Olive picking

Thursday December 9, 2010 Day 162

We packed a picnic lunch (soup, Petits Ecoliers, chocolate, clementines) and walked to Peggy’s house, where Egan greeted us by throwing herself on us. She is a modest-sized but incredibly strong and wiry dog whose effusive greetings leave one seeking protection from her by presenting one‘s back to her. The three of us, minus Egan (big mistake!) piled into Peggy’s car and headed to the meeting point where we met four other ladies and headed northwest of Montpellier for a morning of olive picking. Our host, Serge, and his wife, Monique, took us first to some olive trees near his own where we stopped and Serge began to discuss olive-growing and picking - unfortunately in French, so I only got about half of what he was saying. He discussed the different varieties of olives and we talked about damage to the trees and the olives by bugs, frost and other forces of nature. He had a great deal of freeze damage - he said he probably lost 60% or more of his crop to the freeze. Most of the trees in the grove had already been picked. After a discussion, we moved on up the hill and entered Serge’s olive grove. Serge is a hobby farmer - he is a retired chemistry teacher and makes money giving olive pickings and selling his oil and olives. Roger called it “Olive Tourism” - this is the way in which he markets much of his oil.

Our host, Serge

Our lovely hostess, Monique

We got to see an electric olive picker. It is a long tool somewhat reminiscent of a weed-eater, but the head is probably not as heavy. The battery pack for the picker is worn on the operator’s back in a vest so as to keep down the weight of the picker. The head of the picker is a flexible plastic comb-like instrument. The operator places the comb along the limb and rakes it toward the end of the limb. The picker uses a combination of vibration and raking along the branch to strip the branch of olives. The flexible plastic teeth did little damage to tree. The trees were hand-stripped of damaged olives before the olive picker was used. The machine-plucked olives fell into nets spread under the trees, and the nets were then gathered and their contents poured into crates.

Electric olive picker

Egan could have come here! This is open countryside with very few people around. She would have had a ball chasing birds and romping among the fields. In retrospect, Peggy was sorry that she didn’t bring the dog, but she was unsure of the lay of things, so left her at home in the back yard.

We learned more history and background, and Serge gave more discussion of olive picking. One does not pick one olive at a time - one reaches to the first olive on the branch, then grabs the whole branch and pulls all the way to the end, bringing off all the olives into the hand. Examine the handful, bad ones onto the ground, good ones into the bucket. 60-70% onto ground. This was different from other fruit-picking we have done in that we were not tempted to eat these raw. There were bottles hanging from the trees, and Serge explained that these contain bait to attract a parasite which will otherwise attack the trees.

The ground was stony beneath the trees and what soil there is was chalky - not good for growing most crops! We did not understand why, but after the trees were planted, a rock crusher was used to crush a lot of rocks, but not the ones close to the trees. We did not understand why.

Roger the olive picker

After much discussion, olive buckets were distributed and we began to pick olives in earnest. The group picked a crate to crate-and-a-half. Then it was picnic time. We all brought food to share, including butternut squash soup, vegetable soup, two pasta salads, grain baguette, other bread, starters of olives (naturally!), both black and green, Maggie’s mulled wine punch w/fruit and spices. Today was Anne’s birthday, so Maggie brought a cake with some of those trick candles which were supposed to stay lit in the wind, but not many of them did. And of course, there was wine.



Anne, blowing out the candles on the cake



After lunch, Serge offered us the olives we had picked, and the group took almost all of them. He provided verbal instructions regarding preparation in salt or brine. Roger and I did not take olives - we will not have time to stir them from time to time over the coming weeks, as we will be doing too much traveling. Serge also offered bottles of olive oil for sale, and we bought one. He told us to let is sit for a while to allow the olive pulp to settle to the bottom. On the way home, Peggy remarked that she likes hers with the olive pulp still in it.

Olives, ripe for the picking

It was a long day, but we enjoyed the education about olives, olive picking, olive preservation and olive oil. Now, if only they didn’t have all those calories!