Combing Olive Trees Branch by Branch

Fall brings  a favorite opportunity in our olive rich area - harvesting olives the old fashioned way by combing branch after branch of our friend's olive trees. She has few enough trees to do it this way rather than the more mechanized version used by larger places. What a wonderful way to spend a day with friends.

My friend Sheila's trees were laden this year, ready to be swept into the nets below. Yesterday was in the high 60's with intermittent sun, the three dogs were bounding around begging someone to throw a stick for them to fetch and six of us were eager to engage in the ancient, almost meditative practice of harvesting olives.

A view from the olive grove located about 40 minutes from my house and closer to the mountains.

Sheila prepared a delicious, home cooked feast for the workers. We ate, chatted and shared snippets of our lives in Italy, rich with new-for-us experiences that endear us to this land, this place.

After pressing, each couple's reward is five liters of olive oil. I'm sure it enhances the heart benefits of olive oil to have combed the trees branch by branch and harvested the olives with our own hands.

Sheila has a couple of trees with eating olives rather than those meant to be crushed for oil. The green olives from Abruzzo, our area of Italy, are scrumptious and rated highly nationally.

Olive oil is used in products as well. Soap, of course, but also shampoo, body wash and lotion. My skin and hair love them.

It's hard to overestimate the value of slow, simple, earth based activities further connecting me to all that is- the trees, the sun, the earth, fresh air, fresh food, friends, easy banter, play with a dog, being a part of the cycle of that which feeds me. I'm grateful.

Hugging Trees and Combing Olives

Have you ever combed a tree?  Really. It's the way olives are hand picked here in our little corner of the world. Each branch combed with a plastic comb to pull down the olives but not disturb the leaves.

And did you know that olives are beautiful when they're ripe? Both on the tree:

And up close and personal, even while olives rain on me, and branches brush my hair:

And once harvested, caught in the nets spread under the trees, they are particularly colorful in their earthy beauty:

They're then scooped up and bagged in tall burlap bags:

And taken to community presses to be made into olive oil, some of which we'll receive for our own use:

As it looked today, this was the view from my friend's yard where her 70, 30 year old olive trees live:

Harvesting olives by hand was a first for me. The day was sunny and 67 degrees, clear with the clean, fragrant air characteristic of towns further up into the mountains. 

The outdoors, the presence of friends, both old and new, the delicious, home made food prepared by my friend (the trees caretaker), the light hearted bantering and whole hearted tree hugging was such a rare and lovely way to spend a day. 

Combing a tree branch by branch turned out to be an intimate act of care and love. It made my heart happy. 

Vincent, too - Olive Grove by Vincent Van Gough: