No I haven’t joined some environmental activist group I am talking about our olive crop. It’s been a dreadful year for the trees, a lot of rain and hail storms that have damaged the fruits and an invasion of the fly that lays its eggs in the developing olives, the larva then feed on the fruit. We generally avoid this infestation as our trees grow at a higher level than those in the valley, last year our olives were completely clean, this year we have the worms.
The fruits are soft and mushy, everyday more fall to the ground. We have a few trees that are decent but nothing like enough for a mill run and sorting the crates to take out the bad ones would take an age.
On our walks we’ve seen the situation is the same all around us, in fact many trees are much worse than ours. Usually the harvest is such a happy time, I know Giovanni loves it and he’s still hoping to get some oil, but many people have decided not to pick. It’s not a disaster for us but Italian families rely on a good harvest, a household will easily use a litre of oil a week. Giovanni usually produces hundreds of litres, I know his daughter takes 80 and his son 50 in return for their help at harvest time.
We had such a good result last year, almost 50 litres of oil, so we were able to give a lot away and sell some too. People had already been asking before we left if they could buy more, it’s not just the Italians who will be disappointed.
