Family Olives

A  family that stays together picks olives together.

It's the law of the land, family land, family olives.  Or in this case olive, single.  One olive tree in the back yard.

Our daughter's family went the whole hog and picked their olive-s this year.  You have to go the whole hog whether it's one tree or a hundred.  Out came the nets, the rakes and all the paraphernalia

Tall grandson came home for the weekend to gather the family olives  ..

I would say if that was true.  But he did help while he was here

Laying the net

A bumper crop 

Not 'bumper' enough to send to the oil press

These ones are for eating

They are picked over one by one, leaves removed, mishapen ones put aside.  

Unforunately most of them are infected with 'dako', a nasty worm which burrows into the olive.  Serious growers will spray to prevent infestation.  These olives are 100%  organic.  No sprays, no chemicals

Enough for a few bottles of home pickled olives.  First they must be soaked in water for a few days to remove the bitterness

The rest are piled under the olive tree as compost

Our neighbourhood is buzzing with olive pickers this week.  Vaso and her family have started picking and taken the first sacks to the press.  They'll be picking till well after Christmas.

Further down our road a team of Albanians are picking for a family who live in Athens and no longer come for the harvest.  The pickers receive half the oil as their 'reward' and sell it privately or sell it to the oil press.  

I went out one morning to find a friend of ours picking the olives in the field next door.  These olives are virtually abandoned but every second year they produce a heavy crop.  One of the neighbouring families picks the olives for absent owners.

The olive tree, they say,  will thrive if you leave it alone but once you start watering and giving it nutriment then you must keep on doing so.  

There are olives everywhere, even along the footpaths on Poros