Olives Groves, the eternal tree.

 At this time of the year our olive grove takes on a festive look, the hillside appears to be akin to Christmas decorated trees. Before we started to grow olives, I always believed birds did not like olives, they most certainly are not palatable to human tastes before being pickled.

Parrots are the main villains, they just sit there cracking the olive open in order to eat the seed. They try one, then another until an olive meets their requirement. One lone parrot would not be too bad, but ten, twenty or more can make short work of the crop in no time. Other birds, also seem to be addicted , starlings have this addiction, only they  seem to be more intent on seeing how many they can pluck, drop, pluck, drop, there seems to be some sort of competition to see who can remove the most within some sort of time frame.

The olive tree embodies human history, the beginning of our civilization. The farming, harvesting, and pressing the olives for oil, to be used as food, medicine,  burning for light, stretch back into prehistory. There are gnarled survivors in Lebanon that have been carbon dated to several thousand years. Olive growing therefor is a very serious business, it is not an activity to be entered  into lightly with only short time frame in mind. I must confess that our decorated trees don't seem to be all that effective, I thought the silver and red tape fluttering in the breeze would discourage birds. It seemed to work at first, for a year or so, but not any more, so you see birds do discuss these things among themselves. European olive groves don't seem to have this problem to the same extent, they have already eaten most of the bird life, so numbers are now more controllable.

Another first for this years harvest will be the trying out of a mechanical wand, it consits of two clapping like hands, that also move sideways at the same time, causing the olives to fall onto  tarpaulins around the base of the tree. These machines run on a tractor battery so that you can move from tree to tree. It all sounds very simple, you rake or comb the tree, and the olives fall down! Yields of course are highly problematical, what with the birds, wind and other natural interventions. Is it all worthwhile, I hope so, most things we do in life just don't have the time frame of an olive grove. You need a long vision into the future, plant them hopefully for many generations to come. They are after all called the eternal tree, they can be burnt, chopped down, will withstand heat, frosts and still regenerate, no wonder the ancients loved the olive tree. Sacred to the gods, it is said when Julius Cesar chopped down the sacred olive grove in Spain he sealed his fate.

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