Watching the Olives Grow Read online

  From this terrace, I can also look out over the Olive tree groves to the West and see the village of Agios Nikolaos in the distance; a gentle 12 minutes stroll away.

  It is often said that only women can multi-task, but I don’t think that is true because I can do at least three jobs at the same time. Whilst sipping my Ouzo (task one), I can see and hear what is going on around me (task two), whilst ‘Watching The Olives Grow’ (task three), and all at the same time! This proves that I can multi-task and, for me, this ‘Watching’ is all ‘business as usual’ around here!

  Photo: The ‘Star’ Tree As ‘Watched’ 1st December 2009.

  I did a good job last year and ‘Watched’ our Olives ripen throughout the year. As I write, we harvested them two weeks ago and produced just over 30 litres from 13 trees. It was a good yield, but the job doesn’t end with the harvest. It is a full time job for 365 days of the year. The Olive trees have to be ‘Watched’ from one harvest to the next. Frankly, it is a hard job, and somebody has to do it. It just so happens that here at Meerkat Manor that someone is me!

  Meerkat Manor is the name of our small house. It is so named as a result of our fascination with African Meerkats, but more about that later in the book. The house is made of traditional stone, which is typical of The Mani region. What is not typical is the size, as our house is very small by local standards, and that is what attracted us to it in the first place. It is single storey, but with a small traditional ‘Mani Tower’ built on the end of the building.

  The tower comprises a self-contained studio apartment which has its own access via a stone stairway up to the South-West facing terrace.

  At this time of year, the weather is usually very good; most days are sunny, with bright clear blue skies and temperatures around 18 C to 20 C during the day. However, the nights can get chilly with temperatures ranging from a low of 12 C to 16 C. It’s a good job that the Olive trees provide us with wood to burn to keep us warm, as a fire is required when it is this cold.

  As I sit here on the terrace ‘Watching,’ others are harvesting their Olives in the groves that surround our house. All I can hear is the gentle hum of their whirling electric ‘wands’ that strip the Olives from the branches of the trees. As they go about harvesting their Olives, I occasionally, hear the ‘buzz’ of the small chain saws they use to prune the branches. Mostly though, the ‘buzz’ that I hear is that of the insects; particularly the bees as they continue in their quest to harvest their nectar from the flowers, even during December.

  The view from the front of the upper terrace of the Mani Tower is 180° from East to West and I can hear and see the sea, but not the beach.

  As you will read later, during the spring and summer months, the temperatures can rise to as much as 46 C and during those months it is hot for over 16 hours of every day!

  The attraction of this village, and the many other villages in the region, is because it is so unspoiled and is not described as ‘touristy.’

  In many respects it gives off the aura that tourism has passed it by because everybody works on the land or the sea. It is a very small village with around 350 permanent inhabitants; working at fishing, construction and Olive growing (for the oil and for Olives to eat) to earn their living.

  In the summer ‘season’ of July and August it does attract tourists. They come from all over Europe and during these months the holiday population can rise to as much as 1500 people.

  Many holidaying visitors to the region are Athenians; they can stand the heat of Athens, but they want to escape the dust and the noise for a few weeks’ respite. As it is only four hours’ drive by car from Athens to Agios Nikolaos, it can also be a weekend destination for many just wanting the peace and quiet and the excellent food, and to enjoy the ‘old world’ feel as they wander around the harbour.

  The ‘old world’ feeling is mostly because the village does not exist just for tourism, unlike many other Greek destinations. Away from the sea, the region provides some excellent walks in the surrounding gorges and mountains, and enthusiasts return year after year to relax in this way, and enjoy the abundant wildlife and the amazing flowers that grow everywhere.

  During the summer months, a number of tavernas provide excellent freshly cooked traditional dishes. Their tables and chairs line the harbour wall and spill on to the road. In the evenings, the harbour road is closed to all traffic from 8pm until 2am in order for everybody to spread out and enjoy their dining experience as they relax and look across the harbour out to sea. Visitors are welcome all year round, but those that do come very quickly come to appreciate that this is a working village and that life goes on; tourists or no tourists.

  Photo: Above Agios Nikolaos.

  Fishing is the main activity to observe at the heart of the village. Every day, and for most of the day in daylight hours, you will see the men working on their boats, or cleaning and mending their nets in readiness for their next journey out to sea; later that day, or the following morning. When they are not out fishing or working on their boats, most of the fishermen can be seen sitting at the tables adjacent to the harbour slipway drinking coffee and swapping ‘gossip’, or tales of the sea.

  Time does not appear to be of any real urgency to them, maybe it is because there is always tomorrow? Most fishermen take their small boats out to sea at least twice per day (early morning and early evening) in their search to catch fish to sell for their living and to provide food and sustenance for their families; usually seven days a week

  Photo: View Of Agios Nikolaos Harbour.

  Photo: Fishermen Working On Their Boats.

  In the surrounding hills and mountains there is a veritable army of men constructing or renovating houses. Every day, you will see workmen gathering around the steps of the local bakery from 7am until 9am. They are all looking for work. They want the money, and they want to build. They are waiting for the arrival of the ‘Supervisors’ of the various building projects and hope that they will be contracted for a day’s work. Most contracts are only for one day’s work at a time and the uncertainty makes it a hard life for them. However, they always look cheerful.

  Virtually every house is built in traditional stone that has been quarried locally, and delivered to the site of the house to be built. Every stone is cut by hand; reduced from maybe a 2 ton lump which can be cut into 100 stones suitable to use for the building. Building is hard work at any time, but breaking stones and building the stone houses in temperatures of 30 C to 40 C is extremely hard work. The workmen usually start work at 8am. They take a break around 10.30am for half an hour for coffee and cigarettes and then again around 1.30pm for lunch, coffee and cigarettes. They finish for the day at 4pm and go home for their siesta.

  Photo: Cutting Stones By Hand.

  Density remains low as the houses are built in and around the Olive tree groves which stretch from the shoreline right up into the mountains. Some houses are even built into the mountains themselves, and as you look up at them it is as if they are ‘super glued’ on to the rock face as they teeter on the edge!

  Most families own Olive trees, and usually enough trees to ensure that they can produce sufficient Olive oil and eating Olives to last them for the coming 12 months. However, there are many farmers who own hundreds of trees; oil production is their business.

  It is hard work at harvest time, but ‘Watching The Olives Grow’ is even harder work! From my vantage point on the terrace I can see others doing their harvest whilst I continue to ‘Watch’ ours recover from the harvest and get themselves ready for the year to come.

  Some of the branches of their trees are so laden with ripe Olives that they look like they might break off at any moment as the weight is so great! It depends on the ripeness of the Olives as to when they are harvested, but the harvest usually starts around the first week of November and can go on until the middle of January the following year.

  Perhaps now you can appreciate how tricky it is and the necessity to ‘Watch’ the Olives so much. Gauging the corre
ct ripeness is everything and affects the quality and the volume of the end product, whether it is for oil or for eating Olives.

  We harvested our Olives during the third week of November this year as they were ripe by then. The volume was almost double that of the previous year, and it was excellent quality; Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

  Author’s Note: Towards the end of the book the 2010 harvest will be described.

  Meanwhile, all around me in the Olive tree groves surrounding our house, teams of men descend on the trees and strip the Olives off the branches and put them into hessian sacks to be taken to the Olive press.

  If the truth be told, ‘Watching The Olives Grow’ is not a 12 month job but more like 11 months of the year. Because the trees need to rest for a bit (maybe a month) before they re-commence growing for the following year, I can do other things.

  After our harvest, and when the trees have been pruned and the cuttings burned, I do get a couple of weeks off to do other things, like walking around the surrounding Olive tree groves, watching others at work, and enjoying looking at the flowers and the wildlife in general, and the cattle in particular. This is the time of the year to see the young calves out for the first time with their mothers and older brothers and sisters.

  The mothers graze in the Olive tree groves all-year-round and the farmers tether them to the trees, but they do get moved to new spots every day. The calves are not tethered as they will not stray far from their mothers. After about two years or so, the females will be tethered, and the bulls that are not to be kept, or sold for breeding, will be sent to the slaughter house. All the meat sold in the butchers, and small supermarket in the village, is from locally reared livestock.

  Goats roam the Olive tree groves too, but the farmers keep the baby goats in pens until they are about six months old before they are allowed to graze in the groves. Grazing is poor, but the goats will eat anything they consider tasty, so they fatten up quite quickly and they are a valuable commodity in the region.

  Photo: Calf Grazing In The Olive Grove.

  The goats are usually either bred to produce milk and cheese, or for the traditional Easter celebration family barbeque.

  Photo: Kid Goats.

  Easter is the big religious celebration in Greece. In this region, the tradition is for the whole family to go to Church and then to go home and spit-roast a goat for the celebration lunch. On Easter Sunday you can see the smoke of the barbeques and smell the meat grilling for miles around!

  Mind you, ‘Watching’ isn’t all about sitting on the terrace sipping Ouzo, or wandering around the Olive tree groves seeing the sights and taking photos. There is always maintenance work to do at Meerkat Manor. There are windows and shutters to be varnished, and paths and water drainage pipes to be built and maintained, as well as the cacti garden to be developed. Whilst my jobs may not be full time, the weeding of the garden is almost a full time job for Valerie!

  Weeding is a lot of hard work. The Oxalis is so invasive; it grows anywhere and everywhere and tries to smother everything in sight! It is a shame really as it is so pretty; beautiful Daffodil-like flowers on tall elegant stems. It just grows in the wrong place; our garden!

  Valerie has to tackle it in three-week cycles. Weeks one and two is all about progressive weeding, and in week three she returns to where she started in week one to start weeding again! She does a great job!

  It looks good when it is done!

  We work in the garden every day. Beautiful, bright sunny days follow each other, one after the next, so much so that unless we had a calendar we might not know the date or which day of the week it is!

