Olive Pruning

The weather suddenly turned spring-like, giving us a chance to finish off the pruning of the olives. We had started looking after the olive grove last year. Before that the trees hadn't been touched for some 10 years, so major restorative pruning was called for. We never managed to finish all the trees last year, so we needed to take care of the remaining 15 odd trees, which had grown to a majestic height.

Thursday just Susan and I made a start, then Thursday evening reinforcements arrived out of the blue: two more helpXers arrived, Stephen and Frances from England. Even better they came with their own accomodation, as they are travelling around Europe in their camper van. The kitchen is already full with my cousin Bart and our other helpXer Addie. We immediately found we got on extremely well and they agreed to help us finish the pruning.

I climbed up into the trees with the chainsaw cutting off the big branches, Susan, Frances and Stephen cut the branches into smaller bits and dragged them up to the fireplace while Addie picked a bunch of nettles, sorrel and mallow to make a wild food soup which we then cooked on the embers of the fire.

Bart was in charge of the fire.

Last night we celebrated a job well done by downing numerous litres of vino. Today my head feels a bit delicate and we're enjoying a well deserved break. So thank you sooooooo much to our helpers, we wouldn't have been able to finish the job so quickly without you.

If my ramblings sound a little disjointed, it is because I still feel a bit disjointed...

Winter arrived on Sunday afternoon

I'm still without a camera, but I'll carry on giving you some visual contributions out of the archives, starting with that nicely seasonal shot of a pomegranate from last year round about this time (our own pomegranate does alas not produce yet, it was only planted last year).

Sorry I've been off-line for a bit. After getting the olives pressed we gave the olive grove a few days rest, partially because we had neglected our own plot for a bit and partially because the car played up, making it difficult to reach the place. The weather had continued to be balmy and at times positively spring-like. Hence weeds were still happily growing alongside our crops. Susan attacked them around the broad beans, peas, fennel, celery and strawberries (we're still picking the odd one!). I in the mean time dug over the former tomato terrace, still finding a few potatoes (from the year before...) and pruned some of the fruit trees.

By last weekend we managed to sort out the car (leaving us considerably poorer) and we got back into the olive grove to prune the remaining dozen or so trees. Before we could get stuck into that, we had a bit of tidying up to do. In the rush to get as many olives as possible harvested, I had left the prunings to lie where they fell. there were now so many of them that we couldn't move along the terraces any more!

So picture this if you will (in the absence of any current photos, you're going to have to use your imagination a bit more): There are 5 terraces with some 40 olive trees. The terraces are not quite as steep as the 18 on our land (any steeper and we would fall off the side of the mountain together with our herd of mountain goats), (no, we don't really have any mountain goats), (too steep for them...), but still, steep enough. Some of the trees, especially on the lower terraces, I had to reduce considerably in size, i.e. from something like 20 foot to more like 10 foot. The only sensible way of getting rid of all the leafy, twiggy part of the prunings is to burn them on a large bonfire. The larger parts can be cut into logs for firewood and than taken home.

The only safe place to light said bonfire is on the top terrace, whilst the car is parked another terrace above that. So yours truly runs up and down those terraces, each time returning with an armful of cuttings to carry them to her indoors, sorry her outdoors, who has the cushy job of keeping herself warm by the fire, making sure it wasn't setting the village alight. Occasionally I would have to clamber up even higher with the really heavy bits of timber.

And all that for TWO SOLID DAYS! The first 1 1/2 days of the procedure, we both were shedding layer after layer of clothing as the sun shone on us and we were keeping ourselves warm (as I say, me working and Susan by the fire...), but by Sunday afternoon, all of a sudden, winter arrived. No it hasn't snowed, but a chilly, stiff northern wind has been blowing down the valley ever since. So this gives you an idea how much we have already cut off those trees, and we've got another dozen trees to go. Mind you we won't have any shortage of firewood for a while. Every time we return from there, the car is full to the rafters.

Here's a wintry sunrise view from our bedroom window onto the Versilia coastline.

And here a wintry view of our village from above:

While we are on village views, here is a nice drawing of our village. We live in the large house just in front of the church tower.

Anyway, to fight off the big chill, we lit a big olive wood fire in our kitchen (we do have a fire place with chimney, so don't worry...) and finally got to do the annual Christmas biscuit baking fest. About 10 different varieties this year! It's nothing like an evening by the fire with the smell of freshly baked Christmas biscuits. It takes me back to my childhood (although we didn't have a fireplace, but an oil oven which stank the place out something chronic).

On olive pruning

Friday they took the stitches out of my arm and I'm now much more able to move it freely. I just have to be careful I don't get any dirt into the hole the size of tuppence. So yesterday they forecast one day of good weather before rains would arrive again. We woke up to a glorious sunrise, only to find that a few kilometres up the valley everything was in thick fog. It cleared eventually though and we got a good days work in.

A word on olive pruning. There are many opinions floating around about how to prune olive trees. Many people seem to think there is some mystical ability involved, which can only be taught over several generations. No one who hasn't been up the ladder in an olive tree from the age of 2 will ever pick it up.

The natives here have two principal pruning methods as far as I can ascertain: the "traditional" and the "modern". For the old farmers an olive grove was a status symbol and the bigger the trees the more proud they were. A bit like having a Mercedes Benz in the drive or maybe more the latest model of New Holland tractor. They reasoned, the bigger the tree the more olives.

Nowadays though, commercial olive producers, i.e. those who produce more than just their family's annual consumption of oil, have realised that this is not the case. Both schools agree that you need to train the tree in such a way that air can circulate around the centre of the head. The inside of the tree does not produce olives, and too dense foliage in that area encourages diseases and fungus attacks.

But not only that, if you look closely at a producing tree, the vast majority of fruit hangs on downward pointing branches. So in other words, letting the tree grow tall will result in very little extra fruit, but plenty more shading on the olives growing lower down, delaying their ripening. If you then add the fact that pruning and harvesting is much more labour intensive in tall trees, not to mention more dangerous, it shows you traditional is not always best.

So the moral is, whenever some olive producer, or wine producer for that matter, tells you their product is made the age-old traditional way, like their fathers and ancestors before them, take it with a large pinch of salt. It often can be an excuse for dirty and/or sloppy methods, or they are plain lying to you.

Unfortunately the previous owner of the olive grove, which we have taken on, was of the traditional persuasion. The trees are massive and yields are low. We have now made an appointment with the frantoio for Thursday, by which time we need to have picked a hundred kilos. We are up to 60, so still some way to go. As far as trees done is concerned we are now at the halfway point: 20 out of 40, but the further away we get from the house at the top the worst the trees seem to be. I'm not holding my breath about the quality about the final oil either, as some have been sitting in our kitchen for longer than they should have been, but it'll surely be better than your average supermarket oil.

The photos are coutesy of our friend Karen http://www.italyhomesandgardens.com/index.html, who got us this job. At this point I should maybe give the owners of the property a plug too, as they let out the house to holiday makers: http://www.popetto.dk/. The site is in Danish, but it gives you some nice pics of the place and prices if you want to rent it in Danish Kroner (don't know how much these are worth either).