Last weekend, Mum and I participated in one of our favourite annual occasions: olive harvesting at a friend’s property on the Kaipara Harbour. It’s been a long, dry, Mediterranean type summer, and the olive trees had produced a bumper crop.
For those of you who don’t know the Kaipara Harbour, let me set the scene with this little old church we drive past on the way to the olives.
The harvest is done by a group of extended family and friends of various ages. It’s a relaxed, happy, fun day with great community spirit. There’s a sense that we’re somehow following in a tradition that has existed for thousands of years around similar small-scale family-run olive groves.
There’s no money involved – we volunteer our time and elbow grease, and in exchange we get fed to capacity with gorgeous home-cooked food, get a large bottle of the (cold-pressed, extra virgin) olive oil once it’s been pressed, and have the satisfaction of being part of harvest. After we’ve all received our bottles of oil, the rest goes to the immediate family.
Everyone finds their own rhythm and style of picking to suit their temperament or physical needs at the time.
There’s raking-picking and hand-picking…
…climbing-picking and sitting-picking…
…and even lying-picking…
…and then of course, there’s bug-picking. This seven year old collected bugs on his hands and arms (shield bugs, ladybirds, praying mantises…) and tended them lovingly for hours.
We worked hard…
got fed delicious food…
and by the end of the day, 20 of us had harvested 550 kg (1200 lb) of beautiful olives.
howdy superb little website you got right here
I operate the same template on my own website but for whatever issue it would seem to reload quicker on your site eventhough yours carries a lot more content. Have you been operating any specific plugins or widgets which will quicken it up? If you could quite possibly have the titles so maybe I could use these on my web site so twilight breaking dawn fans could watch twilight breaking dawn online trailers and films more easily I would be ever so pleased – many thanks ahead of time 
Hi Kristen
I haven’t done anything at all to make it run faster. No special widgets or plug ins, just the basics that come with the template. Can’t help you there at all I’m afraid. Sorry! Good luck. I hope you find a solution.
Lucy
Hola Lucy,
Congratulations for your blog! We hope it will grow, interesting for us to read your garden experience, we want more!. Hope you’re fine in your hill. What an amazing site! We send you lots of kisses from our island.
Severine, Sebastian, Martin and Lou.
Hi Severine, Sebastian, Martin and Lou! So great to hear from you. I was actually just thinking about you yesterday as I was walking through our subtropical orchard and under the leaves of our 3m high banana plants. It’s a jungle out there and needs regular attacking with a machete to keep it under control! I was thinking about when you were here 2 years(?) ago and we hadn’t even planted any of it yet! I’ll put some pictures on my blog soon. Hope you’re all good and life is treating you well. I’d love to hear about your home and what you’re doing. Lots of love, Lucy
what a wonderful blog – thank you