Picking Olives

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a unique cultural experience (or something like that.) I got to help in an olive harvest! The Wright's church has a number of olive trees around their building, and this is the time of year they are harvested. So today a bunch of us met Diane at the gate to go pick olives. We only worked for about an hour and a half, so it was really only a taste of what people who grow olives for a living would experience during an olive harvest. Nonetheless, we had a lot of fun.


When we got there we were assigned two trees (there were probably about 10 of us). They found us a couple blankets to put under the trees to catch the olives. My first order of business was to climb one of the trees, because (you know me) I like to climb things. :) The rest of my time there could be pretty much summed up in my continuing effort to get higher up and further out in order to reach more olives. It was really entertaining. Olive trees are fairly strong, and fairly supple, and there are a lot of branches to hang on to and to prevent you from falling. Therefore, I was enabled to reach most of the upper branches on our tree. When I got down from the tree I whipped my streaming brow on my shirt...which then turned a nice color of brown. I looked down and my arms and hands and noticed that I was several shades darker than when I began. Here's a picture of our hands when we were finished:


All-in-all, it was a good time. Don't think I'd like doing that all day, everyday, though. I think Diane might try to pickle some of the olives we got, so maybe I'll get to be a part of that experience too.