Milking Olives

Two weeks ago, the "verdeo" has officially begun. The verdeo is the harvest of green olives (hence the name...verde is green). Green olives are unripe, but are the ones used for table olives; they're the ones we usually eat. Once the olives are black (and ripe), they're used for oil only. Black olives, like the once on your pizza, are actually green ones that are chemically treated to change color. They aren't ripe olives. ...just a bit of trivia for you.

So as I was saying, about two weeks ago the official green olive campaign began. Kind of like berry picking on Sauvie's Island in Portland, around here people head to the fields to pick olives for their own consumption. They're called "split olives" (aceitunas partidas). The preparation conists of cutting a slit in them, or sometimes smashing them, then storing them in salt water with thyme, garlic and pepper. I think you have to change the water every few days to leech out the bitterness of the olives. After about two weeks, you've got home-made table olives that are better than anything you can find in the supermarket.

This afternoon we headed out to the fields to pick some olives ourselves. Usually people just head to the nearest tree and take a bucket although technically this is stealing and you can get in trouble...even if they aren't many olives. Don't worry, we aren't thieves. We called our brother-in-law who has olive trees and headed out to his place to pick.

If you remember, black olives are cake to pick--they fall right of the tree; but green ones are another story. I guess you can use the shaking machines for them too, but it's harder on the tree--since the olives aren't ripe you have to shake longer and harder for them to fall. In many places harvesters don't use the machines because they can hurt the tree with such extensive shaking. In those cases they "milk" the olive tree. That's the verb they use in Spanish to describe the way you have to handle the branches and carefully gather the olives that grow in bunches kind of like grapes: like milking a cow. In our case, picking for ourselves (one bucket and a bag) we weren't about to be using any fancy equipment; so this afternoon was my first experience "milking" olives.

In a few weeks I'll publish the pictures of our delicious "split olives" that Angelines's mom is going to prepare for us. :)