We have the oil!

Murphy's Law has no exceptions. At 07.30 on Friday morning Amedeo, Tibero and I formed a caravan of olive-laden vehicles and raced off to our frantoio on the outskirts of Todi. There were about six olive-growers in line ahead of us, so we alternately kept an eye on our crates and wandered around chatting with folks we knew. We passed the entire morning in this way and it was a long, chilly wait.

About 13.00, we weighed in, registered and returned home; the mill owner would phone us when our turn to press came up. Instead, he called late in the afternoon with the news that various parts of the machinery had broken down. All bets were off for Friday.

The following morning dawned brightly and at high noon we were summoned. Yippee! We helped pour the lovely olives into the collection chute, watched them pass through the leaf-blower and laundry and then sighed as they disappeared into one of five individual mills.

It takes about two hours for the olives to be processed and there's nothing to see except a hazy glimpse of a small vertical mill going around and around with bits of olive clinging to it. When the mechanism decides there's no more fruit to be had, the whole mess is automatically separated into oil, water, pulp and pits.

The precious, cold-pressed oil goes one way and the other elements are carried off to recycle-land. Pulp is excellent fertilizer and the pits are ground up and used to form artificial fireplace logs -- the kind you buy in city supermarkets.

Our yield was pretty puny, but after last year's crop failure we were delighted to take home any oil at all. Now we wait for at least another week until the sediment has settled to the bottom of our 50-liter stainless container. The sediment is bitter and you don't want it on your salad.

I did taste our oil at the mill and wow! It's going to be great.