Kiwis & olives, oh my!

For the last week, I’ve been staying in a village about 50km north of Rome, helping an organic farmer with the harvest of kiwis & olives. I didn’t know what to expect on my first day of harvesting kiwis, but it was quite easy and comfortable. The kiwis are trained onto metal lattices and hang just about at eye level for me. At times, I felt like I was looking at a sea of potatoes floating around my head. Of course, once you cut them open, there is no resemblance to a potato – beautiful green colour, and such sweetness. We loaded up 185 crates of kiwis on Tuesday, with most going to supply school canteens in Rome. Apparently, many European countries have a policy mandating organic produce in schools!

 

We started the olive harvest yesterday; it’s a bit more challenging than picking kiwis, in that there is a lot of coordination needed between the team of people working together. We spread large nets out between the trees and then one person – normally the main farmer, and today, an employee -- runs a large machine attached to their tractor, hitting the tree branches to shake the olives out of the trees. Once the process gets going, the goal is to keep moving so that the gatherers – four of us today --  gather the olives from the nets into bins and then run to place the nets beside the next trees down the line so the nets are in place when the machine arrives at each tree. It took me a while to understand the instructions for how to properly lay out the nets – my Italian vocabulary is pretty limited – but I figured it out eventually, between watching and seizing a few key words.

 

In the evenings, I’ve been learning a bit of Italian and eating delicious meals. On Sunday, I enjoyed a meal of home-made spaghetti that the grandmother of the house, Rosa, made that afternoon. I “helped” a tiny bit, but the technique of rolling the dough obviously requires some practice to perfect and she was none-too-impressed with my efforts! Along with our pasta, as well as meat and vegetables, we had homemade wine that my host, Pompilio, prepares each year with his own grapes. The family’s self-sufficiency is impressive, from wine to vegetables to the eggs produced by hens that are housed in pens just down the hill. Rosa also made home-made gnocchi the other day and last night, we roasted chestnuts in their fireplace. Delicious!

Rosa, our 80-year-old host, is becoming a legend among the family’s volunteers. Not only does she work all day long beside us in the fields but she prepares meals and seems to have more energy than me and the other young-ish volunteers. Today, Rosa drove the big tractor around the field while we gathered the bins of olives. She was the first woman in this region to get her license to drive a tractor. She’s quite an inspiration!

 

View from the village