AN OLIVE HARVEST IN PROVENCE: PICKING THE OLIVES BY HAND

Carol Drinkwater , the actress who is best-known for her role as James Herriot's wife in the much-loved BBC series All Creatures Great and Small, has written a delightful series of memoirs of her life on an olive farm in Provence.  In the first of these books, titled The Olive Farm, she presents an interesting historical background to the olive, discovers that olive trees, seemingly so strong and ageless, are prone to disease, and describes the excitement of her first olive harvest and the processing of the olives into "a glorious primrose-gold oil". 

"At long last", she writes, "the moment has arrived. We are about to begin our very first harvest: la cuillette des olives". The harvesters, five men and one woman, begin work, slowly and carefully picking the olives by hand. Carol and her husband Michel, banished as amateurs to a far corner of the olive grove by their friend and mentor Rene, soon discover that this can be back-breaking work: Rene will not allow them to use rakes, every olive has to be picked singly. There is quite an element of danger, too, from picking olives while standing on ladders which often seem to be on the verge of toppling, or from climbing the trees and sitting precariously among the high branches. But she writes that all this was soon forgotten as they experienced the thrill of taking their olives to a local mill and having the first taste of their own extra-virgin olive oil.

It's a pleasure to read this book; the reader not only makes the acquaintance of a charming couple and their life in Provence, but also learns something of the history of the olive, the art of olive growing, and, ultimately, the production of extra-virgin olive oil.

You can read about the other books in the series here.
With thanks to Carol for permission to use the cover image of her book.

HARVESTING THE OLIVES

Attic black-figure amphora attributed to the Antimenes Painter
520BC.  h. 16" (40cm.)

© Trustees of the British Museum



Today the ways in which olives are harvested range all the way from careful, highly labour-intensive hand-picking to the use of huge mechanical harvesters.

This scene from an Attic amphora shows how the Athenians harvested their olives in the sixth century BC. The painter has depicted four harvesters: two youths and two bearded older men. One youth sits high in the central tree, beating the branches with a stick; another young boy kneels on the ground as he collects the fallen olives and puts them in a basket. The two older men, holding long sticks for knocking the olives from the tree, seem to keep a close watch on  the two younger men; olives that are knocked like this can be damaged, and in particular the man on the right may be watching how carefully the boy sorts and selects the harvest.

These large and beautifully decorated  amphoras, containing the finest oil, were often presented as prizes at the Panathenaic Games. From the olive harvest scene here, it seems likely that this vessel would have served such a purpose.
 
You can read more about this amphora here, on the website of the British Museum.