  Although we work seven days every week and have no fixed plan, we do have a type of daily routine, with just a couple of variations.

  We get up, have a cup of tea together and then we feed the cats. Then we ask each other,

  “What are you going to do today?” Our replies are usually the same.

  Photo: Before Weeding.

  Photo: After The Weeding.

  Stuart: “I’m going to do some ‘Watching’ and carry on with the ‘list’ of things that have to be done.” This list contains items like staining and varnishing and ‘building’ works in the garden, as well as strimming the paths. Valerie: “Weeding and homework!” It is usually weeding in the morning and Greek homework in the afternoon.

  We work until around 10.30am and then we stop for breakfast, and after breakfast, we will work on until around 1pm. Then we stop work again and get changed to go to the village. We go to collect our mail, do the shopping, fill up with water from the village pump, and take the rubbish to the dumpsters. In the spring, autumn and winter months we walk to the village; it is a very pleasant and gentle stroll through the Olive tree groves, and we have two choices of route. We don’t do this in the summer because it is too hot, so I follow the same routine, but in the car!

  The first is along a track that goes ‘as the crow flies’ directly through the main grove to the back of the village. This route takes around 12 to 15 minutes to walk and passes by the cow sheds and a few other outbuildings associated with the smallholding run by the farmer.

  The second choice is along the track to Pantazi beach and then via the beach road to the village which takes about 30 minutes. Even in December people can be seen sunbathing and swimming. The waves are often ‘creamy’ against the turquoise coloured sea as they gently roll up and on to the shingle and sandy beach.

  The beach is about 200 metres wide and 80 metres deep, and at the back of the beach there is a small bar that is open in the summer months and serves ice-cold beers and various snacks for visitors to the beach. There is also a cluster of Tamarisk trees growing there and they provide the perfect shade for the bar’s customers. This is a great place to sit at the end of a day on the beach, to cool off with a cold drink, have a few ‘nibbles,’ and watch the sun begin to go down.

  Photo: Pantazi Beach.

  Photo: Pantazi Beach.

  If we need vegetables, we might buy some from one of the trucks that tour the villages in and around the mountains. The trucks are fully laden with all sorts of produce packed into brightly coloured plastic crates.

  Photo: Vegetable Truck.

  The process is to grab a plastic bag, help yourself to what you want, have it weighed by the owner/driver and pay for it. It can sometimes be a bit of a ‘crush’ but worth it for the freshness and taste of the vegetables that you can buy in this way. No pre-packed, cellophane wrapped pots, just loose and usually un-washed vegetables awaiting your selection! The vast majority of the produce on offer will be organic and probably picked less than 24 hours previously.

  We continue our stroll along the beach road towards the harbour and the village; the sea on our left and the houses on our right. As we walk along the harbour wall towards the Post Office, we look at the men working on their boats moored in the harbour.

  We always marvel at just how crystal clear the water is in the harbour. As we look, sometimes there appears to be more fish swimming around the boats than those they catch out at sea! If any fish have been caught that morning, they will already have been unloaded, and we will stop to check out the catch which is laid out for sale. The men put the fish on the marble slab of the table on the edge of the harbour slipway.

  After unloading their fish, the fishermen work on cleaning and stowing their nets away for the next time they venture out into the sea.

  Photo: The Fish Stall.

  Photo: The Fish Stall.

  For us, the next stop is the Post Office as mail is not delivered to house; you have to go to collect it. It is not surprising really as the streets don’t have names, so what chance of finding his way along the tracks to the various houses sprinkled within the Olive tree groves surrounding the village? Little or none! We check the stack of envelopes and small packets on the counter, take what is ours, and if we have anything to mail we pass it over the counter to him for weigh and stamp. Then it is on to the small supermarket next door for bread or
any other items that we may need, and then we will walk back to the house.

  Although the return walk can be completed in less than 30 minutes, the journey can often take well over 90 minutes as we stop and chat to the villagers we pass along the way, and this gives Valerie an opportunity to practice her Greek. Me? I nod and smile and say “Nai” (Yes) or “Oxi” (No) at the appropriate moments, and “Yassas!”(Cheers!) as we move along.

  The return journey can also be longer because we decided to treat ourselves and stop for a glass of wine, or a glass of Ouzo.

  Photo: Glasses Of Wine At The Ready.

  Photo: Stavros With An Ouzo.

  After all, it’s all about our new life living here in The Mani and ‘It Started With An Ouzo’, and old habits die hard!

  Whichever route we take to the village, we will always stop at one of the water pumps to fill some plastic bottles with water fresh from the mountain springs that flow into the village wells. One of the taps is at the base of a ‘lookout’ tower that was built on top of a well during the Greek Civil war.

  The water on the mains supply is quite salty. It also contains an exceptionally high level of other minerals. Although we can drink it, we prefer the taste of the spring water from the wells, especially for making tea and coffee! Even the water from the well has quite a high level of mineral content, so much so that we have to de-scale the kettle once per month! Another tap is on a traditional water hydrant at the edge of the road.