Soccer Dad

Olive harvest blogging

Mystery Achievement's wife has an olive orchard that has been in her family for generations. So every two years he and his wife harvest their crop. He has acceded to the wishes of his readers and written about the harvest, complete with photographs. First he gives a history of the land and explains the harvesting, then he tells of the horror the olives endure as they are pressed and crushed into oil.

Two things he mentions really resonated with me.
In his first post Mystery Achievement writes:

For the olives that are too high to reach from the ground, we do one of two things: 1)Climb up the tree and use our hands. 2) Pull them down using a tool that my wife and mother-in-law call a rampino. Basically, it's a small rake-like tool about the size of a man's hand taped to a long handle.

The Mishnah, in Peah 8:3 refers to "zeisei nikuf." One possible explanation is that these are "olives that are knocked (down)" by the poor people after the owner has picked those closer to the ground.

The other aspect of his harvest that particularly interested me was how he described the production of the oil from olive paste:

Usually, though, the paste is taken and pressed again for oil. And that's the difference between "Extra Virgin" and "Virgin" olive oil. "Extra Virgin" is oil from the first pressing of the paste. It's the only kind that anyone who knows anything about olives or oil cares about having. And after having seen how dry and crusty olive paste looks after the first pressing, I can understand why.

In Shmos (Exodus) 27:20 it describes the process of producing the oil needed for the Menorah (candelabra) as "...pressed for lighting." According to Rashi, the olives are pressed and only the first drop of oil is taken from them for lighting oil. Apparently even "extra virgin" oil would be too late in the process for this usage because the "extra virgin" oil is extracted after the olives have pressed and crushed.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 12, 2005 5:24 AM