The hills are alive……

By Ann Lisney

It’s January, and one of the busiest times of the year is just drawing to an end.  Every family seems to own a few olive trees and this has been the harvesting season. You can take a walk almost anywhere – and however far away you think you are from civilisation, you can usually hear the throb of a mini-generator and the ‘ticka-ticka-ticka’ of the mechanised flails.

On our one strema of land (about quarter of an acre) we have ten olive trees. As we are often short of water in our village our trees get no extra from us; after all, we are not commercial growers and they need the water more than we do. Even so, our trees produce enough olives to give us about 50 litres of oil a year, which is plenty for the two of us and enough to give the odd bottle to friends.

The ideal height for an olive tree, apparently, is no more than a man’s reach plus the length of the flail – about five metres overall - and so they are pruned heavily after harvest to keep them in shape. Like an apple tree, the tree should be open in the centre to allow the sun and air to do their work.  Because our plot of land had been for sale for a few years before we bought it, our olive trees were fairly neglected and overgrown. Some of our trees were 8-10 metres high and like birds nests.

We were lucky the first year and were able to borrow nets, generator and flails from friends. One flail costs about 200 Euros, and one 8m x 6m net is about 50 Euros (and you need at least two). A small generator can be anything from 300 Euros upwards, and you will probably need a transformer as well – another 200 Euros.

Olive picking is not for sissies. Holding a 2 metre flail aloft, combing through the tree, is really hard on the arms. The flail gets snagged up fairly frequently and has to be detached and unravelled. As well as falling olives, the pickers are pelted with twigs, leaves, dust, insects and tree debris.  Even the workers on the ground have to drag the heavy nets about (and it always seems to be a 1:3 slope) rake up, pick or sieve out the worst of the debris and shovel the olives into huge jute sacks.  When full, these are very heavy. And then it starts to rain. You have to stop then, apparently, or you can damage the tree.

Like all the unpleasant work here on Crete, there is no shortage of immigrant labour (mostly illegal) to carry it out. Most of these labourers used to be Albanian, apparently, but they have priced themselves out of the market now, and a lot of North Africans will do the work cheaper. They can be seen in the local square every morning, waiting for someone to offer them work. There is a much repeated story to the effect that some farmers hire them on a Monday for the week, get four days work out of them, and then report them to the immigration authority before pay day on Friday….

But back to work – the rain has stopped. Now the bags of olives have to be transported to the local olive press.  There are plenty of these around – usually the semi-derelict buildings that have been deserted all summer – and they vary from the low-tech with the stone grinding wheel to the high-tech with hot metal rollers.  But even the low-tech ones these days have computerised machinery to test for the acidity level. Low acidity is good – high is bad!

We took ours to the local press, which was one of the old kind. The bags were emptied onto a conveyer belt which fed down into a hopper where the olives were washed. Then onto a moving sieve which separated the olives from the leaves and other rubbish. Next, they moved into a chute which fed into a huge basin in which two massive stone wheels were circling. The resultant slurry then disappeared from sight into more modern equipment which extracted the oil from the pulp. The pulp is sucked away into a heap for later delivery to the local soap factory.  After a while, the first golden drops appear at the end of the tube and are tested for acidity. Then the precious oil is poured into large plastic churns.

At this point, you can either take your oil away or sell it to the factory. If you want to take it away, no money need change hands as the factory will keep a percentage of your oil in payment for their work. We received a computer print out with details of the weight of our crop, amount of oil produced, acidity level etc.

We assumed we would be able to use the oil immediately. Not so! It smells and tastes rather unpleasant to begin with, and needs about three months to settle before it takes on the form we use in salads and cooking.

Of course, we had to buy a smart stainless steel Innox churn to store our oil – rather ostentatiously - in the kitchen (another 50 Euros). But it is pretty marvellous to be able to turn the little tap and fill up the bottle as required, thinking “That’s our oil!”

So can you now have a rest on your laurels? Not exactly! You have to prune your trees now! Olives grow on the second year’s wood, so you have to be careful which bits you cut off or you will have no crop next year. As our trees were so overgrown, I pruned off huge amounts the first season and as a result we have a reduced amount of oil this year. But we have had some marvellous bonfires, and have logged up the bigger branches for firewood. And all those leaves and twigs which we picked out of the olives before we bagged them up?  Well, they went to feed the neighbour’s goat – so everyone got something