All is safely gathered in

I used to like the church harvest festival when I was young, the church decorated with fruit and veg, corn and straw, I liked the hymns and the way all the local farmers some of whom didn't attend church so often always found time to give thanks for another years crops. So I've been giving thanks myself that we managed a decent harvest here, 122.5 kilos of hand picked olives produced 24 litres of delicious oil. I would say delicious wouldn't I but truly because of our altitude and terrain oil from this part of Italy really is prized. Mr FF and I picked on our own over 3 days finishing yesterday which was my birthday. It wasn't great fun as Mr FF is always anxious to get the work done and I am always anxious that the olives are pristine so I spend ages picking out all the leaves, twigs and bits of bark while he complains I'm wasting my time. He doesn't complain though when we get a great yield, I maintain the debris adds to the weight but produces zero oil and all anyone cares about is your resa, a calculation relating to weight of olives to weight of oil with something to do with specific gravity thrown in. We used the local frantoio as they will do a run on small quantities, we delivered at 3 pm by 5 pm the oil was flowing, we barely had time for a coffee in our favourite bar which conveniently is opposite the mill. As ever we came home and made bruschetta, I think we shall do so again tonight, got to take advantage of the freshness of the oil. The bitter peppery taste is intense when the oil is new and the flavour lingers in your mouth afterwards. I'd decided before we started the harvest that I'd be content with 15 litres, we exceeded our expectations and that doesn't happen so often to a couple of 69 year olds.