We were fortunate this year to be invited to help one day with the olive harvest at Residenza Cornino near Castelina in Chianti (see their website here. The site is in Swedish, so contact them if you need info in English) . This was my first olive raccolta (harvest). Leif trained in olive groves when he first moved to Tuscany, so he was my guide alongside Gino, the owner of the trees.

This day started like most of our adventures do: We woke at the crack of dawn, rode our bikes to the train station, managed to find the bike carriage and took the train to the nearest station to our final destination, and rode our bikes the final leg of the trip in the crisp morning air of fall in Tuscany. When I say the views at the residence are panoramic and breathtaking you’ll know that the ride up the hill on a gravel road filled with switchbacks and double digit grades was tough but worth it.

Olive harvesting, like any farming, is labor intensive work. Large nets are laid under the trees to catch the olives as they fall, then the olives are moved downhill over the net and gathered into bins for transport to the olive press. The olives are picked using a variety of tools. Hands, the world’s oldest tools, are the gentlest way to harvest but this method is very slow. Gino told me that this, along with rakes, are a traditional Italian way to harvest because it’s quieter than machines and it’s possible to talk. Chiacchierare, or chatting, makes every task more pleasant! Rakes are faster than bare hands, but are still slow…the motion is kind of like combing the branches from top to bottom to remove the olives. The next step up is a stick with a motorized wheel on the end that beats the olives off the branches. It’s much faster but beats up the olives and the trees more than the other ways. It’s very physical work, this harvesting of olives. You’re either working above your head or lifting and dragging heavy nets up and down hills. Did I forget to mention that olives are planted on hillsides to maximize their exposure to the sun?

Every time I stopped to stretch my muscles my eyes wandered to the views. The absolutely spectacular view of the Tuscan countryside; undulating hills, vineyards subtly changing from green to yellow to gold, the shimmering silvery shades of olive green covering the spaces between fields of vines, all under a constantly changing sky. Cloudy, stormy and sunny skies changed our work from cool to sauna-like and back to cool again.

We finished the day with a visit to the olive press, just a short distance away. This is a modern press, far different from the old stone presses everyone used until recently (when health regulations required changes that stone simply can’t comply with). The olives are cleaned in one machine, moved to the pressing machine, then the oil is separated from the water, seed and pulp in a third machine before being moved to the centrifuge where the last water is removed and the oil is put into containers.

Of course we finished the day with the great downhill ride back to the train station. There’s something about riding in the moonlight that’s magical. It was the perfect end to a fantastic day.