We are staying with friends Emile and Vivian at their home in the beautiful rolling hills of Umbria to the north of Rome. Like everyone else in this region, they grow their own olives and grapes so they have their homemade olive oil and wine for the year. Today we harvested olives with them. We learned some new techniques that we can’t wait to try out at Condor’s Hope in a few weeks. (Consider joining us for our California olive harvest, the weekend of November 13-15. There are still a few spaces available, just register here.) Enjoy some photos of our Italian olive harvest:
The landscape of the Umbria region of Italy has been farmed for 1000s of years.
Olive tree ready to harvest.The net catches the olives.
Group works together, each harvesting at different heights.
Steve ‘rakes’ olives from branch into net.
Steve and Emile share a joke in the treetop.
Robbie reaching for those olives.
Vivian looks forward to cooking with the fresh harvest.
A tree’s olives are gathered in the net and moved to a crate.
Here is our day’s harvest! They will go to the local mill once the harvest is completed.