We had a once in a lifetime opportunity about a month ago to travel to Zoaglia and pick olives for Maura and Nonni. If you remember when we first arrived in Italy we posted a story about traveling to Rapallo, Zoaglia, Genoa to a beautiful home overlooking the Mediterranean? Maura is Steve and Ashley's landlord and Nonni is her boyfriend and they are both very sweet people. If you don't remember go back and look at the views from this house!
Now, onto olive picking! I had never picked olives before this weekend so I thought I would share what I learned. One method was to lay several nets below the trees then several people use bamboo sticks to knock the olives from the trees. Then everyone would gather up the nets and pull out the sticks and leaves and put the olives in the bucket. The second method we used was just to walk to each tree and pick the olives off you could reach.
It was a lot of work, but we were rewarded with fantastic Italian meals, good conversation while we are trying to learn Italian, and great friendship! We had quite a crowd that included Steve, Ashley, Elizabeth, Tyler, Baby Julia (she didn't help much though ;-)), Maura, Nonni, Maura's 2 sweet Italian friends, Matt, and me.
A few weeks later Maura presented us with 2 bottles of olive oil and we were not expecting that! We went to Zoaglia with the impression that we were going to pick olives for oil for their family and honestly we just wanted the experience. Maura said the olive quantity this year was not great, but the quality of the olives from the trees was the best!! I have tried the olive oil and it is very good....
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| Matt, Steve, and Nonni hitting olives out of the trees |
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| Maura and Nonni |
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| An Italian Dining Room |
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| Our pickings |
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| upclose of the olives |
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| Ashley and I are hard at work |
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| Olive Trees |
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| Our sweet reward...Olive Oil! |
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