“We’ve all been given a gift, the gift of life. What we do with our lives is our gift back.”   
– Edo

When Matthias contacted me nearly two weeks ago to check if I’m up for a day of harvesting table olives on a local organic farm, I jumped at the opportunity. Not only did I find myself on a piece of land that would even in South Africa be considered a farm, but with its mixed farming approach, it also felt like the type of farm I grew up on and am familiar with. It was a first for me in Portugal, where most pieces of land are less than 10 ha.

It was an exhausting but satisfying day dragging nets around to different parts of the land, harvesting different table olives separately. I quickly caught on, learning the most important instructions: “apanhar” indicating we were collecting the olives; “em frente” as we dragged the nets to the next tree, and “ta bom” – it’s okay. I enjoyed working with Zé and Felípe, and was pleased when I learned that they would also be helping with the harvest on Matthias’ land.

On Matthias’ land I learned to read and anticipate the next move by watching Felípe’s actions closely, and we quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm without the need of many verbal instructions. I like to work like that. Give me too many instructions, and I am bound to get irritated. I’ve never been a fan of group work. I like to be left alone to work at my own pace, using my own logic. Having to deal with different, often contrasting inputs, and deciding on a method, before the actual work can start is an exhausting exercise to me. With various people helping, I followed Felípe around as he decided what needed to be done with the nets, either gathering olives, or preparing them so that Matthias and Zé could just keep moving from one tree to the next with their machines. We managed to harvest between 1000 and 1200 kilograms of olives per day with 5 people working the whole time, and another 5 people coming and going.

Four eight-hour workdays (with an extra two hours on the road each day) flowed into one another, interspersed only by a break to attend my three-day fungi course and another day for mushroom club. On Friday evening when I got home at 7pm, I was knackered.

I vowed to take it slow over the weekend, but as there is always work on the quinta, rest was interspersed with chores to try and catch up on my own work. A quick walk through the garden ended up with me picking loads of peppers and eggplants, which had to be processed for later use.

The cats and I did make good use of the lovely autumn weather over the weekend by going for strolls on the quinta, and just sitting in the sun, soaking up the warmth and peace of our surroundings.

Today I feel almost human again as I prepare for four days of physical labour on the land – hopefully finishing the lower part of the garden and sowing some seeds; pruning the rest of the lavender; and do some general strimming and pruning, before the predicted rain sets in on Friday. In-between I promise to catch up on responding to comments on previous posts, and other correspondence that had to be set aside. But first and foremost, although I will be working on the land, I will do it at my own pace, and in doing so, I will also catch up with myself as I engage in the joys of solitary work.

Portuguese Words:
apanhar – to collect
em frente – in front of
ta bom – it’s okay

Notes:
# It will take a couple of weeks for Matthias to harvest all 500 trees, as the four days of harvest last week only saw around 150 trees harvested. In the short time he co-owned the land, he only managed to prune a small portion of the olive grove. Unpruned trees, although they bare a lot of fruit, take a long time to harvest and clean, as there are far more leaves and sticks that need to be taken out once it falls with the olives onto the nets – first by hand, and then a machine that separates the leaves from the olives. He has grown a substantial market for his olive oil in Switzerland, and with just under 10 kg of olives per litre of oil, it looks like it will be a good year for him.
# We only have 29 olive trees with olives on, and although I have no idea when they will be harvested, I trust that Matthias will keep his word to help me.
# I have learned a lot over the last week and a bit, and Michael and I will most probably buy our own equipment next year so that we can, for the first time, be in charge of our own harvest, and not have to rely on a friend who has to go out of his way to help us.

Written by: Jolandi