Subject:   [adventure!] Olive pickin´!

Date:   1/22/2004 8:24:09 AM

 

 

 

Hola again ladies and gents,

 

Yes for those of you interested, I am still alive. Very much so. Presently

sat in an internet cafe in the Alpujarran town of Orgiva (aka Hippie town).

This place is pretty cool, but the Spanish apparently don´t like it because

it´s been totally taken over by the international hippie community, who

apparently represent to the Spanish, the lowest form of life besides

the environmentalists.

 

Anyway, we´re here to bring our olives to a small mill where we can get the

oil immediately. We started harvesting them on Monday and picked 4 trees in

two days, which produced 250 kg of olives. Most of the olive mills in Spain

take your olives and give you a receipt for the weight, and you can decide

whether you want some predetermined percentage of that weight in oil (not

the oil from your own olives, but the oil of whatever everyone has brought,

mixed together) or you can just sell your olives to the mill, which then

sells the oil to a larger company. The result of this is that most people

who harvest olives beat what they can from the trees with sticks and throw

in anything from the ground that resembles an olive, to make sure they have

lots of weight to bring to the mill. There is no incentive for quality.

The trouble is that olives are relatively fragile and once they hit the

ground, they bruise and immediately start to deteriorate. What often ends

up going to the mill are olives that fell off of the tree months ago and

have sat on the ground fermenting. It´s not nearly as gross as it sounds,

but still leads to lower quality oil. Which is why the family I´m staying

with has decided instead to pick the olives from the trees (instead of

beating the branches with sticks), dropping them onto nets and then sorting

through them by hand before putting them onto trays to avoid crushing them

in the big sacks most people use. Then, as I mentioned, we´ve brought them

to the small careful mill where you get your own oil back right away (well,

in a few hours).

 

I am in dog heaven harvesting these olives here. Basically, I get to climb

trees all day and see how far up and out I can go without plumetting to my

death on the olives below (well, plumetting to a nasty sprain anyway). So

far I am unsprained and the proud former owner of a pretty good chunk of my

head which was removed using the simple and ancient method of ramming it

into a tree limb. I can still do math, but every so often I have the urge

to bite the heads off of chickens.

 

Not sure whether I´ve mentioned this or not, but the organization that

hooked me up with this family is called WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on

Organic Farms, http://www.wwoof.org).

 

The other night we had a visit from a couple who also hosts WWOOFers and

that visit made me realize what a great match I have found with the family

that I am staying with. Work life in Montenegro (where I´m staying) is

productive and challenging, but in a very laid-back kind of way. This is

not a business, I´m staying with a family who wanted some help with

harvesting their olives and doing some building. We have breakfast at 9,

dinner at 2, and tea and bread in the evening (German schedule, quite nice)

and we basically work until it´s too dark out (around 6 or 7) The people who

visited us were a British couple with a very nice WWOOFer from New Zealand.

Although they seemed very nice, as they were showing us their records of

man-hours/kg and explaining how they came to their figures by subtracting

out each 10 minute break, somewhere between the second and third decimal

place I felt a sudden chill. That could have been me counting down the

seconds of my coffee break! I settled back into my tea and smiled.

 

On a slightly more political note, although the olive trees we´re working

with are probably 50 years old, well-pruned and cared for trees can live for

centuries in the mediterranean, and often provide olives and oil to very

poor people who have little else. It often takes 20 years before a tree

will produce olives and these trees are extremely important to the families

who tend them. Driving around this area, you can see some of the older

trees, beautiful old trees with huge gnarled trunks in which you can see

what look like ghostly faces. Sometimes the trunks are made up of 3 or 4

trees that have weaved themselves together. Occasionally on the news, you

might hear about military bulldozers knocking down olive trees. Until now,

I have never really understood how devestating that could be to families and

whole cultures. Just something to think about.

 

Okay, instead of leaving you on a sad note, let me tell you some happy

things before the internet cafe guy kicks me out for the siesta. I bought a

guitar in Granada. My UK passport has just arrived and now I can officially

stay here forever (excepting of course Jeff and Suzy´s wedding!). There is

something called Pan de Higo here (fig bread), which is more of a log than a

bread, but if you can find it at home pick it up. It´s superfantastic!

 

Oh, I´ll have more pictures up soon too. Including the missing ´xmas on a

camel´ pictures, which I found on another memory card.

 

And, if someone can suggest a way for me to get a cheap old laptop here,

maybe I´ll write a book or something.

 

Hasta Luego!

jay