Of course, this wasn’t much of a ‘cave’. It was more of a tiny room dug into the side of a hill. There wasn’t much room to do anything but take shelter from the weather, and maybe build a fire.
On the day before we left Jerome and I ventured off into the forest to find the secret olive grove. We had already harvested enough to get the oil we came for, so this was just an adventure of sorts. We’d also been told there was a cave dug out of the side of the mountain for reasons nobody really knew. This was the side mission. As it turned out, the side mission was even more interesting than finding the other olive grove. We had to cut away some over grown trees and rosemary, but the cave had been found.
A shot of Tolva from the rooftop at the end of Day 3. No sunset, but still amazing.
On the last day of the harvest, Martial and I made a fort out of the Arundo donax or Carrizo plant. The most interesting thing about this particular cane plant is that “It is the principal source material for reeds for woodwind instruments such as the oboe, bassoon, clarinet, and saxophone. It is also often used for the chanter and drone reeds of many different forms of bagpipes.” It’s also been used to make flutes for over 5000 years.
The structure that we made didn’t last long, so we had to rebuild it a few times. It was much more difficult than it seemed like it would be. We didn’t have any string or anything, so to tie it all together we used the cane leaves braided together. Eventually we found a good configuration and it lasted till the end of the day.
Cane House success.
In Tolva, every family (for as long as the locals can remember) has a patch of land with which to grow olives (and figs). The fields get passed down from generation to generation. Most of the trees that we harvested were over 100 years old, and still kickin. They are trimmed in a way that keeps them low to the ground, while still producing the same amount (if not more) olives.
Oh the carnage. Like a horrific car wreck, I can’t look away.
Day 3. Martial and I in the tree. You know, just hangin’ out.
Day 2. The top of the house that Angela’s family own. They rent two of the rooms out. The sunset more amazing than the picture suggests.
Same hill, slightly different angle.
The top of the hill (well almost) that we had to walk down a shot way before we got to the olive grove (read:Massacre Grove)
Angela carrying some of the nets to a new victim. My finger got in the way. In case you didn’t notice.
From the top of the same tree as the previous picture, but the color was a little better in this one, and you can see more of the hills. I’m not sure any camera could do justice to such a beautiful country side. I’ll never forget it.
In this picture you can see the bridge we had to cross everyday before we reached the fields. It seemed remarkably unsafe to me. Those tall concrete pillars seemed like they could fall just like dominoes if the wind was strong enough. Although I’m sure that I’ve very wrong about that.
It’s hard for me to tell in this particular picture, but either im in the tree looking down at Martial, or I’m on the ground taking a picture of him in the tree. I’m not sure. Either way, The Massacre lasted 3 long days. We had to gather at least 200 Kilos of olives for them to be able to press it into oil. It’s a lot more than it seems like.
