It’s olive season! Time for WWOOFers to cast their nets and climb trees. We spent a few days balancing precariously on ladders and tasting bitter olives off the ground.

Julia used to be an olive hater but over the summer, in preparation for our trip, she trained herself to like olives. I’m not sure what that entailed but I have a visual of her eating an olive a day much like a multi-vitamin. Not far off considering the Greeks treat olives a bit like multi-vitamins. A few years ago there was surge in the fanaticism of olive trees and their healing powers. People were seen carrying olive branches with them to brew teas that they claimed could even cure cancer. They were of course ridiculed by the press but no one can really argue that Greeks don’t live long lives.

What I think is most impressive about olive trees is not their alleged health advantages, but rather their age. Some trees are thousands of years old and saved people from famine. In the Peloponnesian war many olive trees were burned as a war strategy.

After harvesting our modest 46 Kilos we all took a field trip down the road to the olive press. I was disappointed to find out they had updated their machinery. “The old machines were magnificent!” Irini said. Still it was wonderful to see how the olives turn into olive oil. The owner explained how it all worked and Irini translated for us. They get sorted, squashed, pitted, and churned. We got 8.5 liters of oil for the crop. The rest of the olives were split up into green olives and Alatsolies, which means salted olives. The latter dries out in the sun for a couple of says and then sits in a sack of salt for a month as it loses its bitterness while the former sits in water that must be changed daily. Then when the green olives have soaked for 15 days you add salt to the water until an egg can float. It really makes me appreciate each individual olive I eat now.

We took a walk to see the moon rise tonight.