Olive Picking On Andros

“Whenever I close my eyes I see olives. We’ve been picking seriously for four days and for a week before that I was selecting the best for eating, begging friends to come and get some too. This was our fat year after two lean ones, where the whole crop ended up as hard little raisins littering the ground as early as August.”—Diana Farr Louis

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

By Diana Farr Louis

Note: Weekly Hubris apologizes for not running Diana’s olive-picking column when it was submitted, during olive-picking season. Like one of those pesky bunches of olives that escaped the pickers on Andros, this essay fell by the wayside. It is, however, a delicious piece, in any weather.

ANDROS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—4/13/2015—Whenever I close my eyes, I see olives. We’ve been picking seriously for four days and for a week before that I was selecting the best for eating, begging friends to come and get some, too. This was our fat year after two lean ones, where the whole crop ended up as hard little raisins littering the ground as early as August.

My fingernails are black, stained by slitting the olives before soaking them. It will be weeks before they’re back to normal; not even chlorine can expunge the dinge. Yesterday, my palms were purple from pulling overripe fruit off one tree where they hung like beads on unclasped bracelets. We could rarely use the hand rakes that resemble children’s beach toys, the branches were so tangled and knotted, like an over-sized fishing line that a cat’s been playing with. And we couldn’t prune as we picked as it’s been far too warm.

The trees seemed to fight back, too, resisting our attempts to lighten their load, and both my arms bear scabs where a branch punctured the skin more than once (in exactly the same spots, of course).

But I love being close to these trees, admiring the glossy perfection of the ebony Kalamata olives and the spherical Amphissa ones that range from coal black to mahogany to pistachio green as they slip through my hands, and I duck inside next to the trunk, trying to penetrate the thicket of unruly branches. Since we last pruned two years ago, each tree has reasserted its own shape, each horizontal branch putting forth shoots that aspire to the sky, confounding our efforts to keep the center clear enough for a bird to fly through without grazing its wings. These branches have become so dense they’d stop an arrow. But I applaud their tenacity, the force that keeps them strong and vital during these baking, waterless summers and almost constant ferocious winds. No wonder quacks advertise distillates from olive leaves that claim to cure cancer.

After we picked far more olives than we could cope with for eating, we embarked on the more arduous task of collecting the rest. Our olives ripened so early this year we thought they’d drop before the press opened. But ours weren’t the only ones, so it opened two weeks ahead of schedule to get the harvest in. Last year, Greek olive production was down 80 percent; it would be a shame to lose this bumper crop just to keep to the tradition of starting on the day of Saint Demetrios, October 26th.

We managed to locate the woven plastic sheet—not quite a tarpaulin—from the bottom of a pile of “stuff” in the apothiki, along with two blue Ikea bags and the two rakes. We spread the sheet under the first tree at the top of the land, trying not to get ensnared in its fraying, unraveling edges, and set to work. As we raked or plucked, the olives tumbled onto the sheet with a most satisfying series of plops, like over-sized raindrops. And I had that song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid playing in my mind, over and over. “Raindrops keep falling on my head . . .” but couldn’t remember the rest of the words.

We stretched up, in and out, we bent, we dipped, and even when we thought we’d emptied a branch, there’d be clusters of olives taunting us, as if playing hide and seek. We’d hook our long Epirote walking sticks on higher branches, pulling them down to hand level, only to have them spring back, still bobbing with glistening fruit. We tried hitting the tallest branches with poles, but many olives clung as tight as limpets and refused to budge. Others bounced off the sheet and mingled with their withered relatives, so we gave that up. On a windy day, it made even less sense. Besides, despite our intent to space them properly, the trees themselves have so narrowed the gaps that we have to stoop beneath their interlocking branches to get from one to another, which makes whacking their tops difficult as well as futile. Now, if we’d had a toddler to chase the olives, that might have been a different story.

Finally, after four days of steady picking with just a lunch break to revive us, we resolved to bag them and take them to the press. The weather was going to turn nasty, strong south winds followed by rain. Time to stop, never mind if a few kilos of plump black globules continued to dance out of reach like Tantalus’s grapes.

Pouring them from the wide Ikea bags into narrower bags for transport resulted in a few spills, and the slate floor of our back terrace is seriously blotched with purple olive juice. But the wind and rain will cleanse better than Ajax and they’ll be gone by spring.

We lugged them into the car, six bags weighing about 12 kg each, and the setting sun was burnishing the horizon by the time we got to the press in Ano Gavrio. Two pick-ups piled high with 400 and 800 kg (!) worth of bags were already in line, so this would take a while.

