We’ve been picking olives for two days, well, a day and a half. Rained out this morning, we traveled back to the fields at noon to pluck the green and purple delicacies. There’s no temptation to eat the harvest which is bitter to the taste, but the promise of bountiful olive oil awaits us at the end of our stay.
Each worker receives a liter of olive oil for a full day’s work. (I also learned that roofers get a case of beer for each day they work–I’m thinking olive oil goes with olive pickers more than beer with roofers, but I’m going to have to chalk that one up to cultural differences).
Picking olives isn’t rocket science, but the activity is precarious. Balancing in trees like an acrobat, climbing branches like a monkey, reaching for olives just beyond grasp fill our days. Yet I find the hands-on work delightful and rewarding. Clearing a single tree can take anywhere from two and a half to four hours depending on the fulness of the harvest as well as the amount of helping hands.
Speaking of hands, one of my biggest surprises is how supple and soft my hands are at the end of every day. While one might think hard, farming labor would lead to dried out, scratchy hands, picking olives leaves you with the sense you’re hands were just treated at a spa.
I express how good it feels to be out in the fields. Putting in a hard day’s labor. Recognizing that as hard as I work, our host’s 74-year-old mother who I’ve nicknamed “Mama” is working circles around me.
As I pick olives, massaging each branch to release it’s treasure, I’m reminded that what we have in our refrigerators and kitchen cabinets is not a right as much as it is a privilege, a gift, an opportunity and obligation to give thanks to God who gives us all good things….even the fruit of the fields.
*Photo courtesy of here
