A wild windy night leaves me feeling rattled: feeling the fresh breeze around the edges of our duvet, and thinking in my stupor that a falling metal cat dish was a precious tile crashing off of our newly(-self)-repaired roof... It took a good half hour of breathing exercises to get my nervous system calmed again for (a night of very broken) sleep.
These days and nights are feisty, inspiring, colourful! There is a vibrant new rainbow-patchwork of woodland splendour. Our olive trees are bounding with rich fruits (at least, some of them). The temperature is glorious for working outside (finally!!) and we get to wander around our land imaginating and planning.
The olives are piling up, whilst we wait for a very specific, modern, mini olive press to be back in stock - they say next week. The prospect of being able to press our beloved harvest is mindbogglingly joy-inducing! It is an affordable, compact wee machine, that will work at just the pace that we like and love: oltra pian-piano. We had a great deal of pre-harvest musing, around how to/ whether or not to/ where to/ with whom to, etc, etc process our happy berries. It seemed like it might even get rather stressful and laborious, before we started researching a home frantoio.
This reminded us that we should always come back to a natural, intuitive and very slow work approach. There is no rush, because we are not trying to cram the harvest in, between other jobs. The trees, the olives, the land, all want our full, undistracted attention. And our prayers and love; our gratitude.
Though we are simultaneously doing some major pruning and some very radical cutting back, it feels like the trees are in-tune with our actions, as we work without the usual fuel-powered tools and tractors. We don't even use the mini rake - which folks commonly 'comb out' the olives with. In fields further down the steep mountainside, we are jarred by the noisy heavy metal of mechanical engine-powered goings-on, and we give thanks that we're far enough away from them.
Each tree has a different family of olive fruits, and we think of how they might have been planted - all eighty-five at once is unlikely - and some may even have self-planted; I certainly found an occasional sapling under a tree, and replanted it in a more auspicious place, where it might grow to its full potential.
A few of the olive trees are crammed in too close to each other, but this may be because of them not having been cared for in recent years. Olives have the tendency to retake their bushy form - they are plants/ bushes, actually, not trees! - when not tended to. Though it is rather intense, I am loving the process of helping each olive tree, amidst rogue walnuts and an veritable army of mini oaks, to find their right form. The sacred geometry that will allow them to flourish healthily: the robust stance and easy structure that'll allow them to maximise the energetic flow through their beingness.
This is the beautiful shepherding, guardianship work that Beloved 
As Vincent makes apple crumble for breakfast (we have mascarpone too, yuuuuummmm!), I think about the rinsing of yesterday's raccolta, and about that Sicilian technique of boiling olives that some Iranian friends back in Guardia once told me about. Otherwise, this year we'll be doing the first few buckets in salt, I believe.
Looking forward very much to sharing more with you all - and to having our olive groves in better shape, for our guests in the future to enjoy the olive harvest with us!
With Love!
Clare.