Today was our first day of the Olive Harvest. Annette first taught us about the process of harvesting the olives and how the press works. She also had 6 different kinds of olive oil for us to taste and see if we could guess which ones were organic and which ones were not. She taught us that the best olive oil is the first press cold press. Which means just what it says the olives are pressed cold and not heated up like in the 2nd and 3rd presses. This means that the first pressed olive oil still contains all those good fatty acids. It also means that those are not the olive oils to cook with. When the first pressed olive oils are heated up you loose all the good fat. It's better to use lower quality oil for cooking.
Then it was off to the field. Wolfgang showed us to a tree and gave us a line up of trees to pick. He taught us how to place the nets around the trees, then comb the tree branches to get the olives off.
When we got to the olive grove we already had some visitors. Apparently neighbors allow their animals to run free across the hill tops.
Our olive grove was on a hill that overlooked other hills with lots of valley's in between. So April and I decided to cook some sandwiches and we ate overlooking the hillsides.
We attacked 3 trees for that day and got one basket filled up. The boys really got into the picking and were climbing all up in the trees. After picking most of the afternoon we all sat around and cleaned our olives. This entails taking the sticks and leaves out, and removing the stems from the olives.
Our hard day's work!
While we were sitting there working on our olives we heard a few gun shots. Then all of a sudden a couple of hunters came walking through and down the other side of the hill, then more shots. We have no idea what they were hunting or if they got anything. We were just hoping no stray bullets came our way. To commemorate our first day picking olives we all dared each other to eat an olive straight off the tree. And at the same time we all stupidly did it. One of the worst tastes you will ever encounter. It was so bitter that nobody could keep it in their mouth's very long. Bryan accurately described it as a pulpy vinegar taste. Glad we all shared that adventure together hahahaha.
The rest of the night was spent cooking, sitting by our fire place, and board games again.
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