La raccolta - part 2

Back in the harness today - quite literately in my case with my new Umbrian olive picking bag. Have to say it is very useful and very good for your neck muscles when you have a few kilos in it.

Rachel made a couple for us as we couldn't find where to buy them but the mice did for them over the winter and so I have the wonderful example.

Picking by hand is very peaceful and calming but very slow - can't quite imagine picking all our trees in this way.

What colour is olive oil

We make our own olive oil soap here at Casa Margherita and the admittedly bad photo shows our soap on the left and some commercial olive oil soap on the right.

I wager that people would want/expect olive oil soap to be green and so be drawn to the product on the right. Nothing wrong with that.

But what about olive oil itself. I think that the public are very used to shop bought oils which are golden yellow or very slightly tinged with green at best. The fact is newly pressed olive oil is very green and it is only its exposure to heat and light that changes it to yellow.

Our new olive oil is very green - think engine oil - but is like all other oil currently being produced here in Italy at the moment.

Who needs a 4x4

I spotted this lovely old Fiat 500 in the grove below our house over the weekend. Here is someone who doesn't mind that this grove is routinely ploughed twice I year - he needs to get to where there is some picking to be done.

Lovely car and a great colour too - burnt ochre I'm told.

Feeling guilty

As we have walked amoungst the olive groves recently we have both been feeling guilty as everyone else is busy picking and here we are taking things easy walking the dog. The reason is my hand is still in a cast and so I cannot pick.

I say everyone is picking and this is true as after i Santi (1 Nov) everyone traditionally starts to pick. This is the modern tradition as the older tradition would have seen the date being St Catherine's day which is the 25th November.

As for we are planning to re-start on Wednesday.

Fit for gleaning only

Last Friday saw me spend the night in hospital as my hand had become infected. The cause remains unknown but boy did it hurt.

Anyway we have stopped picking for a few days to give my hand time to clear up. So until it does all I could manage would be to mop after the pickers and ensure no fruit is left behind on the ground - gleaning.

Mercury dropping

Its getting colder here - only three degrees tonight so the fire is on and the heating is on for the first time this autumn/winter.

Picking again today and so tomorrow off to the Frantoio to have them pressed. Then straight into our olive oil festival Festivol Sat/Sun/Mon.

This is the sky tonight. As Rachel often points out, if you painted that then everyone would say it was not realistic. Nature is better than art?

Naming

A survey shows today that the most popular names for babies in 2009 were Olive(r) and Olivia. What are the odds on Margherita for 2010.

And in a very poor - brain dead from picking link - our new season's olive oil is now available online at www.casa-margherita.com