Olives anyone?

The gang arrived on Sunday Oct 24th late in the day.  Joe, Elfride, Bob and I had picked for 2 days so we were now all trained up and ready to tackle the big push for the coming week. 
The way the harvest works is you pick as much as you can, then you take them in the Frantoio where the olives are then pressed.  You have to take several batches to the Frantoia as once they have been picked they cannot sit around as they rot very easily.

We have a booked time on Friday the 29th so we must pick like wild men to optimize our time at the press.  Besides which, the Frantoio charges you for 400 kilos of olives whether you have them or not.  Luckily we had already picked 180 kilos before the others arrived so it shouldn't be a problem. 
Monday morning we got up and started picking bright and early.  For some reason (it escapes me now) we ended up having Monday afternoon off so we went over to Montepulciano which is about 12 kms away to see the sights.  Rick, Brad, and Bill had been there many times but Joe, Roy and I were rookies.  This is the town that the movie Twilight was filmed.  And let me tell you it is a cool place.  Bob and Elfride think it is really touristy but I think it is charming.  We went through several shops that specialize in wine and pecorino cheese so we did a few wine and cheese tastings as we went through the main street.

This is the church featured in the Twilight movie

Can you say cheese?

  Some of these places have huge wine cellars with all the barrels of wine in it that you are allowed to go see.  These are in the basement of some little inconspicuous shop that you would have never in your wildest dreams expect.

Tuesday was the big push day to get as many olives picked as possible.  With the full crew of 8 we managed to pick 340 kg just on Tuesday.  There is a lot to this whole olive thing.  Reniella is an organic farm and Bob and Elf are fanatical about the cleanliness of their oil.  They believe (and I now understand why) that the only thing that should be pressed with the olives is olives.  No leaves, no branches, nothing.  So at the end of the day ever olive picked must then be put through a relic of a contraption called a Riddler which removes all the leaves.  This is a 2-3 person job and can take a few hours depending on what the pick was for the day.

Reniella is very well known for how clean their olives are and how pure their oil is and because it is organic, no other olives get mixed in with theirs during the pressing process.  It is extra virgin olive oil, first press, cold press. You cannot get anything remotely better than what we are about to bring home!     

These are machine picked olives at pressing time.

These are our olives at pressing time.  There is a big difference!

                            



Tuesday night Bill made his famous Sex Pasta and salad for dinner and I acted as his sous chef.  Gordon Ramsay was spirited through his veins that night and dinner was exceptional!  Elfride also brought an amazing chicken dish to the party and I had made a pie earlier in the day.  We had a great night.

We were all given Wednesday off because Bob and Elfride had to go to Umbria for the day and for safety reasons they thought it would be best if we didn't pick without them here.  We tried to argue but there is no argueing with Elfride so we planned a road trip.  The boys all know the area well so we were really happy to have them as our own personal tour guide! 

view from the wall in Pienza

The Motley Crew

First stop was Pienza which is about 40 minutes away from the farm.  When we arrived we wandered down the main street then Bill made a right turn and we found ourselves standing on the wall of the town looking over the most amazing vista.  The sun was shining and I was thinking to myself, "life can't really get much better than this", when all of a sudden a waitress from the bar/caffe shows up behind us wth a tray of prosecco.

 She places the glasses on the wall in front of us, smiles and walks away.  This particular place has been a tradition for the guys for the last 3 trips.  Who are we to argue.  Joe, Roy and I are nothing but smiles.  Actually the others are too but they knew the drill and it was a great surprise to us! 

Me and my posse

Next we are on to the little town of Montalcino.  The drive between the two towns was just incredible.  It has started to become a running joke about turning a corner and seeing another picture worthy vista.  Ahhhh, Tuscany!  I just can't think of too many places that can rival. 
Montalcino is were you can Brunello wine.  This is a little town on top of a big hill and it was really windy and cold. All of us were wishing we had dressed warmer but Pienza had been so warm standing in the sun we didn't think anything of it.  We quickly found a restaurant that Rick had tried before and got in out of the cold.  We ordered a bottle of Castello Banfi which was served in the most extraordinary way. The cork was taken out of the bottle then tied to the neck.

