SOÑAR NADA CUESTA

Bangkok, 23 April 2016

There is a small olive orchard abutting the path that runs behind our apartment in Liguria. It’s in a sorry state, seemingly sorrier every time my wife and I pass it on our way into the hills. I’ve never taken a picture of it, but it looks something like this, only worse.

It’s the sad fate of many of the terraced olive orchards in Liguria. It makes no economic sense any more to harvest olives in this part of Italy, and as the peasant-farmers who own them die off their children and grandchildren abandon the orchards to their fate. And so the brambles and nettles and vines and finally maybe some scrubby oaks recolonize the land. Harvesting Ligurian olives is now a labour of love.

My wife and I could lavish that love on that derelict olive orchard, once I’m retired. I have a dream of us identifying the owners and making a deal with them. Let us clear the orchard, I tell them, let us give those poor olive trees a bit of TLC, so that they can once again shake out their branches and drink in the Mediterranean sun.

In return, I say in this dream dialogue with the owners, let us have the olives which those trees, in their gratitude, will give birth to.

Neither my wife nor I have ever picked an olive in our lives, but in my dream this is not a problem. My wife and I would extend under the spreading olive branches those orange and green nets I’ve seen so often in Liguria to catch the olives as they fall (would we have to shake the branches, I wonder?)

And then, arm-in-arm, we would bring our harvest of olives to the local olive press.

Actually, an internet search has informed me that the nearest local olive press is 10 km away, so a car ride rather than a stroll would be in order. Also, it doesn’t use stone presses, that is passé; something along these lines is used – more modern, more sterile, but, the internet assures me, more efficient.

No matter, one way or another the oil from our olives would be squeezed out

and after some filtering, some racking, and some other things (I’m going to have to learn the olive oil lingo), we would become the proud owners of several bottles like these of cold-pressed, organic, extra-virgin olive oil.
We would drizzle this nectar of the gods on our salads for a year, until the next harvest was brought in.

Or might we want to pickle the olives? A quick whip around the internet persuades me that it’s not that difficult to pickle olives; you just need time and brine.

OK, it’s decided: we will follow what happens in the global olive market, we will pickle 10% of our olive harvest and use the rest to make our very own olive oil.

Lovely dream. Of course, there might be a few snags in the real world. We may never find the owners, the owners may tell us to bugger off, the trees may be too old or too sick to fruit any more, the fruit or even the trees themselves may be attacked and destroyed by what seems on cursory reading to be a vast army of animalcules just waiting to sink their fangs or similar organs into fruit, leaf, or bark. But like a colleague of mine in Colombia recently wrote to me, “soñar nada cuesta”, to dream costs nothing.
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Abandoned olive orchard: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6n7eBKRLQ80
Clean olive orchard: http://www.vinoemozioni.com/blog/tag/anfosso/
Olives on olive tree: http://www.tavoladautore.it/contenuti/id/22/Gli-ulivi-di-Liguria–cultivar-e-caratteristiche.html
Nets under olive trees: http://www.casalefiliberto.com/gallery/gallery_oliveto/index.html
Old olive press: http://www.casait.it/it/toscana-grande-villa-vendita-vigneto-uliveto-S96J/
Modern olive press: http://www.oliofrantoioamoretticarlo.it/frantoio-da-olive.html
First press oil: http://novellaevignolo.com
Bottled olive oil: http://www.mraxani.it/prodotto/olio-extravergine-di-oliva-agrintec/
Olive oil on salad: http://www.foodinitaly.com/news/fotogallery/OLIO_EXTRAVERGINE_D’OLIVA_LE_REGOLE_D’ORO_PER_SCEGLIERLO-2527.html?start=4
Pickled olives: http://www.yaffa.co.uk/product_p/ogt1.htm