Beautiful, healthy, delicious frost-nudged purple olives

We're about 2/3 through the raccolta (harvest) of olives in our area and I was one of the lucky ones who finished before today's wild storm came and knocked millions of olives off the un-picked trees. Actually, we barely made it; we finished the last tree at 5:00 yesterday afternoon, just before dark. My little harvest is safely awaiting the mill in ventilated plastic crates, stacked up in the middle of the garage. It's far more important to give the olives breathing space than to protect the car from hailstones.

I had wonderful help this year. Two of my friends/neighbors in our informal cooperative olive pressing were joined by their relatives: Amedeo brought his cousin, Franco, and Amedeo's wife, Antonietta, recruited her brother, Tiberio. The whole family is my family and I only wish I had more skills to do for them the hundred things they do for me.

Saturday or Sunday morning we'll harvest an olive grove on the lower (valley side) acres of Izzalini. The property belongs to a Roman who can't come up during the week, but shares in our cooperative effort. I sure hope this storm hasn't reduced us to scouring the ground for recently-dropped, but usable, olives. That is not fun to do.