After three days of picking olives by hand, we finally harvested enough to go to the press. Most years, farmers are able to press the olives every day, but since the harvest is so sparse this year, it took us three times as long to pick enough olives to reach the weight minimum for getting oil. The usual yield throughout the harvest season for Caterina's family is 700 liters of oil. If they get 25 percent of that this year, they'll be doing really well, I think. The press was quite involved, and the workers were kind enough to let us have a look around. Here's a short clip of the cleaning and pressing process:
The last step is the separation of oil and water after they squeeze the daylights out of the packets of olive mush.
We celebrated with a traditional Sicilian sandwich of bread, oil, tomatoes, onions, anchovies, and cheese. The land manager Nicola made it for us and joined us for the rest of dinner. DELICIOUS!
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| 65 liters of fresh olive oil |
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| Nicola is wheeling the oil to the car. |
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| Jesus is at the olive press. Welcome to Sicily. |
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