  Next a small bit of wine was poured into a glass which was then poured into our wine glass. The wine was then swirled around the entire glass to open up the flavour for our glass.  We were then handed the empty glass to smell and generally fawn over before the wine was poured for real.  None of us had ever seen anything like it before but these people are serious about their wine. Wine here is cheap, most bottles we have bought have been between 2-5 Euros each so when we ordered a 45 Euro bottle, we knew this was high end stuff.  All this fanciness in a little tiny cafe looking type of place!  The menu equalled the wine. Wild boar ragu, hand made ravioli with spinach and pecorino, tagliatelle with wild boar sauce.  All in all very memorable!

We actually spent a bit of time in Montalcino and headed out again at 4:30 to our next destination of San Angelo.  Efride had suggested it was a very cute town and worth a visit.  It was just that. Although no bigger than the two main blocks of Oak Bay avenue.  It touted a church built in the early 1200's which a couple of us tried to go into right as 5:00 Mass was starting...oops!  We smiled and quickly retreated. I knew those bells at 5:00 meant something!

The sun was just going down as we were driving home.  I felt like I had "spectacular vista" overload. I don't know for sure,  but you are all probably getting tired of hearing about it but I really feel blessed to be here, doing this, with these people, at this time.  That said, I got up on Thursday morning and I could not stop thinking of home.  We have been gone for a month and I had not had one day of homesickness but all of a sudden it hit me like a brick to the head.  Perhaps I was sad that you couldn't all be here with us. It isn't like I am wishing I were home, it is more like I were wishing you were all here with me.  The guys have been really great and absolutely treat me as one of their own, but I am missing the great women in my life who would have a different take on the whole thing.  (C'mon, do we have to talk about Ferrari's and Paneri's again!!??) (The answer of course is, YES, so get over yourself!)  They were all very sweet when they realized I was out of sorts.  So much so they let me be the deejay out in the field.  No one said anything when I put Neil Diamond on for Elfie, or when Led Zepplin followed Mambo#5, or when the Beatles followed Nickleback.  I send them all my gratitude as it lifted my spirits and made me live in the moment.  The random hugs didn't hurt either.  I am very lucky girl.
 That night we all went to the town of Torrita for dinner.  Bob and Elf had to take their son Owain to band practice so they told us to meet them at Fats Place beside the well in Torrita.  (this really is the only kind of directions we got but believe it or not, we found the place.)  We had dinner at the Piccolo where we ordered antipasti platters that were amazing with fresh fish, cheese, meat, mussels, prawns, ggplant blah blah blah....another crappy meal in Tuscany.
Friday morning we had an early start off to the Frantoio to squish the olives.



Hard working men getting ready to take the olives to the press.

  We were told that it is chaotic and frantic with Italians running all over the place, olive oil all over the floor so it would be really slippery and everyone jockeying for position to get their olive weighed. We arrived, much to our surprise,  to an empty house and us the only ones there to weigh. We had a bet on how many kilos we had picked so it was now time to find out who won the grand prize of 45 Euros.
 
The first thing we had to do was take our 46 small yellow cassetti to the frantoio and dump them into large green ones to be weighed. 

The next thing that happens is the olives get washed and put in a hopper to go to the masher.

  Then it is put in the press and out comes the oil.  It is the most unnaturally vibrant lime green colour when it comes out!

 After the first press, the mash is then put in a hopper where it literally is thrown out into the parking lot.  This mash is what the oil in North America is made from.  They pick it up with a front end loader, put it in a dump truck then transfered to another press somewhere else.

