Harvesting Olives

Saturday, 21 November 2009

On our preparation day we (and the Sommerfeldts) had the opportunity to drive into the beautiful countryside to help Brother Guidara harvest olives.

These photos were taken along the way.

It was a beautiful 70 degree day. You can see the fog in the valley and the trees changing colors. The Mediterranean climate is perfect for growing olives.

Very cool old olive tree.
Greeting Brother and Sister Guidara.

Getting down to the business of harvesting olives.
First - spread a net around the tree (check out the scenery!)

A view from the grove up to their home.
The Guidara’s have 300 trees, planted 8 years ago
(it takes 6 years until a tree is mature enough to harvest).
The olives are harvested for their oil,
so it makes no difference if the olives are black or green.
With a short handled rake, Jeff rakes the olives from the branches

as the olives fall to the net.
Brother Sommerfeldt's flying olives!
When the tree was bare of olives we gathered up the net, letting the olives roll into a pile,
then dumped them into a plastic box.

Bringing in the harvest. A full box weighs about 65 pounds.
These weren't quite full so they had it easy.
Brother Guidara took us to the community olive press.
The olives are dumped into a machine which removes leaves and washes the olives. The olives are then ground pit and all, into a pulp.

The finished product ~ beautiful!

After working for about 4 hours, Sister Guidara served us a three course meal of, 1) Bread, cheese, salami 2) Barley soup 3) Baked salmon with potato wedges. We topped it off with Sister Sommerfeldt’s delicious cinnamon rolls.

This was a storybook day. I had to pinch myself to really believe I was in the beautiful countryside of Italy on an unusually clear, warm Autumn day, helping a wonderful LDS family harvest their olives, eating food around their table, hearing their conversion stories and enjoying their kindness and hospitality.

We feel so blessed!