What a delight it is to pick
olives at this time of the year. I hadn’t realised that the olive tree is such an
easy going friendly tree, no thorns or prickly bits; it surrenders its fruit without
too much difficulty if one, of course, overlooks the height of some of the trees.
Walking amongst the trees,
the scent of thyme, sage and rosemary pervades the nostrils as you brush
against the herbs or tread down upon them. Their pungent aroma immediately releases a feeling of joy and a gradual smile becomes a huge grin. The warmth of the sun shining on the skin
and the fact of simply being out in the open air, gives rise to a feeling of happiness and
well being.
Reminds me of a book I first read by Winifred Fortescue "Perfume from Provence", many years before Peter Mayle became famous. I still have it and have read it over and over again. I shall dig out my copy and post a photo of it - the illustrated cover is charming.
As for the olives, it is
surprising to see such a wonderful contrast of colours ranging from the
lightest of greens to the darkest, shiniest black, with all shades of purple in
between.
Although we don’t have many olive trees, we wanted the experience of harvesting the olives, as we hadn't had this before and, also we couldn't bare to leave them unpicked, since this year, the crop was very good.
So with buckets and ladders to hand we set too and managed to pick 16 kilos, which took two afternoons of solid picking - not bad for our first attempt.
Chuffed to bits, we set off to our local moulin a huile (olive mill), which, by the way, is well over 300 years old and where today, they still grind and press olives in the old traditional way - using a millstone fed by a water wheel to crush and grind the olives, then cold pressed between rope mats and finally the oil is extracted after settling in huge tanks.
When we arrived and walked in to the mill, the smell is what hits you first, it's the olives being ground into a paste by the fast rotating millstone.
After a while the pulp is placed onto the rope mats and stacked one-upon-the-other and pressed to force out the liquid which is made up of both oil and water.
The liquid is then collected and pumped into huge tanks where the oil begins to rise to the top and separate from the water.
Our 16 Kilos of olives earned us 2.3 litres of extra virgin, cold pressed, olive oil!...how pleased were we?
Now to have a go at making a perfect French salad dressing....
Thanks for reading.
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