This Frantoio only does first press.
  I would like to dispell the myth around extra virgin olive oil.  Being extra virgin means it has as to have a low acidic rate (under 1% we think).  It has nothing to do with how it was pressed or when, or whether it was cold pressed or not.  Organic oil cannot be pressed in heat more than 18 degrees which is why it is called cold pressed.  The hotter the press, the more oil they get out which they need in order to press it 3 and 4 times.  This doesn't necessarily change the acidity rate which is why we can get really crappy olive oil (called extra virgin) in Canada. 
After it is pressed it is put in a very large can to take home.  Bob and Elf can their own oil here at the farm usually.

The process took all day but what a rewarding day it was.  The grand total of olives pressed was just over one ton.  This made 126 kg of oil. 
I will never take another drop of olive oil for granted.  Especially this stuff...it is gold! 

This has been a great experience and Bob and Elfride are always looking for pickers if any of you think you would like to give it a try.  You pay to stay here, but you get paid in oil for picking. 
I can honestly say it was worth it for the experience alone.  
We are going to really miss Tuscany but we have to return our rental car to Florence on Nov 2 and from there, we have no clue where we are going, but I promise to let you know as soon as we figure it out!!!

Reniella

As you come toward the house.

We arrived at the farm on Sunday Oct 17th, time seems to be whizzing by us here.  I can't believe it is already Thursday!  It was utter chaos when we arrived as Elfride and Bob (the owners) had just finished up with a group of 7 women who had come to the farm to learn how to paint in water colour.  (Elfride is an excellent artist and teacher), so they were busy getting ready for us to arrive. 
After we picked our jaws off the ground from looking at the landscape, we decided to take a wander around a bit of the 7 hectares farm.
They have approximately 400 olive trees plus a vineyard which they had just finished the harvest on.
First and foremost what you need to know, is these people work hard, really really hard.  Owning something like this seems very romantic but you have got to be made of some very hardy stock to want to take this one on. 
Bob gave us a tour of the surroundings and told us there had been a house on this spot for 400 years.  Their house isn't quite that old but it is absolutely older than Canada.  Apparently in the old days the owner of the house would rent it out to pickers, who would pick olives for their living accomodation then the owner would take all of the profits.  There is a man just up the road who still did that up to about 20 years ago.  He is 86 years old.
Our accomodation is just beautiful but then again with the view we have it could have been total crap and we would still feel like we died and gone to heaven.

our room

our terrace

our view

So as you can see we are not suffering here at the "farm". 

We had a day to get oriented, get groceries and find our way in the farm world then it was on to some kind of work.  Elfride put us to the task of cutting the succioni (suckers) off the bottom of the olive trees.  These snag the nets and tear holes in them so they must be cut as close to the trunk as possible.  Although I am sure in their world this really isn't such a hard job but more teadious and labour intensive so the more hands the better.  The weapon they use to do this job is called a pennato which looks more like a torture device than anything.

the pennato

cutting succioni

mending the net



After our lunch break at 2:00 we went back to the trees to cut back all the long grass that grows up on the bank under the tree.

This process basically took us a couple of days but I guess Jim Simpson knows this particular hill very well as he cleared the last time he was here.  Good job Jim, but it all grew back! 
At night we have dinner around 8 then collapse into bed, it is quite different from home. 
One night Elfride decided to make pizza in the wood burning oven. You have not had pizza until you make yourself and stick in an oven made of bricks in the back yard!  We made 6 different types, everything from anchovy and artichoke to salami with red chili's that would blow your head off.  Thank God for Vino Rosso!
The whole process was just so cool to watch.  I am sure Bob and Elf think we are just stupido tourists who have not been anywhere or seen anything the way I am clicking away at the camera.  I just am finding everything so amazing I want to capture it!

This is really fun.
Did I mention it is really beautiful too?
Have I told you how lucky we feel?
Tomorrow we are picking olives for the first time. Bob and Elfride want us up to speed by the time the other pickers show up so we don't hold the production back. (Apparently these guys are in serious competition with each other to pick the quickest!)  Okay, that's what we are here for...bring it on. 

I will leave you with a few of my favourite shots...so far!

under the Tuscan sun