i picked olives on sunday

olive season has begun in catalunya, and we are inserting ourselves into every step of the process we possibly can.

the arbequina olives we picked yesterday from josep and pilar’s olive grove

yesterday, for the first time in my life, i wandered through an olive grove and learned how to harvest olives by hand. we have arbequina olives here in our region of catalunya, which are smaller and more drought resistant, but still: if you haven’t been watering your olive trees, your olive harvest is small to nothing this year. the rains came too late. but our neighbors josep and pilar have an olive grove that they water, and yesterday josep drove us out to their grove on a perfect sunday midday for a harvest. massi was in his element, and i so enjoyed seeing him so happy.

views from the olive harvest

we filled our buckets four times, enough to fill four 5-liter bottles later, in pilar’s kitchen. there, she taught me how to preserve olives for eating: wash them, fill the bottle, then fill with filtered water, then pour that water back out and mix in a quarter-kilo of salt into the water, and pour it back in. we’re doing it the traditional way, the slow way, no cutting the olives with a knife or smashing or throwing them to open up the olive to get it preserved faster.

the end result (left) after my neighbors, sisters concepcion and pilar, teach me how to preserve olives for eating (right)

these little arbequinas are fresh from the tree, in a salt water brine, and won’t be ready to eat for 3-4 months. but once preserved, they will keep for years. as will my memories of josep teaching us how to harvest them, of his wife teaching me how to preserve them, to make them enjoyable to eat. a simple preparation, and then a lot of waiting. so not a big deal to them, and so beautiful to me.

i left last night wondering how to repay them. they let us pick their olives. they taught me the traditional way of preserving olives here. they had the containers and the water, everything for me to save enough olives for over a year of enjoyment. how can i repay them? multiple loaves of sourdough bread? it doesn’t seem like enough. the generosity is overwhelming. people are so generous here, over and over again.

this is the part of the culture that i did not expect: the overflowing generosity. i thought what i would learn is the slowing-down, the good food, the patience, the relaxing and letting go of the clock. but the greatest gift just might be the one i didn’t expect: to be surrounded by such generosity.

and yes, such beauty and flavor and unhurried enjoyment of life, that too, is a gift. but the generosity. friends, the generosity. it is a whole way of life.