of us picked until it was literally too dark to see the olives - by happy coincidence that was also the point at which we had finished picking all of the trees, so we retired indoors for a drink before saying our goodbyes and heading home.

Thursday was a day off olive picking for Stuart and me, while David and Sarah picked at the property next to theirs, joined this time by Donatella. It felt strange not to be heading out to stand in trees and fill crates with olives, but there was good reason for putting it on hold for the day: I needed to do some office work and to participate in my team's fortnightly team meeting, we needed to tidy the house and, in the afternoon, we were due to drive to the airport to meet our friends Kathryn and Steve.

Kathryn and Steve had paid us a flying visit back in the summer, together with their teenage children Jasmin and Alex - they had only been with us a little over 12 hours on that occasion (being on their way to a family holiday in the Garfagnana valley), but we'd had a great time with them, and when Kathryn suggested that she and Steve might like to come out in the autumn to help with olive picking, we were really pleased. There was always a chance that olive picking might have already happened by the time Kathryn and Steve came to stay, or even that it might not happen at all, so it was a happy coincidence that our week of olive picking coincided with their visit.

Having picked our friends up from Pisa, we came home to spend the evening cooking, eating and catching up over a few glasses of wine before retiring to bed - hoping that we wouldn't be regretting the glasses of wine when we got up early the next morning!

After breakfast on Friday morning  David and Sarah joined us at our house, bringing with them the olive nets, and while Steve, Kathryn, Stuart and I started picking the tree on our lawn, David and Sarah busied themselves with walking the upper terraces, finding all the trees with olives on them and picking as they went.

We were thrilled to find that the tree on the lawn was a little "Marliana-esque" (had many more fruit than we thought at first) and we ended up filling an entire crate (25kg) just from the one tree - small fry compared with the Marliana trees, but we were delighted.

By lunchtime we had finished picking all of our olives and were pleased to find that the Numero 182 trees had yielded two full crates, or around 50kg of olives.

We stopped for a lunch in the sunshine, before cleaning out the olive oil containers then heading up to David & Sarah's house to collect the other 8 crates of picked olives that they had kept dry in their metato (outhouse).

A whopper!

Coffee break.

Folding the nets.

Numero 182 olives - all 50kg of them.

The Oxfordshire/ex-Oxfordshire picking team.

All picked in time for lunch: boys.

All picked in time for lunch: girls.

Cleaning out the oil containers.

Pretty persimmons at David & Sarah's house. 

251kg of olives (five crates from Marliana, two crates from David & Sarah's olive trees, two crates from Numero 182's trees and one crate from the property next to David & Sarah's house).

Almost too pretty to press.

Before we knew it, it was time to head into Pescia to the olive mill. We were joined by Paul and Kathy, who took some of the crates in their car, and we drove in convoy to the mill.

Our crates were weighed, and we were delighted to find that we had a total of 251kg. We needed 150kg to make the minimum weight for a pressing (and at the start of the week we were unsure as to whether we would even be able to reach 150), and the maximum amount that we could press without having to pay extra for the pressing was 260kg, so 251kg was just about perfect.

After a short wait for our turn, we poured our crates of carefully picked olives into the large collecting bin at the start of the pressing process and watched our olives go on their way - first to be washed and for any remaining leaves to be shaken out, then to go to the masher, centrifuge and eventually to come out as liquid green-gold.

The "magic number" that everyone is eager to find out for their own pressing and that of others is called the resa, and is the percentage of weight of oil coming out to weight of olives going in. The average seems to be around 13-16%, but it can vary a lot with climatic conditions, picking conditions, how much detritus (leaves etc.) is left in the crates with the olives when they are picked, geographic location of the trees and all sorts of other factors. We had heard stories of people getting an incredibly high resa this year, with our friends Julia & Vittorio (parents of Amanda and Samantha) having helped friends pick over at Monte a Pescia and having had two pressings, one at 19% and the second at 21%.

We ended up with a resa of 13.5% - decent, if not outstanding, and certainly something to be pleased with for our first ever harvest. It worked out at about 36 litres of oil which, split between David & Sarah and us, will be plenty to keep us going for the next 12 months.

First-time oil producers.

And there's the proof - 251kg.

36 litres.

We celebrated our first pressing by heading for the enoteca (wine bar) in Pescia for a round of celebratory drinks before saying goodbye to Paul & Kathy then heading up the hill with Kathryn, Steve, David & Sarah, stopping off at our local restaurant Nerone to buy pizzas that we could then take home and devour in front of the fire while we divvied up - and, more importantly, tasted, our olio novo. It was delicious - very fresh and peppery tasting - and we all agreed it was something to be pleased with and proud of.

It was a long and tiring day, but very satisfying and we said a slightly sad farewell to our fellow oil producers David & Sarah - it seemed odd that we weren't going to meet up with them again the next day to pick more olives.

As tired as we were, Saturday was a new day and the second full day with Kathryn and Steve on board. We started the day by taking them for our traditional weekend breakfast (coffee and pastry), before stopping off to buy chicken food then heading back up the hill to start the day's work.

The main aim of the day's work was to continue clearing and tidying the gully that runs along the left-hand side of the terraces (as you look up at them from the house). Stuart also took the opportunity to give the very tall olive trees up there a very hard pruning to try and bring them to more easily pickable height.

So, while Kathryn raked and gathered foliage to burn, Steve cut up felled trees with one chainsaw and Stuart and I swapped between chainsaw and hedge cutters to prune trees, log more wood and clear bramble.

We stopped work for a sunny lunch on the patio before heading back up the terraces to do more cutting, start an enormous bonfire, and generally tidy things up at the top of the terraces.

By the time we'd finished and let the fire die down, Kathryn and Steve had managed to burn all of the prunings - an impressive feat - they are master bonfire managers!

After everyone had showered and changed, we reconvened in our living room for Steve to watch the rugby while we also all chatted, and Steve helped Stuart with a plumbing conundrum he'd been mulling over for a while.

We then all headed for the car and up the road to Ponte di Castelvecchio for dinner at the Da Carla restaurant. We had a great feed-up and virtually rolled out of the restaurant to the car and back home for a final few drinks with our friends before it was time to head for bed.

Cheers to a great few days!

Antipasti.

All too soon, Sunday morning came around and it was time for Kathryn and Steve to load their bags into the car and for us to take them to the airport - but not before a Sunday morning cappuccino and pastry on the way. In some ways it felt (in a good way) as if our friends had been with us for longer than just 3 nights - I guess we had accomplished so much with them that it seemed as if they must have been here for longer! But it still felt too soon to say goodbye - what easy and delightful company they are, not to mention how hard working! We do hope they will come our way again soon. (I should also say a huge thank you to Kathryn for the majority of the photos in this blog post!) 

Breakfast selfie.

After dropping Kathryn and Steve at the airport, we made an unscheduled stop at Ikea (which is next to the airport) - thinking that we might be able to find a few odd bits that we needed, and indeed we left with brand new sets of linen for the apartment for next season, several jars and containers, and some hooks for hanging the pans in the kitchen.

When we finally made it home, we really were whacked from our busy week and treated ourselves to an afternoon and evening of doing really very little at all - we caught up on Bake Off Italia, had an early dinner and headed for bed nice and early for what felt like a well earned sleep!