Wednesday 5 November 2008

Viennese Escapes: Olive Harvest in Tuscany














Picking Olives by Hand
The farmer and his wife started picking olives
at the crack of dawn,
stripping the fruits, still wet from the dew,
from the branches into willow baskets.
When full, the baskets would be emptied onto blankets,
and the olives spread out into a single layer,
to dry under the warm Tuscan autumn sun.

Remember,
the next time you pour
first quality, stone-milled Tuscan olive oil
over your salad,
that it could have come from the olives you see here,
picked on a late October morning,
by hand,
the fruit of a long hot summer,
and of a farmer's dedication and knowledge,
as well as love and pride in his hard work.

*

Photographed in October
in the Tuscan hills of Mezzano,
in the Chianti region
.

7 comments:

  1. These photographs surely will be remembered when I do pour that olive oil.

    I do often visit your site and enjoy every visit. I thank both PG and Elizabeth for introducing this beautiful place to me.

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  2. Lovely post...I hadn't thought about how the olive oil gets into the bottle...

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  3. It is fascinating to know that in some places at least our provisions are harvested by low twchnology methods rather than by polluting machinery.

    Beautiful mood-capturing pictures.

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  4. Olive in this season ??? I'm surprising, because it's cold...
    Very nice photos

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  5. Frances,
    welcome,
    and thank you for your kind words! :-)

    Rambling Woods,
    it is backbreaking work! ;-)

    Wandring Star,
    it takes about 15 pounds of olives, more than an hour of picking, to produce one liter of olive oil!

    Webradio,
    these olives were gathered for the so-called "primolio", cold presssed Extra Virgin olive oil, from the very first olives harvested, during the last week of October, into the first week of November. These early harvested and immediately pressed olives produce lovely, very fruity olive oil.

    The olive harvest continues into late November.

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  6. Thanks for the reminder of what the first harvest and cold press mean. I had forgotten. When one sees all the work that goes into making a supurb olive oil, its understandable why its so costly.

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  7. wonderful photos about olives , it seems an advert

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