Monday, November 30, 2009

Olive harvest 2009

The last visit of the year to Trullo Azzurro to close the place down for the winter and a very productive visit it was too.

Usual routine when we are flying RuinAir: straight from work Thursday evening to the SAS Radisson Stansted. A relaxing meal and an early night for the dawn flight to Brindisi and a sprint down the SS16 to Trullo Azzurro (tafka Hovel-in-the-Hills).

After a quick lunch at Trullo Azzurro we went to the bank to pay some gas bills and reinstate our Internet banking. That evening we went with Chris & John for a meal in Martina Franca.

Harvesting olives 2009 - Mark and John
Harvesting olives 2009 - Mark and John

The next morning C&J came round to help us with our olive harvest and a spot of lunch. Mary insisted on buying rather than borrowing the kit so we are now the proud owners of three crates, four nets (4m x 8m) and four olive rakes.

Harvesting olives 2009 - Nets, crates and haul
Harvesting olives 2009 - Nets, crates and haul

A couple of hours was enough to denude all our trees of their olives. We took them round to C&J's neighbours to add in to their harvest for pressing. Hopefully next spring we will get back a couple of litres of extra-virgin olive oil.

New patio paving
New patio paving

The other main reason for the visit was to admire, and pay for, our new patio (see "Trullo Azzurro works"). After lunch Donato came round to tell us about what he had done and receive his well deserved money. He has done a fine job and we are very happy with the enlarged sun-bathing area :-)

The rest of the time was bagging up all the linens into vacu-sacs, plugging in the dehumidifier and preparing the place for over-wintering. Job done it was home on Sunday. I travelled light: hand luggage only and that was a Waitrose bag-for-life!

1 comment:

Rosa said...

Oh!!! How fun! Well, I'd stay down on the ground, of course putting all the olives in the bins. YUM. What a load you got! And how will you preserve them? How many jars? What fun!