Photo Article from the Greek Hovel Olive Harvest Day 2, the snake tree

That is to say he drags mats around and twerks away as a man would do. He may be 10 years my senior but he is in better shape than me. Now and again he returns to the grill, below, with a bag of olives and leaves which I do my best to separate. But I know that when we go to the press, even after a resifting, our bags will be laughed at as containing too many leaves.

Meanwhile I do women’s work, I take my saw to those trees with insufficient good branches to justify a twerk or to ones where dragging mats is too tough even for Tim.

One such tree is the snake tree. Many years ago I was strimming away the frigana and as I strimmed around this tree I encountered a large snake. That probably means it was not poisonous but it was coloured like an adder so I just dropped my strimmer and fled, shouting, to an audience of nobody, snake, snake. I know it is winter and the snakes should be asleep but I still approach this tree with some trepidation.

That tree is on my land but drapes over the fence and down a steep bank to the road. So you cannot mat it and it was dripping with olives, the best tree here. So I took my saw t it, tossing branch after branch onto the road and we both dragged the branches up to thresh on the grill.

The olives generated this way come with almost no leaves so just pour into the sack at the end of the grill.

Long time readers will note that the olives this year are far more brown, purple or black than in prior years when there were many more greens. 

They are riper and that means the oil will sell for a higher price. By the end of day 2 we were almost at, what we calculate, to be 25 litres of oil. That is enough for me and Tim (20), the press (2) and so we are in profit.

Each year the after tax oil money goes into a Greek bank account opened at the height of the financial crisis. My friend Jim Mellon said that they should put up a statue to me as I opened my account just as a line snaked around the block of Greeks getting out all the cash they could. I have not checked the balance in years but we have had a couple of monster harvests and many others of variable quality. So there must be a few thousand Euro in there by now. I am rather happy not knowing just thinking of it accumulating as a bonus for a rainy day. The Greek economy is now doing rather better than that back in Airstrip One so maybe this is a prudent hedge.