Hello from Poreta, Umbria, Italy!
The best reason to pack your job into your backpack is to be able to travel. We’ve been staying in a small rented farmhouse in southern Tuscany, Italy since early October enjoying a warm and wet autumn. While October was mostly sunny, warm and breezy, November has brought many days of heavy rain, often with incredibly noisy thunderstorms. A dry day for olive harvesting is a rare thing. For friends of ours, who have more than 700 olive trees to pick in nearby Umbria, it’s been a tough time with all the rain. This past weekend, however, the sun came out and we got the call! We quickly packed up our olive rakes and roared off to Umbria.
Driving in Italy is one of my favorite things to do as it is both fast and challenging. One drives on either one-lane country roads, narrow medieval streets or modern Autobahn-style superhighways. We travelled swiftly on the four-lane SR71, from Tuscany into Umbria, through Perugia, then turned south through Assisi to Trevi. It’s about a 1 ½ hour drive made, at Italian speeds, in just over an hour.
Having arrived at 9am, we were picking in the sunshine soon thereafter. We paired up with one picker working the low branches and another working higher in the tree. I got the job on the ladder in the treetops – I’m 6’2” with good reaching capabilities.
There are several methods of picking olives. Many still use the ‘raccoglitori’ or olive pickers bag slung around one’s shoulder to gather the harvest. By far the most common method of gathering is the use of nets laid on the ground under the trees. The olives are picked by hand or raked out with special rakes or, in this modern world, vibrated out with electric powered olive tree shakers. We work with just our hands and rakes to pluck the harvest.
The best parts of the day are the meetings with new friends, most who only speak Italian, and the incredible lunch provided in appreciation by the family that owns the trees. Communication is mostly with smiles and handshakes. The famous word, ‘allora’ is frequently heard as the Italians chat amongst themselves. I decided that music would be my language and, using my phone’s music app, began quietly playing my Italian Dinner music playlist from my jacket pocket. It begins with an Andrea Bocelli classic ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ sung with Sarah Brightman. Most of the pickers begin to hum along with the tune. Mr. Bocelli is revered in Italy.
Around 11:30 I began to smell woodsmoke nearby and learned that our family’s Nonna had started a fire to cook sausages for lunch.
It’s difficult to effectively write the sensations at this point. I can feel the rough wood surface in my hands of the ancient ladder that I am clinging to. I can see an endless panorama of olive tree tops whose branches are heavily laden with dark black olives. Beyond this are the low hills and terracotta rooftops of medieval homes dotting the Umbrian hills. Andrea Bocelli is raising his voice again from my pocket. The sun succeeds in peeking out from behind the blue-grey clouds. Coloring it all is the white woodsmoke and its campfire smell from the olive branches smouldering nearby as the fire burns down to the coals for our soon-to-be-lunch. It’s a truly an inspiring moment and realization for me of an Italian dream.
