Paxos News - The olive and it's oil

OLIVE HARVEST

The olive here in Paxos was the main industry for many years and still, despite tourism being responsible for most of the income nowadays, is a very important part of daily life out of the summer, holiday season.

When the tourist season finally ends everyone here in Paxos takes a break, a short holiday. Some stay on the island and some take the opportunity to go to Athens or further afield. During this period very little is done and even that is done more slowly than normal ("really?" I hear you ask!) - Until the strimmers start up in the groves!
Everyone on the island seems to have his strimmer or employs someone to come along to their olive trees to clear away the greenery that would interfere with the collection of their olives.
It still amazes me how people know which are their trees, which trees belong to whom and that there are no disputes. If you stop and ask someone whose tree that one is they generally know! And there are 250,000 trees according to some of the books on Paxos (I haven't actually been around counting them - well not yet anyway - so can't confirm that number!).

After the grove has been strimmed back the owner of the trees will come along and lay out his or her nets (usually done by the ladies whilst the man watches!)

Olive grove with the carpet of nets below to collect the olives

Once this is done the hard work is over for a while, and now it’s just a rather time-consuming matter of going down to the grove from time to time and collecting by hand all the olives that have dropped off and are now sitting pretty on the nets. These olives are then bagged and left by the side of the road or track for the olive factory guys to come and collect.

Everyday from the end of November throughout December we see the olive factory cars, vans and tractors wandering around the island collecting. They then take the bags back to the factory where they are processed. The factory (or at least the modern factories) cut and press the olive to get the oils with some fairly modern cutting and pressing machinery.

In one or two now derelict olive presses on the island you can see how this process was achieved before the new machines. Then it was mainly heavy stone and wood presses which were wound down on the olives either by donkey or by hand with locks to stop them releasing and the pressure being taken out of them. We should be able to learn more about everything to do with the olive when the new museum opens in Lakka.

Green olives on the trees whilst the nets are being laid.

At the end of the day the factory gives some of the olive oil to the person who provided the olives and the remainder is their profit which they sell on.

We've found December to be a good time to be here on the island as having used a great deal of olive oil during a year for cooking and on salads etc. we had run out and in December when everyone has their oil again we are getting given wine and water bottles of oil as presents! So we shouldn't be short for a while. Next year we could have the first harvest of our own, who knows...