Olive picking under way

The olive harvest is fully underway at last.  One has to make an advance appointment at the frantoio, the olive mill.  We had decided we were going to deliver our batch on Tuesday the 23rd November, partially because, that's roughly when our olives were ready last year and partially because it was going to be the last full day of our little helper Cat.  However, they told us they were booked out until the end of the month.  After much begging and pleading they finally agreed to squeeze ('squeeze', get it?) us in on Wednesday after we established that Cat could stay an extra day.

So this put the pressure on: olives have to be picked by then, but... Last Tuesday rumours started going around, that were even reported on radio: 20 days of rotten weather.  Apparently the cockerel crowed 3 times before sunrise 5 days before full moon, which according to local wisdom heralds 20 days of rain or something like that.  So the signs weren't good.  So when on Wednesday the weather gods sent us some glorious sunshine speccially for my birthday, although we had other plans, we decided to put at least a morning's work in on our land.  We came home with 3 full trays, but we were resigned to the fact that we would probably get quite wet for the rest of the time.

Thusday it turned out just like that.  It was miserable.  We finished the largest trees on our plot in Arcola bearing the ripest olives, but left a few of the greener ones hanging, because we were just getting soggier and soggier.  We'll pick them later for eating, we thought.

Today we went over to Popetto, where we look after a much larger olive grove consisting of 40 trees (our land has some 15 trees, not all of them producing).  As we woke up and looked out the window, the weather looked good, but as we drove up the valley clouds moved in and it started raining heavily.  By the time we reached Popetto we just waited 5 minutes before the skies cleared, giving us a great days work.

Unlike last year, this year some of the trees gave us incredible yields.  The trees closer to the house, which were in better condition prior to us starting the pruning job last year were heavily laden with fruit this year

So we managed to get about 6 of the trees done today.

As you can see even some sunshine peeped through now and again.  Getting home we weighed our spoils and altogether we've picked over 90 kg so far.  That's more than we had from the entire plot last year and almost two thirds to our minimum quantity as charged by the mill of 150kg. 

So another good day weatherwise and we'll be there!  Grazie alla Madonna!

In other news we took a wee trip along the coast to one of my favourite places, Montemarcello and the nearby black beach of Punta Corvo (in Montemarcello we met the above Madonna, by the way).  While there we got caught out in more heavy rain and a thunderstorm which churned up the seawaters in such a strange way that part of it turned sand coloured, leaving a distinct line bordering the areas over rock.