We use olive oil almost everyday and we have visited several olive oil museums during our travels so, when give the opportunity to actually go olive picking, we were not going to turn it down.

Together with cruising friends, we all headed into the hills on a sunny Sunday morning (which was a miracle as it had rained heavily all the night before and we thought the trip would be cancelled) to help with the annual olive harvest on a farm that belonged to theparents-in-law of a local lady who is teaching Italian here. We were shown what to do and in no time at all, we had laid out the mesh netting under the trees in which to collect the olives and set up a couple of step ladders to reach the highest branches and we were off. The plump green and black olives were ready for harvest and came off easily as we slid our hands along the branches and let the fruit drop onto the mesh below. Surprisingly, the branches and leaves were quite soft and we did not have to wear gloves or complain of lacerated hands afterwards. The olives were then put into plastic crates to be taken to be processed later. We worked hard for several hours, happily chatting away, and after stripping 20 trees of their fruit, we had collected 240kg of olives.

Our reward was a delicious lunch of local produce prepared by mamma. We were served pasta with a lentil sauce, salami and cheese from a neighbouring farm along with their own olive oil, of course. All this was washed down with plenty of wine from their own vines. And, as if that wasn't enough, we were all given a bottle of olive oil to take away, as is the tradition when you have helped with the harvest.

After lunch, we took the olives to be processed and saw how they were weighed, washed, crushed in their entirety, had the water and oil seprated and finally the green liquid emerged. The olives that were harvested were mostly small, hard and green, which gives the oil a grassy taste, much sought after in Sicily and the sign of a very good oil. Black olives were also harvested (they are simply green ones that have matured longer) and they were included in the process too as it is too hard and unnecessary to separate green from black.

We had a great day and enjoyed taking part in the whole process. Our Sicilian hosts made us feel very welcome, even though they did not speak any English and they must have been the only farm for miles around to have such an international picking team for the day, much to their amusement.

To see all the photos, click HERE