Post-Election Reality: The Olive Harvest Is About To Begin

Well, it’s time to get my head out of the clouds and put my Nikes back on our stony Izzalini soil. The olive trees await us and as soon as we have a cold snap followed by dry weather we’ll be out there with our ground nets and our ladders.
2007 was one of our periodic "bad years” and we didn’t even bother to think about the harvest. Almost no one in our area had enough fruit to pick.
My particular trees were infested with fruit fly larva in 2007. The previous winter was particularly warm and the flies, not the trees, were fruitful and multiplied. I could have milled those olives and produced “olio grasso” (fatty oil), as the farmers in Southern Italy normally do, but I don’t care for the taste. It’s heavy, not at all peppery, and the addition of worm protein turns the oil rancid in no time at all.
The groves of some of my neighbors produced olives last year, but all the fruit shriveled up and dropped because we had no rain during the summer. We could have picked them up off the ground, but then what? They contained almost no raw oil.
The Umbrian zone to the west and south of Todi had a pretty good crop in 2007 and they immediately profited by raising the price of local oil by about 50%. Those of us with our own, normally productive trees refused to pay nine Euros (US $13.50) per liter and instead rationed our 2006 supply. Thrift and pride in equal measures.
La Casella’s trees aren’t exactly full of olives this fall, but there are more than enough to harvest and mill. I’ll report back on how it goes.