The olive harvest began officially on November 1st 2011. Our wonderful, hardworking, harvesting team includes interns Greg, Jerrod, and our newest “addition” Henrique. The first week of November was devoted to teaching the interns about the proper methods of using the harvesting machinery, safety procedures, and various techniques for efficiency and speed. The harvesting process is quite simple: the interns will work for two days in the olive groves to gather enough crates of olives to start a production of olive oil.
All interns take turns with the various tasks involved in harvesting. Specifically, two are responsible for placing the nets under the olive trees and making sure that pickers always have an empty net to work on. This task is perhaps most important as the two interns doing this job set the pace for the rest of the team by directing them to harvest the trees in a fast and efficient way. The rest of the team, a.k.a. the “pickers”, follow the nets with olive harvesting machines knocking the olives onto the net. The interns responsible for the nets must then empty one net into another until they have a large enough pile of olives to fill several crates. Once they have gathered the number of crates needed, the olives are transferred to the mill where the production of olive oil begins. It is definitely hard work… but that taste of freshly milled olive oil on fresh bread at the end of a day’s production makes it all worth it!!!
See more pictures of the harvesting on the Flickr Link
Despite being miles away from home, intern Jerrod and Ashley invited everyone to celebrate Thanksgiving yesterday. With a little help from the American base we were able to find a turkey for the dinner which was cooked to absolute perfection by Ashley! Jerrod prepared a range of other delicious dishes, including sweet-potato mash and green-bean casserole. The dinner concluded with a mouth-watering home-made apple pie and ice-cream prepared by Christine. Needless to say the night ended with our stomachs stretched out and our spirits high!
INTERNING AT BIOLEA ASTRIKAS ESTATE 