Olive Picking Party

This weekend we went to an Olive Picking Party. Our friends, Nathalie and Jerome, live in a lovely home on the west side of Aix, which although only about 10 minutes’ drive from our house, is “out in the country”. We arrived at about 11 AM and joined the others out in the olive grove with our buckets and pails to “ramasser les olives” (literal translation “pick up the olives”). This particular weekend is the traditional weekend for olive harvest as they are all mostly ripe. The soil was VERY muddy as we’d had torrential rains the day before. For those without galoshes, we put plastic bags over our shoes or, like Nick, got very muddy!

As is true with most of the events we go to here, this was an international gathering. The first group of pickers I joined was Norwegian, Australian and American. We were quite a jovial group. While picking, we chatted, joked, shared our experiences of living away from home, speaking a new language and discussed how much we all love living here. Nick had a great time with our Dutch friends.

There are 200 olive trees in this two year old grove. The olives here are being grown for making oil and there are many varieties planted so the resulting oil will be more flavorful and complex. We were instructed to pick every olive whether it was red, green or something in-between.

This is the first time this grove has been harvested and for most of us, it was our first time picking olives. It is certainly not skilled labor! The height of the trees and the method of picking reminded us a bit of picking beach plums or blueberries; especially at the Herndon’s Bog years ago. The children had a good time and were very enthusiastic olive pickers. They filled many large buckets before going off to play and have “children’s lunch”. Sarah had fun with her Dutch friends, Jeanne and Lara.

Here, the youngest olive picker brings in his harvest before lunch....

At around 1:30, we were called up to the house for a well deserved, delicious French feast! Our hostess, Nathalie(wearing the apron), had been preparing and cooking for days and it showed.
On the table, there were large pots of homemade pea soup, fresh bread, a rustic, soft pork pate(which all the Frenchies were gobbling up) and black-peppercorn covered saussison. Jerome set out many different types of red wine and water. While we were enjoying this spread, the next wave of culinary delights came out from the kitchen. There were three different kinds of tarts(tomato, spinach and chevre and Lourraine), a rabbit pate, baked stuffed tomatoes and mushrooms with meat filling, a huge platter of the best cheeses we’ve ever eaten and more breads.
Everyone was hungry after all our hard work and we ate, drank, chatted and rested a good, long while. The meal concluded with a big platter of yummy chocolate brownies, cakes, dried fruits, nuts and marzipan. When we could hold off no longer, we wandered back down to the olive grove and resumed picking for a while. Somehow the group had dwindled in size, hmmmmm…… An hour or so later we decided to call it quits. Afterall, not only were we tired, we wanted to leave something for the group coming tomorrow to do!

PS. Natalie and Jerome told us that if they get at least 250 kilos of olives, they qualify for their own private olive oil. After looking at the day's harvest, they felt that by the end of the weekend they might have close to 300 kilos! We're looking forward to our bottle!