Harvest

“God, I’m knackered,” I said as we slumped into the armchairs in the snug, easing our shoes off and picking leaves and twigs from our sweaters.
“I think I’m going to feel that in the morning,” said Mr Blue-Shirt, rubbing his back. “It’s not a very physically demanding job in itself, but when you do it for the whole weekend…”
Dusk was gathering and Mr Blue-Shirt and I had just completed this year’s olive harvest. We had been um-ing and ah-ing about when to start for some time, keeping an eye on what our neighbours were doing as a signal for when would be the right time. Over the preceding week or so one or other of us would come in and report that “Maurizio and Flavia have started.” Or “There were stacks of crates outside the place with the goats.” Or “They’ve got nets out next door to the baker’s on the hill.” With each new sighting, Mr Blue-Shirt retrieved another piece of our harvesting equipment from the workshop: first the bright green nylon floor nets, then the russet-coloured storage crates (ingeniously designed so that they can either stack on top of, or, if turned round the other way, slot inside each other), and finally the orange plastic rakes about the size of a child’s toy that can be fitted onto poles of varying lengths. And then, Mr Blue-Shirt being Mr Blue-Shirt, both chainsaws, the leaf-blower, the long-reach secateurs, the bolt-croppers, and the decorator’s ladder.

“It’s such a pity that we seem to have so little to show for all that effort, though.” said Mr Blue-Shirt, getting up again to put the kettle on the stove.
“So annoying. Especially as the trees had been absolutely laden,” I agreed. “There was so much fruit on those tall trees on the eastern side you could see it from our bedroom window. Hundreds and hundreds of little black beads shining in the sun like fairy lights made of jet.”
“I know. I had a look around after that first weekend of storms and although the winds had brought some down, I still thought we’d get a good crop, even without the trees damaged by ‘the east from the east’ back in February.” The kettle wailed into life. “Earl Grey or mint?”
“Earl Grey, please. The following weekend, though, was when there were all the storms that caused the flooding in Venice. It was absolutely howling even here. There was loads of debris on the road when I went to work on the Monday, so I suppose it’s not surprising that it brought our olives down too.”
“I hadn’t realised just how many had come down until I started to spread the nets out under the first couple of trees. The ground was absolutely carpeted with them. I could have cried.”
“So annoying,” I repeated, reaching out an olive-stained hand to take my mug of tea. “Mind you, we wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near the amount we did just with our plastic rakes. They’re fine for the lower branches and if the fruit is quite dense as just a vigorous yank will bring the fruit raining down. And there is something almost romantic about the simplicity of using a technology that has hardly changed for centuries.” I took a sip of tea. “But if you really need to get right to the top of the tree and comb through every branch to make sure you’ve got them all…. ”
“Then you need a gadget!” declared Mr Blue-Shirt, raising his mug in a triumphant toast to technology.

I rolled my eyes in mock boredom as he had been banging on about – sorry: extolling the virtues of  – his latest gadget all weekend. But he was right: his abbacchiatoro elettrico (the birthday present he had been waiting to use since June) had saved the day. This car-battery-powered device consists of a telescopic pole on the end of which is a pair of lightly interlocking rakes that jiggle back and forth like a pair of rapidly clapping hands and tease the olives from the tree as you pass it along the branches.
“It certainly earned its keep,” I agreed. “There was fruit pinging everywhere! Even from trees that initially looked almost bare.”
“Yes, as well as the reach, it’s the speed that makes it so efficient. It would have taken twice as long to get the quantity we did otherwise.”
“Which would have been just too depressing.”

Even with the appliance of science we had only managed to fill four-and-a-bit crates: little over a hundred kilos. The previous year we’d got almost the same amount from just five or six of our thirty-eight trees using just our trusty orange plastic rakes.
“And we don’t know what the yield is going to be like yet either as there’s quite a high proportion of unripe, green fruit,” said Mr Blue-Shirt, reaching for the kindling to light the wood burner. “I’m going to the oleificio to get them pressed first thing tomorrow as I don’t want the fruit that we have got to deteriorate at all.”
“Are you going to the one that Enrico mentioned the other day?” Mr Blue-Shirt had asked for a recommendation from our neighbour while he was ploughing at the edge of our land. The previous year we had gone to an oleificio almost down in Civitanova Alta, but were sure there must be a closer one.
“Yes – as long as I can find it. Enrico’s directions were a bit vague.” He clanged the door of the wood burner shut and sat back to admire the flames now dancing merrily in the grate.

But he did find it: a small set-up in the corner of a sprawling but immaculately kept olive farm down a lane on the way to Macerata. “Rodolfo the owner was really friendly and really knowledgeable,” said Mr Blue-Shirt over dinner the next evening. “He confirmed that it had been a really bad year for everyone. I was lucky to catch him, in fact, as he said he had pretty well given up for the season.  I think ours must have been his last pressing.”
“Yes, Jo at work said today that her neighbours apparently hadn’t even bothered harvesting this year. And a friend of Pat’s claimed that they’ve got precisely five olives off their twenty-seven trees this year.”
“I suppose that’s some comfort.  And Rodolfo said that our fruit was really good quality, too. You know that all green fruit? He reckoned that was good enough to preserve as eating olives, which obviously have to be top notch.”
“Hmmm. Something to think about for next year. Did he say whether they would give a good yield, though?”
“No. He said it’s not really possible to tell in advance. We’ll only find out when we go to pick it up tomorrow afternoon.”

“Twenty-five litres?!” I exclaimed as Mr-Blue-Shirt and Rodolfo lifted our gleaming stainless steel flagon onto the scales whose electric-blue digits had just flickered round to 25:08 kg. “Wow, that’s miles better than I expected!”
“É buono,” said Rodolfo, nodding appreciatively.
“And actually a better yield than last year,” observed Mr Blue-Shirt.
After a bit more olive chit-chat, we swung the satisfyingly heavy flagon into the boot, handed Rodolfo his €25.00 pressing fee, bade him farewell until next year – “Ci vediamo l’anno prossimo!” – and trundled back up the hill towards home.

Down in the musty gloom of the cellar Mr Blue-Shirt unscrewed the lid of the flagon, which we had carefully placed back on its stand, and shone a torch in through its wide neck. As the beam illuminated the fragrant greeny-gold oil that half-filled the flagon it occurred to us: this really was our oil. For anything under about two hundred and fifty kilos of fruit, it’s not normally possible to get a ‘single estate’ pressing. Smaller amounts are usually pooled and you get a pro-rata quantity of the resulting oil.  But because Rodolfo had been just about to shut up shop and had effectively pressed our meagre one hundred kilos on its own as a favour, this modest haul of liquid gold was our very first, pure Casa Girasole oil!

Which suddenly made it very much worth all that effort after all.