The Olive Harvest

"This place is being watched"---mostly by me

The Olive Harvest

Any time now the olive harvest will commence in earnest in southern Messenia. Farmers wait for the first rains of early fall to finish the olives and then the work begins. And it is huge work. It is said that there are over 5 million olives trees in the prefecture of Messenia. The olive has been the lifeblood of the eastern Mediterranean for more than 5000 years and it remains central to life throughout Greece, and especially here.

Our trees are loaded with olives!

In early October the entire character of the region is transformed. Gone are the tourists—although tourism represents a significant portion of the local economy here, unlike other parts of Greece economic life is not based solely on tourism. First and foremost this is an agricultural region and everyone has olive groves. The number of trees under one’s care is the measure of wealth, not the amount of acreage. So, for example: Yianni has 800 trees, Niko has 1200 trees, and old Panayioti has over 3000 trees.

koroneiko variety (for oil)

The olive tree has near mythic power in rural, southern Greece and also on the larger islands, like Crete and Rhodes. It is the currency of life and the measure of status.

But the oil produced in Messenia and Crete is among the best in the world and people take great pride in their individual harvests. Chemical analyses show that Messenian oil has the lowest acidity of any olive oil in the world—by some measure, that makes it “the best.” The locals sure think so.

Raising, cultivating, and harvesting olives is a twelve-month endeavor that begins with the fall harvest (which lasts well into the winter) and in the other months includes cultivating, pruning, replanting, and—if you don’t farm organically, which many people do—spraying and feeding. Some of the olive trees adjacent to my house are over 1,000 years old. The ones near ancient Delphi are said to predate the Christian era. The are practically indestructable—trees scorched from wild fire recover—but if left untended become wild trees, producing little or no fruit. It is very much a hands-on operation.

 

Planted from a cutting four years ago

Large mesh nets are placed on the ground around each tree and the olives are removed through a variety of methods—hitting the branches with long-handled brooms to dislodge the olives, using power equipment that agitates the branches, or chainsaws to put off entire sections of trees, which are then hit on the nets, dislodging the olives. The chainsaw, in fact, is the tool of choice—the olives are harvested and the tree is brutally pruned simultaneously. The brush is burned—the only time of year that open fires are allowed in this dry and vulnerable landscape. Between the buzz of tractors and the whine of chainsaws, the motorized winnowers, and the chatter of harvesters, the early morning silence is broken at first light.

Table variety (for eating)

We have planted a half dozen olive trees, opting for table (eating) varieties as well as the quintessential koroneiko, which is the choice tree for oil production. Rather than supplementing the millions of olive trees in the region, our property, by my own design, includes orange, mandarin, lemon, avocado, apricot, pear, and pomegranate trees—all planted by me since 2013.

Pomegranate--heavy with ripe fruit

Apricot (left) and fig (right)

All of these once small saplings now bear fruit, standing over twelve feet tall, such is the agricultural marvel of this region, with its rich soil and 300+ days of sunshine.

At the end of each day, the olives are placed in 30-kilo mesh sacks and taken by the dozen (usually by tractor, with grandma and grandkids hanging off the back) to the local state-of-the-art cooperative press that serves five or six nearby villages. Farmers wait their turn, then empty the olives into a hopper where they are first rinsed before being pressed in a massive screw-like device.

Ancient olive tree--older than Yiayia (grandma)

Temenos, our liter-sized sanctuary in an olive grove

Shading the east side of the house

A rich, lime-green liquid (unfiltered, pure, unadulterated olive oil) pours out the other end. Baskets of bread and carafes of wine line the tables and everyone tastes everyone else’s oil and argues in good humor about whose oil is the best. The press works twenty-four hours a day right through late winter. The owner of the co-op keeps a portion of each farmer’s oil as payment; the rest is put into 17-kilo tin cans which are then stored in cool, dark warehouses—every farmer has one, for his or her oil, wine, and produce—for use, sale, and barter during the course of the coming year.

The 2019 harvest promises to be a good one, judging by the trees in this area—they are laden with olives, some green others purple. The table (eating) varieties are prepared with each farmer’s “secret” recipe. In general, table olives are soaked in barrels with fresh water that is changed every day for several weeks; then they are brined. Some add lemon and herbs, others use a more basic brine mixture. After a few months, these olives are jarred and used throughout the year.

All Creatures Great and Small

Rural Greece is not the place for you if you are spooked by a multitude of creepy crawly creatures, some great and some small. There are the everyday insects (bees, wasps, butterflies), snails, scorpions, snakes (one particularly venomous one, others harmless but alarmingly large…the stuff of nightmares), geckos, lizards, toads, and terrapines. And then there are the large mammals, including jackals (a remant African population that has seen a resurgence in the Peloponnese), wild boar, foxes, and polecats. The wild boar, more than anything else, can be dangerous. A charging two-hundred pound hairy pig, with long sharp tusks, will get your attention like nothing else. They are a consideration for an otherwise oblivious distance runner, hiker, or cyclist meandering in the “back forty.”

Learning to Be a Senior

I have largely resisted the draw of Finikounda, which is three kilometers down the mountain on the sea, and opt instead to spend my nights with the old men in the local village cafeneion. Aside from the proprietor’s wife, the traditional cafeneion is a largely male venue.

I count the 75+ crowd among my best village friends. The also provide a small sense of things to come, now that I’m 60.

Call me Sisyphus

They badger and heckle one another as they chain smoke cigarettes and drink thick Turkish coffee, pontificating on world politics, bragging about their olive harvests, complaining about their wives, and speaking of how life used to be in the village. It is a field day for an armchair sociologist like me.

They all know my name—it is Yianni, but they call me Tzon—and accept me as another villager in one sense. (But, of course, I’ll always be an outsider to some degree, although fluency in Greek and my heritage is an entre to village life.) This assemblage of old men are especially interested in life in America.

The conversation goes something like this:

“Where do you live?”

“In a state called Maine, which is located on the Atlantic Ocean near Canada.”

“Oh, yes, that’s near Chicago,” one man offers with utter geographical confidence.

“That’s not too far a drive from California,” says another.

Given that most Americans, including our leaders, could not find Ukraine on map, this is not hugely ignorant.

But most of all they are curious about one Donald J. Trump, our fearless leader—that “stable genius”—and implore me to explain his modus operandi.

This is asking too much from a mere mortal lacking an advanced degree in behavioral science.

Beach in nearby Methoni

Sunset from near the house

House on the turn, red roof--awash in olive groves

Ecclessiastical Intolerance

At the cafeneion I listened to an interview on TV with a Greek Orthodox bishop on the subject of heresy. According to this bearded cleric, the West has introduced a lot of sinfulness to the world. The good bishop claimed that yoga, pilates, and mindful meditation are the work of the devil.

I once heard another cleric opine that Alcoholics Anonymous was a dangerous cult that sought to destroy organized religion. Yikes!

Beach is teeming wiht ...no one. House is on the mountain in the background