Projects
The old man says that I ought to
plant 30 more olive trees on our property, which, he says, would yield about 200 liters
of olive oil per year. It seems like a bit of an exaggeration given the size of
our property.
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| Make hay when the sun is shining, make lemonade when lemons are ripe |
My friend Spyro, the one-handed
Albanian gardener, agrees that the property can accommodate at least another 20
olive trees. It was obvious from my reaction that I remained skeptical.
“Yianni, the air blows hard up
here on the mountain, and for this reason you can plant the trees closer
together than down below. A five-meter spacing would work here.”
Daily Routines
By mid-October the sun rises late
in the eastern Mediterranean. Often it appears overcast at first light, but
once the sun rises above the mountain, the morning dew evaporates, the clouds
clear, and a bluebird sky reappears. Just like yesterday, or tomorrow. The air
temperature will reach the low 80s today, about fifteen degrees cooler than in
June/July. The sea temperature is not much cooler than the air temperature.
There are at least two months left for ocean swimming, so there are no complaints. The lakes will soon freeze over in eastern Maine.
I would have liked to fall into a
daily return—a morning run, some writing, some freelance work, and the balance
of the day on the beach. Then a good afternoon siesta.
But I find myself in the midst of
several projects and can’t seem to break away. Mediterranean peoples have a
different sense of time than that of North Americans. Everything is paced;
breakneck speed (my own modus operandi) is frowned upon. The work day is
puncuated by many coffees and cigarettes.
I drove down to Finikounda at 8
a.m., before Dimitri arrived to continue work on the perimeter fence, and did
some grocery shopping and treated myself to a luxury: an “americaniko” coffee.
The real deal prepared by a new barista on the main road.
Breakfast consisted of fresh
yogurt from sheep’s milk, with a good drizzle of local wildflower honey, and a
still warm cheese pie (luxury number 2). I learned yesterday that not eating for
the entire day and then running eight miles up and around the mountain in the
heat is ill-advised. A recipe for disaster, in fact.
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| Table (eating) variety, planted in 2015 |
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| Koroneiko variety (for pressing), planted 2014 |
Last night’s dinner—my first meal
of the day at 9 p.m.—included a large bowl of grated cabbage and carrots, with
olive oil and lemon juice and several cloves of garlic chopped on top, the
later my special request. Unlike North American restaurants, a simple request
for a deviation from the standard menu is never issue. You can get anything you
want at Alice’s—or Niko’s—Restaurant.
Part 2 of last night’s dinner
consisted of three grilled chicken kebabs and a quarter loaf of fresh village
bread, dark brown and aromatic. Cost for dinner: 9.50 euros (or about $10 US).
I’m not drinking alcohol of any
kind (“not even wine or beer?” some ask increduously), which makes me an
exceptionally cheap date. My “teetotaling,” an expression I deplore, is a
source of curiosity and less often ridicule—but it’s the right thing for me. I’ve seen what alcohol does over
time to people who drink like I used drink (that is, excessively, for 30+ years), and the
results aren’t pretty, either here in Greece or back in Maine. I’m not afraid
of the police or of myself, which is a special kind of freedom.
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| Yacht habor in Pylos |
Wine is especially cheap and
several carafes a day over many years transforms the mind and soul in a
gradual, pernicious, and sometimes damning way. I remind myself that this is a
highly personal decision, one that I keep to myself (unless badgered),
requiring neither justification nor lament. My attitude is that if you don’t like
how I don't drink, that’s your own problem.
I’d much prefer to live a sober
life than to die drunk. But that’s just me. And besides, I have sufficient
other vices up my sleeve…to keep me unfocused. ‘Nuff said already.
----
This morning’s groceries (11.30
euros) will last me another week: fresh pears, oranges, and banannas; the
aforementioned cheese pie (tiropita)
and sheep’s milk yogurt; a loaf of fresh village bread (still warm); 200 grams of semi-soft kaseri cheese from ewe milk; a half
dozen eggs, a jar of local honey, nuts, peach juice, and evaporated milk for my
morning coffee. Why does this sound so cheap?
I welcome the challenge, when I’m
here alone, of spending precious little every day. My goal is 20 euros ($22 US)
per day but some days I spend less than 10 euros. And yet I feel like I am
surely living the good life. Petrol, on the other hand, is $8.50 a gallon. It puts all that distance running into a whole new perspective.
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| Mastoras and son |
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| Inch by inch, row by row |
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Tractors are buzzing by our house
at a rate of about one every five minutes. The drivers always wave. The olive
harvest has begun a bit early, mid-October rather than mid-November, and it is
an all-consuming enterprise for which all hands are on deck. Some of those
hands are Bangladeshi; thin, quiet souls who live in whatever unelectrified
hovels they can find, gratefully earning 20 euros for a full day of
back-breaking labor. I am told it is a fortune for them. They wire half of
their earnings back to their families, thousands of miles away.
I ran by our village co-operative
olive press yesterday, on the way to Yameia, part of my five-village mountain run loop. Already it’s working nearly twenty-four hours a day in
order to process the precious crop. Farmers wait their turn, a backlog of tractors
and olive sacks in the yard. The men (mostly men) sit in the shade of a large
plane tree, chain-smoking and trading stories. The early olives are said to be
bitter but produce an oil of unsurpassed quality. The men in our village cafeneion say it is very special, “like
medicine.” But they say the same thing about tsikoudia, an industrial-strength floor cleaner posing as a beverage--fermented from the skins of grapes after the wine-making process.
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By noon the breeze blowing up the mountain from
North Africa is warm and filled with a narcotic fragrance of wild mountain tea,
oregano, sage, and ocean air.
Dimitri and I meet once again
with my farmer-neighbor Vasili—at my urging—to verify the fence line. We are in
agreement, shake hands, and he returns to his harvest, which will extend into
January or beyond.
And Dimitri and I shoot the breeze
on a multitude of subjects as we drive metal stakes and measure.
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