Postcard from Europe: The olive harvest

We're scattered in the olive trees with truly a bird's eye view of the rolling Umbrian countryside. But our focus is on the black olives. We yank them in handfuls and send them cascading onto the green nets below. Conversations flit among the trees. Family members who rarely talk chat with one another, the olive branches seemingly bringing peace and goodwill.

Sometimes singing can be heard in distant fields.

These are the moments when Lucy MacGillis loves the olive harvest. The painter encourages city friends like me to come to Monte Castello di Vibio to help her extended family pick. In exchange, we eat spectacular meals washed down with wine – and, of course, seasoned with glorious, fresh olive oil.

Nancy Greenleese scales great heights during the olive picking season

I feel more Italian than Michelangelo when I'm picking olives. He scaled dizzy heights to paint the Sistine Chapel; I'm high on a ladder helping create a culinary masterpiece. In fact, olive-picking pre-dates the painter by hundreds of years. The Roman empire planted olive trees in the conquered lands...and soon, families were laying siege to the gnarly trees at harvest. However, this annual ritual may soon go the way of Constantine.

Olive picking may soon be a thing of the past

Many Italian families have already given up picking. They're hiring migrant workers to bring the olives from tree to table. Lucy wonders if her son's dad and his brothers will continue picking. The harvest takes weeks and modern workplaces aren't too keen on letting Italians off to go climb a tree. Young people unaccustomed to farm work find it tedious, difficult...and never-ending.

A few harvests ago, Lucy was pregnant. She says she lay on the ground, plucking olives from the grass. Everyone has to lend a hand. And those hands will become scratched and raw. People fall from trees. Snow falls...and the olives still need to be picked. This is the harvest and, like a birth, it can't be delayed.

Lucy's son Vittorio arrived after the trees were picked that year…and now is a regular in the fields. Before we started picking one day, he and I stepped into a café. A huddle of older men stopped playing cards to chat with a favorite son. They asked him if his mother was picking olives.

"No," he said, shaking his head dramatically.

"Well, your father's picking, right?" they asked.

"No," he replied, exasperated. "Grandpa is picking!" Everyone laughed but quickly became quiet. Who will pick once the grandfathers can't? When Vittorio's grown up, the birds may be the only ones singing in the trees during the harvest.

Author: Nancy Greenleese, Umbria

Editor: Helen Seeney