Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The harvest has begun!

The Olive harvest is yet to officially start, with most frantoio's opening this long weekend, but we've got the jump on everyone else with a good two day slog over the weekend. With only 25 trees down and 745 yet to do (with a two week window in which to do them) we've already raked in enough olives for 60 or so litres of oil. Which is a fair amount.

Particularly when they're spread over the lounge room floor so that they dont sweat and get moldy while we impatiently wait for our neighbourhood olive press to open for business.

This year all our country friends are crowing about a bumper harvest, with bulging trees and no sign of the dread olive fly. We do still have to solve the problem of how to harvest so many trees, but keen to get as much as we can while the weather holds. And then its bruschetta, soups, stews and all other kinds of oily goodness all year!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Autumn community moments


Autumn is a great time for community moments- when families and towns or even employees find themselves doing the comunal work of the season.

Examples of this are the harvests, pruning and all the outdoors work that means long, strenuous hours but are rewarded by the bringing in of crops and the first measure of the years sucess or failure.

There is the sense of preparing for the winter, putting things away with care, stopping up the cracks, cutting the wood.

And then theres the celebrations! Wine festivals, hunting festivals, mushroom food fairs and my favorite- the truffle fairs! Communities getting together and toasting a years worth of work and reward.