THE OLIVE HARVEST NO. 3 -- THE NETS -- AND LUIGI

My mission today was a tree or trees with the nets down. I will put a link to that pic below. It's a young and pretty tree, only 200 years old.

I thought looking down at the nets from above would be better. Up I went. Bliss. It is soul-satisfying and wonderful being up in a tree. It's a private world with riffling leaves and bird song. It was a dense tree which made it all the more secret but all the more impossible to get a shot to the ground.

As I was coming down, Luigi was barking up a storm at something on the tree. Oh, no, a snake? No, a giant beetle.

About the nets. They are being put down just now to catch olives that are blown down by the wind or fall by themselves. Olives are all hand picked around here. Himself hooks an umbrella upside down on a branch and drops olives into it. Our helper straps a basket to his belt. I steer clear of the whole operation.

When I discovered we had olive trees I thought that I would float about in a straw hat and filmy dress and pop olives into a pretty basket. Little did I know that olives are harvested in the late autumn and through the winter months. A good harvest can mean picking up until the New Year. A bad one can mean it's all over in one week flat.

There are occasional fads for gadgets which I call "battery operated olive shakers." One person buys one and talks it up; the others shake their heads and mutter. There is no quick way to get olives off trees. There are large versions of these shakers operated with generators. They clamp onto branches and are said to be harmful to the trees. When crops are grown on hillside terraces it is difficult to get a giant machine to do the job. I'm sure olive groves on flat land exist, but I have not seen one.

Olive Tree.