As Merran indicated in her post, it is the olive harvest right at the moment. Every day we walk through olive groves where the harvest is underway. It is great watching men and women working with their small rake like tools stripping the branches of fruit and letting the olives drop onto the large netting sheets spread out under the trees. The netting is gathered up and the wicker baskets filled with black olives.
This morning we walked past a place with a massive sign advertising "nuovo olio", new oil. There is lots of excitement about the harvest. At Lucca, the head of the monastery bought out a bottle saying it was just pressed from this year's harvest. At Sant Maria in Chianni, our hostess bought out a bottle with pride indicating it was bottled that day from her sister's harvest and we could enjoy it with our chickpea salad. Which we did.
While there is still joy and pride, we have been told the harvest is only 1/2 what it normally is this year. It has been too dry. We can believe it. We had expected to be walking in cool and wet weather, instead it has been quite warm and it is very dry. There is haze in the air and fields are now ploughed but obviously dry and baked quite hard.
The weather forecast for the next 3-4 days is wet, good for the farmers and we will be happy for a few cooler days. Although we don't want another downpour like we experienced in Pontremoli.
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