Olive picking with Sagraincasa
Olives , bloody olives ,you never know when is the right time to pick them!
Anyway it is with great pleasure and relief I can now say, it`s done , completed, over, IT’S FINISHED .
But let me start at the beginning which was over a week ago when we planned the first picking day with some local friends and a group of American students ( 20 people all in all). Our naive idea was to start on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, after carefully checking an online weather forecast we decided we had to change the day as it was going to be horrible and wet , so we called everyone and moved it to Sunday morning . But would you believe it things did not improve and when checking a few hours later the weather was not looking at all good. In fact after checking on four different websites on Saturday evening we thought it was probably more important to build a boat like Noah and forget the olives ! So once again we had to apologize to everyone and cancel and rearrange our olive picking…believe me making all these phone calls was getting to be a bit embarrassing ! (and guess who had to do it !!!)
On Sunday morning we woke to sunshine, be it a little shy ,which did make us think that perhaps these web sites were not the best weather forecast to look at. Perhaps it would be more reliable to look at the sky the night before while enjoying a glass of wine then flip a coin ,say a little prayer and go to sleep. Then in the morning open the windows, look outside and say: today is going to be.. whatever you want , done, sorted!
But clearly we have to be more “sorted” then that especially when you have to organize a lot of kind people who are coming to help us pick our olives …. so, we decided to use something more official: the Italian Air Force website … the Italian military cannot get it wrong , right? But after the first check we noticed that ,according to the Italian air force military , the weekend we had just cancelled, was going to be dry and precisely at 6 pm Saturday and Sunday ( in November ) the sun would be wonderful and warm … O MAMMA MIA we thought, but at 6 pm it is dark already, the sun goes down at 5pm… not a good sign would you say? With that we gave up and decided to play “lets wish for the weather that we would like and need”.
So this weekend , thanks be to God, Saturday was beautiful and lots of people full of energy came to give us a hand . We all worked really hard , the American students , local friends and a small group of close friends who had come from Rome. We had so many olives to pick this year in fact the olive trees have been incredibly generous.
We had a short break around 1.30pm to enjoy a delicious Focaccia seasoned with sea salt and rosemary, stuffed with plenty of good quality Mortadella and jugs of wine to wash it all down . At the end of our break we were all ready for a few more hours of work.
Later after picking 600 kg of olives I really wanted to thank all our hard workers with a great meal , so I did. Under the porch in the garden we served bruschetta with extra virgin olive oil, just pressed the day before from olives from local trees, bruschetta with cherry tomatoes , three different omelets stuffed with vegetables and cheese, which were all prepared only using eggs from our own hens , big bowls of rigatoni pasta served with a sausage and mushroom tomato sauce. Carafes of local wine were waiting to be drunk.
We were all very tired after the long day of work but all very happy , the atmosphere around the big table was fantastic. One of the American boys was an opera singer , he decided, during lunch ,to share his amazing voice with us ,to listen to him singing was wonderful.
At sunset after a great day full of positive energy the olive picking was over for another year.
Both Nick and I cannot thank you all enough for all your hard work and for being such great company and we also want to apologize to those who wanted to join us but were unable to after our continuous changes of date. Grazie a tutti.
PS I hope for next year we will be more precise with the organization, in fact I ‘m starting to think that I could create a new business : ” The weather YOU would like” I’m sure it would be a great success .
Many kisses and thanks again to those who were with us and a big hug to those who would have liked to be with us too.
The weather you would like
Olive picking with Sagraincasa
Olives , bloody olives ,you never know when is the right time to pick them!
Anyway it is with great pleasure and relief I can now say, it`s done , completed, over, IT’S FINISHED .
But let me start at the beginning which was over a week ago when we planned the first picking day with some local friends and a group of American students ( 20 people all in all). Our naive idea was to start on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, after carefully checking an online weather forecast we decided we had to change the day as it was going to be horrible and wet , so we called everyone and moved it to Sunday morning . But would you believe it things did not improve and when checking a few hours later the weather was not looking at all good. In fact after checking on four different websites on Saturday evening we thought it was probably more important to build a boat like Noah and forget the olives ! So once again we had to apologize to everyone and cancel and rearrange our olive picking…believe me making all these phone calls was getting to be a bit embarrassing ! (and guess who had to do it !!!)
On Sunday morning we woke to sunshine, be it a little shy ,which did make us think that perhaps these web sites were not the best weather forecast to look at. Perhaps it would be more reliable to look at the sky the night before while enjoying a glass of wine then flip a coin ,say a little prayer and go to sleep. Then in the morning open the windows, look outside and say: today is going to be.. whatever you want , done, sorted!
But clearly we have to be more “sorted” then that especially when you have to organize a lot of kind people who are coming to help us pick our olives …. so, we decided to use something more official: the Italian Air Force website … the Italian military cannot get it wrong , right? But after the first check we noticed that ,according to the Italian air force military , the weekend we had just cancelled, was going to be dry and precisely at 6 pm Saturday and Sunday ( in November ) the sun would be wonderful and warm … O MAMMA MIA we thought, but at 6 pm it is dark already, the sun goes down at 5pm… not a good sign would you say? With that we gave up and decided to play “lets wish for the weather that we would like and need”.
So this weekend , thanks be to God, Saturday was beautiful and lots of people full of energy came to give us a hand . We all worked really hard , the American students , local friends and a small group of close friends who had come from Rome. We had so many olives to pick this year in fact the olive trees have been incredibly generous.
We had a short break around 1.30pm to enjoy a delicious Focaccia seasoned with sea salt and rosemary, stuffed with plenty of good quality Mortadella and jugs of wine to wash it all down . At the end of our break we were all ready for a few more hours of work.
Later after picking 600 kg of olives I really wanted to thank all our hard workers with a great meal , so I did. Under the porch in the garden we served bruschetta with extra virgin olive oil, just pressed the day before from olives from local trees, bruschetta with cherry tomatoes , three different omelets stuffed with vegetables and cheese, which were all prepared only using eggs from our own hens , big bowls of rigatoni pasta served with a sausage and mushroom tomato sauce. Carafes of local wine were waiting to be drunk.
We were all very tired after the long day of work but all very happy , the atmosphere around the big table was fantastic. One of the American boys was an opera singer , he decided, during lunch ,to share his amazing voice with us ,to listen to him singing was wonderful.
At sunset after a great day full of positive energy the olive picking was over for another year.
Both Nick and I cannot thank you all enough for all your hard work and for being such great company and we also want to apologize to those who wanted to join us but were unable to after our continuous changes of date. Grazie a tutti.
PS I hope for next year we will be more precise with the organization, in fact I ‘m starting to think that I could create a new business : ” The weather YOU would like” I’m sure it would be a great success .
Many kisses and thanks again to those who were with us and a big hug to those who would have liked to be with us too.