Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Olive Season in Morocco


Would you buy this liter of brownish stuff in a recycled Coke bottle from a roadside stand in Morocco? Neither would I—until now. If you did, you might well be getting the finest of traditional olive oil for about $2 a liter. It’s olive season in our area and now is the time to stock up. We have been fortunate to experience both the olive picking late last year and the olive pressing which is currently going on.


One day in late December, our host family invited us to go with them to their farm in the valley where they grow olive trees, almond trees, and a large vegetable garden. It was a pleasant day, like a fall Montana day, with warm sunshine and crisp cool air. We all shed our coats except for our host mom who is made of steel. (She wore her long black wool coat all during the picking, eating lunch, and the hour’s walk back to the road.) Some people beat the olive trees with sticks until the olives fall off, but not our host family. They treat their trees kindly, and we picked every olive on the tree by hand, dropping them into a canvas spread under the tree. The olives were then hand-sorted and put into bags, ready for pressing. On the walk back to the road to catch a taxi back to town, we passed by a spring where a cut-off soda bottle had been left as a drinking cup. Our host mom rinsed out the cup and offered us a drink from the spring. She gave it to her daughters too, so we put aside thoughts of giardia or worse and swigged it down—as yet to no ill effect. When a taxi finally came by, it had three people in it already. There were five of us but we all piled in anyway, with one person sitting to the left of the driver. Luckily it was a short trip home.

Last week, we were invited to spend the day with another family to participate in the pressing of olives into oil. Again, it was a beautiful winter day. The small mud and concrete building that houses the press is on a hillside overlooking the valley, and the view from there is stunning. First we loaded sacks of olives onto a donkey and hauled them to the press. There they were dumped into a large circular stone mill with a huge grinding stone hooked to a horse that walks in circles around the mill. While the horse was doing his work, we ate fresh bread dipped in olive oil and drank coffee. After the first grinding, the mash was put in shallow baskets which were stacked in a column under the hand press. The weight was slowly tightened on the baskets while the oil poured through the basket mesh into a tile container in the floor. Hot water heated over a wood fire was added to aid the oil flow. The water and oil naturally separate while sitting. The mash in the baskets was then dumped back into the grinder, and the process was repeated two more times. After the third pressing, the oil in the floor was skimmed of impurities and funneled into various plastic containers. The men then lugged about 15 gallons of olive oil back to the road. As you can imagine, this is a time-consuming process. I spent part of the day sitting on a rock outside in the sun looking out at the mountains across the valley and listening to the squabbling of chickens and the sound of horse’s hoofs plodding around and around. The next time you buy a bottle of traditional olive oil from the store, think of the labor of men and women, donkeys, and horses that went into it.

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