Walls in France: Quintessential Provence!

There are lots of things that Provence is known for…sun, lavender, cicadas, and olives. Our friends, Heidi and Jean-Paul Becker, have 60 olive trees on their property that they harvest each November on their own. They pick the olives and then take them to a mill in St. Remy de Provence to be pressed for olive oil. It is not a money-making venture, but an act of love for the trees, the olives and the process. They invited us to help them pick olives this week and we jumped at the opportunity. Luckily, the weather was wonderful (sunny and cool) and we started picking the minute we arrived at about 1:30pm – we learned that you can pick the olives by hand or with a small rake, but you need a net below the tree if you are raking and there are only two nets so most of us did the picking by hand. We were told that we could pick all of the olives, regardless of color or size. Most of the olives were green, but some were getting darker and seemed to be violet or even purple. We were encouraged to pick up the olives off of the ground that we dropped or had fallen earlier because all of the olives would be pressed, even if they were a bit bruised. The olives covered the trees and we soon discovered how rewarding it was to pick the olives and fill our baskets and buckets. It was gratifying to strip the silvery trees of all of their fruit, knowing that the outcome would be lovely green olive oil. I actually became somewhat obsessed with the process and acknowledged that olive-picking is a great activity for someone with a touch of OCD! At 5pm, we had to stop picking and pack up the cars with our harvest. After the obligatory pictures of our haul, we followed Heidi and Jean-Paul to the mill where the olives were then weighed and added to the other deliveries of the day. We were then lucky enough to visit the pressing facilities and learn about the process of preparing the olives and extracting the oil. It was a great experience for our family and we all await the olive oil with great anticipation!