I grew up in suburban America in a two-story home surrounded by a moderately flat, half-acre yard with a driveway. My youth knowledge of gardening was limited to cutting grass on a rider mower and occasionally weeding around the house when my mother demanded it. University was next, then onto apartment living until about five years ago: I bought a home in the Roman countryside on 2.5 acres of hilly, lush land, filled with perennial flowers, climbing vines, hedges, shrubs, fruit, and over 60 olive trees.
It’s beautiful, but entails endless gardening; my knowledge of gardening has grown exponentially. Full weekends and weeks are spent pruning, planting, weeding, and attending to any general garden care you can name.
In addition to the lawn at home, we have an organic farm where we produce grapes for winemaking, olives for olive oil, and recently, our own wine, Jacobini. The farm has over 1,600 olive trees, and every year since I was 24, I’ve been fortunate enough to have unlimited amounts of organic, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil from the farm production.
(To find out how olive oil is made and harvested, read La Raccolta: The Olive Oil Harvest.)
For these reasons, I haven’t picked the olives on my home property. Nor have I asked our workers to come to our property --they have enought to do at the farm. Although the idea of having my “own” oil was romantic, and I felt wasteful watching the olives drop every year, I still never found the motivation to do the manual harvest, nor felt the need to pay someone for the service on my personal property.
Luckily, there are associations and individuals who offer an exchange: They harvest the olives and take them to the press in exchange for 50 to 75% of the oil produced. In the past few years, we have added these agreements for either partial or full olive harvest at the farm. On the books, it's financially equivalent: we save on manual labor, machine upkeep costs and managerial stress.
At our home, enter Gianluca. Gianluca has a small farm, and he harvests the olives on private properties, taking his payment in olives. Our next-door neighbor tipped us off to Gianluca, and for two days he came by himself to harvest the olives we had on our property.
I liked him from the start; he was knowledgeable and cared greatly about the proper upkeep of land. Prior to pressing, I presented him with our 10L plastic containers to transfer the freshly pressed oil back to our home; his face of repulsion made me quickly run to replace them with my 30L stainless steel oil container, the obvious superior choice for olive oil storage. He drove extra miles for a mill that uses millstones, the traditional method of pressing. He is all about quality, tradition, and Italian excellence.
We agreed on a 70-30 split. He harvested approximately 20 trees over two days, producing a total of 80 liters: He received 60L (an estimated resale value of 720 euros) and our share was 25L.
Was it cheating that I didn’t pick my own olives? Maybe. But Gianluca managed to turn a profit, no wasted olives were on the ground, and for the first time, I have my own homegrown extra virgin olive oil.
If you are interested in visiting olive groves or learning more about the olive harvest contact me and/or read La Raccolta. The Olive Oil Harvest