My Day as an Olive Picker:
The other morning, Kip and I ran into our landlady, Lydia, and she told us that her husband and a few friends were “picking” her olive trees the next day to make olive oil. Since I have been here in Crete, I have seen countless olive trees and workers, and I have been a bit fascinated with the whole thing. Me being an olive hater, but an olive oil lover, I wanted to be part of it, so I volunteered myself to help with the “picking”.
Lydia said that would be great and thanked me. I called my new friend Susie to set it up that she and her husband, John, would pick me up the next day for the “picking” (you sure she said 8:45?...am? As in, in the morning??? Oops, didn’t realize we would start so early!).
The next morning, I was up and dressed in what I believed was the perfect olive “picking” outfit. I had on a few layers, jeans, a hat and my rain boots. I was very much looking the part of a professional picker and so excited about the day! Susie picked me up, we swung back to get John and we were on our way!
As our day began with coffee and tea-- coffee for the American (me!), German, and Dutch, and tea for the three Brits and the Ethiopian (how very U.N. of us), we were given an overview of olive “picking” and what to expect for the rest of the day -- By the way no one could ask for a better group of people to spend the day with! We certainly made an awesome olive “picking” posse!
SIDEBAR: After the overview, I realized this whole process was not a very complicated one and I was very gung-ho at that point. It wasn’t gonna be like picking cotton in the south, or rooting around the french countryside like pigs for truffles...I was going to kick some ass and take some olives’ names. BRING IT ON!
We started by pulling out these huge tarps that were used to catch the olives after we “picked” them and spread them out under the trees so we don’t lose any of the little buggers. With that first tug of the tarp, a trickle of perspiration and the first layer of my perfect “picking” outfit came off (we’d just begun, holy crap what did I get myself into?).
As you may have noticed I used quotations for the word “pick”. I did that because you really don’t “pick” olives as much as you, well, how do I put this delicately? Well, you just bash the ever loving shit out of the tree until they plummet to the earth. Like I said... not too complicated.
Our very advanced tools for this process consisted of plastic pitchfork looking things that have a life span (in my case) of 1.5 olive trees, a generator powered spin-y thing that REALLY shakes the tree to “encourage” the olives to jump from their leafy perches, tarps to catch the olives, and a sorting table and a bunch of big brown burlap sacks.
After about a half-hour or so, my gung-ho-ness wore off a little bit (I mean, don’t we just hire people to do this kind of thing?!?!) and I tried a variety of methods of hitting the tree, while at the same time using my cat-like reflexes to dodged the spin-y thing that made the olives come flying out of the tree at Mach 10 to pelt you.
My swings: I tried a baseball swing, over-handed, under-handed, left-handed, and even a golf swing which made me realize if I’d had my driver with me it would have been pretty damn cool.
Then it was time to move the tarp to the next tree (yeah...that was just the first tree). Not complicated still, but holy hell it was heavy, there are a bunch of olives up on those trees. Who knew?!?! So as I walked with the very surprisingly heavy olive tarp to place it under the next tree... WHAM!!!!!!! I hit my head on a branch and I am pretty sure I heard my neck break-it made a very scary cracking noise. As a result, my hat went spinning around but managed to hang on by my little pony tail, just dangling there. So while I stood there stunned waiting for the stars and tweety birds to disappear their circular parade around my head, I fought back my tears, I righted my hat, checked for blood (none--BONUS), sucked it up, kicked the god damn tarp and went back to whacking. After that the novelty of all this olive bullshit was gone and it just felt like work. Correction: MANUAL LABOR. I thought asking to go home at that point would have been a bit gauche, seeing as how I was the youngest in the crowd.
It was pretty quiet most of the morning and we were all in our own little worlds just listening to the hum of the generator. As time went by, I amused myself with singing in my head and changing choice words of songs and movie quotes to something to do with olives. I wish I could remember what I sang to myself because I feel it was pretty damn funny, but the blow to the head might have limited my memory. We whacked some more and eventually we collected enough olives on one tarp, so it was time to put the little green bastards on the sorting table.
The sorting table was just that (nothing very Harry Potter-ish about it. It didn’t talk and shout out GRYFFINDOR or anything like that), it just separated the olives from the big branches and most of leaves and set them loose to roll down the tilted expanse and finally ended up in the burlap sack. At this point I start cracking up and all I can think of is Dr. Evil in Austin Powers during the group therapy scene, ”I had a normal childhood. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. If I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds.” I guess these olives were insolent! This table will forever be my favorite part of the whole olive tree whacking process. Why you ask? All that is needed for this is to move the olives around until they fall thru the holes in the sorter into the burlap sacks. Aside from a few pricks from stray branches, it was right up my my alley; and BONUS my hands had never been so soft and smooth. I stood around that table like a buzzard watching road kill, whenever there were olives to sort, I was there. It was like, “Hey everyone! Look at me! Working soooo hard over here with the sorter. Sorting olives. Making the magic happen!”
More time passed and next thing I knew, Susie, my personal savior, announces the words that had been lingering on my lips for the past hour, “Is it beer:30 yet?” She was right , it was lunch and beer time. BTW, at some point she took over the spin-y thing, kicked ass with it, and did it the rest of the day- girl power! As we enjoyed our break, we had a nice discussion about the cold rocky mountains and I made a couple of hilarious comments about the pitiful, tired little fire they tried to start from wet olive branches. I was told I was being “cheeky” - which I thought was the coolest thing ever!!! Me? Cheeky??? I never heard anyone say that word outside of a movie, a joke, or trying to be funny using a fake accent (“are you a cheeky bum looker??). I beamed with pride that it was directed at me.
Fun and games over-- back to work. We power whacked (Susie), moved tarps (Lydia and Ruby), cut and collected branches (John), truly picked olives (Pete), sorted and bagged (me) and fire started (Dale) for 3 or so more hours until we were “finished”. We collected all the tarps, broken tools and left over branches for the fire.
As we sat around the fire and had a few more beers, with the sun setting behind us, we talked about what a perfect day it had been for picking (it was a gorgeous day nestled in an otherwise crappy week). We looked over ourselves-- all filthy and sweaty with some olive picking battle scars (hurt neck/bruised head (me), hurt knee (poor Lydia), back aches and some scratches (everyone)), all the while feeling very proud of our olive prowess!
Our pride lasted just a few minutes when Lydia told us one man had done every tree in the orchard in one day...OUCH! Full Disclosure: I think we finished less than 20 trees all day and there are about 50 total.
So. Complicated? No. Dangerous? You betcha! I don’t believe professional olive picking will be an option for any of us in the future, but I have a newfound appreciation for my olive oil and would like to remind all of you martini drinkers to raise a glass to celebrate the often underappreciated bad-ass olive pickers of this world! Yamas!
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