Dominick contacted us to let us know his olives were being picked and to invite us to see what was going on and join in. He had nets on the ground to catch the olives and a couple of guys doing the bulk of the picking. One was picking from the lower branches by hand, the other was using a pair of battery powered vibrating hands on a long pole to shake the olives from the higher branches. We joined in picking by hand from the lower branches. It was quite fun and satisfying to see one of the baskets start to fill up. Unfortunately, Dominick had COVID-19 and needed to keep away from us.
We picked olives until lunch time and then popped over the road to Il Giardinetto for a pranzo di lavoro. Eating outside in mid-October – not bad.
All round the village, nets are laid out for the olive harvest.
The next day, Dominick called up to ask if we could help deliver his olives to the frantoio (olive press) and collect the oil once it had been processed. Of course we agreed and made a date for the next day.
We delivered the olives to the frantoio in the morning. This involved loading up the car, driving over to the frantoio and tipping the olives into their much larger containers. These were then weighed and queued up for loading into the crusher. If you exceed a minimum weight, they will separate out your olives from other batches and you can be sure the oil you collect came from your own olives. Dominick had plenty – more than 450 kg. The frantoio was a hive of activity with loads of people waiting to collect their oil.
In the afternoon, we went back to collect the oil. We also bought some empty bottles so we could take some of Dominick’s oil home later.
We collected 58kg of oil and took it back to Dominick’s for a taste and to fill our bottles. The freshly pressed oil has an extraordinary colour and taste, both of which settle down to what we consider normal over the course of about two weeks.
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