But we are old customers and the owners, members of the vast Mamaïs clan in this corner of Andros, have viewed our minimal production with amusement ever since we turned up the first year our young trees had olives with one 6-kilo bag. Back then, Dimos Mamaïs gave us his sweet smile and a 1.5 liter water bottle with our very own oil and didn’t charge a drachma.

The press is old and, at this time of year at least, its floors and machinery are black and slippery with the accumulated grease of thousands of tons of olives—this country’s green gold. I’ve only seen it in autumn, so cannot tell you if it ever looks spic and span. In the past, chickens have wandered in and out; even a cow or two has poked its head in the door, not to mention a myriad flies. But the atmosphere is jolly and friendly. With the machines going practically nonstop, the racket is constant, so the men and women watching the proceedings stand close to each other and talk above the din.

Though we know only the management, conversation comes easily as we compare loads, time taken to pick—four people collected their 400 kg in just one day, making our toils seem even punier—location of grove, and then more general subjects such as politics and professions. When they hear my husband was a surgeon, interest sparks, but for once no diagnostic opinions are sought. Agreement is universal that all 300 members of our parliament should be strung up and shot for crimes against the Greek people. But they also talk about the pleasures of retirement, of growing their own vegetables, and being close to nature. Before long, someone produces a water bottle filled with homemade raki and we’re offered a splash in tiny plastic glasses. Food is forthcoming too, a Tupperware of zucchini flower fritters and sliced apple.

Finally, our olives have made the journey from washer to crusher to mixer, where a disappointingly small amount of black paste is being spat onto woven rope mats and added to the pile already on the spool. When the two young men in charge have slathered all of it, they push the cylinder into the hydraulic press that will squeeze out the oil.

I’m in despair. We’ve brought three 5-litre containers but I take one back to the car. We’ll be lucky if we have even 5 liters. I ask one woman if I could buy some of her oil, but either she doesn’t hear or she thinks I’m joking.

We hang around and chat some more as our oil trickles from the press into a large round metal basin. I place one container under the spigot and turn it on. There’s much more oil than I expected. Harilaos has to fetch the third jug and, even so, we need a bit more. Dimos’s wife comes to the rescue with another water bottle. We’ve got 16.5 liters from our 75 kilos, a ratio of better than 1:5, so not bad at all.

We carry our slippery bottles to the car and return home, exhausted but proud of ourselves. For supper that night, we have fresh bread drenched with rich green oil. It has a pleasant bite and is definitely more-ish. I boil up some water for spaghetti al pesto, made with last year’s basil—this is not a night for cooking from scratch—and we add some more oil to that, too.

Heaven.

Recipe 

Spiced Nut Rolls (Patouda)

This confection from Eastern Crete combines a lemony, shortbread-like crust folded around a filling of crushed nuts; even the confirmed non-sweet eater will find the smoky taste of the sesame seeds and the hint of honey hard to resist. They belong to a vast repertoire of fasting sweets that use olive oil instead of butter and contain no milk or eggs, either. Olive oil produces a stiffer dough that needs no resting time.

For the filling 

350 grams (12 oz) chopped walnuts and/or almonds

3 heaping tablespoons sesame seeds, browned quickly in a non-stick frying pan

1 full teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

2 tablespoons dry bread or rusk crumbs

60 ml (¼ cup) olive oil

4 tablespoons honey dissolved in 6 tablespoons hot water

 

For the pastry

about 400 grams (4 cups) sifted cake flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

240 ml (1 cup) olive oil

70 grams (1/3 cup) sugar

80 ml (1/3 cup) soda water

60 ml (¼ cup) raki or brandy

grated peel of 2 lemons

confectioners’ sugar for dusting

 

Mix the filling ingredients thoroughly in a bowl.

Sift the flour with the baking powder into a medium-sized bowl. In a separate, larger bowl, beat the olive oil and sugar together until the mixture is smooth and then slowly add the soda, raki or brandy and lemon peel. Finally, beat in the flour, 100 grams (a cup) or so at a time, until dough begins to form. When the electric beater gets too sluggish to have any effect, take out the dough and knead on a floured surface until it is soft and pliable. Roll it out immediately into four strips about 26 cm long x 12 cm wide (11 x 5 inches), as thin as possible.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Lay the filling on one side of the first strip and fold the other side over it, pressing the edges together to close the seam. Repeat with the other three. Place them on a lightly oiled baking sheet and bake until golden, about 10-15 minutes. When cool, dust with confectioners’ sugar and cut each “loaf” into slices about 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick, on the diagonal. Makes about 48 pieces that can be kept up to a week or more in a biscuit tin.

You can also shape the dough into circles (with a glass or cookie cutter), placing a spoonful of filling in the center and folding the dough over to make crescents. But then you will have some filling left over.