The Harvest

We drive half an hour away to Cavi, where their olive groves are.

I think they said they have about 500 trees. It feels so satisfying to have purpose again.

How to harvest the olives:

1. Lay nets on the ground all along the trees you'll pick that day. This sounds easy, but there's definitely an art to it. One of the women who is a regular here complimented me on my creativity in arranging the nets so that none of the olives roll down the hill and said I was a natural. Very exciting.
2. We pick the olives by hand (it feels like stripping thyme leaves off their stems) or use a rake to get the higher branches cleared. It's a killer on the neck.

3. The nets catch all the olives on the ground. We roll up the nets and gather all the olives into a central point. Pour them into a crate. Pour those into a burlap sack.

4. And that's it! They send the olives off to be pressed. We've been eating their olive oil with every meal (seriously, we drizzle it on everything at the table), and it's awesome.