NORTH CYPRUS | NORTHERN CYPRUS HOLIDAYS | HARVESTİNG MEDİTERRANEAN GOLD | PICKING OLIVES IN NORTHERN CYPRUS
Always towards the end of October, harvest time is announced and celebrated with the Olive Festival in Zeytinlik, a traditional event where everything to do with olives is displayed, folk dances and theatre plays shown, poems and short stories read, and where political and cultural personalities give their blessing to the coming harvest days. At the same time, the oil mills open their doors and check their machines fort he rush to be expected as this year promised a good harvest. Last year, the harvest produce was very poor after an incredibly hot and dry summer. Finally one beautiful November morning, we felt we could no longerwait for a good shower of rain, so we brought out our ladders and buckets and chose our collecting positions. I had equipped myself with a big plastic bag around my waist like a kangaroo and my neighbour commented that I looked very Professional.
My husband climbed to the very top of the trees while I stayed around the lower parts and I took the twings in both hands and just stripped them off. In no time my belly bag was filled and ıI went to empty it into the wbeelbarroow. We bad at least two days of endless pıckıng bours abead of us as the whole picking and sortıng process must be fınıshed ın no more than two to three days, otherwise the acid content rises which is not good fort he quality of the oil, or the olives start to rot. It is a very work intensive time of the year, but it is the last harvest in your garden before winter comes except fort he citrus fruit which  are about ripen. While my hands were automatically grasping the branches with their rich burden and stripping the fruit off and into my bag, I had all the time in the world to think about the hıstory of the olive tree, some thousand of years old, the oldest and biggest producer of life
Enhancing oil, of its value in bonouring the gods in temples , bonouring heroes and sportsmen, of the oil being used for beauty products or  as a basic food ingredient and many more uses. In my Latin classes at school, I had heart about my  beloved beroes sauntering in olive groves carrying a music instrument and singing ballads to their women, and, having grown up in Bavaria between oaks and birches, I always longed to own an olive grove such as we have today, small though with three old and venerable trees and five yound and newly graffed ones having been grown out of old stock. From these young ones I harvested olıves without any blemishes, nearly the size of plumbs, big gren and blue ones-they are not black, just to inform you-and brought them into the house for preserving later which means an extra day of work.The sun was warm on our backs and the freshly arrived migrant bird were singing their sweet songs our heads. And we started to talk about things we had not bad the time to talk about for ages. There was a certain ceremonial creativity in the picking. The harvesting. You work for your food.
Follow the course of nature. Obey its laws and gratefully receive the fruit of what you have planted. And cared for.Along with this work the problems of your day vanish into insigificance: your mind and soul are concentrated on the fruit and your hands, the basic meaning of life. The breeze ruffles the leaves and shows their silver colouring, the ancient trunks with their rough Marks of age. The bending and unbending. Knotting of wooden power. Just like the wrinkles in an old human face. During the evening hours, we sat under the arches of our terrace sorting the olives. There were hardly any worms this year. The evenings was cold and we had to get fur jackets out and a bottle of our own red wine, which helped us to finished the job before midnight. In the morning at 6-30 am we proudly took 150 kg of hand-pıcked olives to the olive mill where two big lorries with tons of big canvas sacks stood waiting at the front. The mill was already in full swing. The machines are stil coll with 40c being the temperatures limit for cold pressing. I was thinking back to the days in the old village mill in Karsıyaka where I had to sit for seven hours to wait my turn.
The big Stone wheels turned and crushed the olives to pulp which was then ladled into flat wicker baskets, like large envelopes, mounted on a centre pole like a tree. The pree plate came down and pressed the oil through the baskets into the basin below from where it was led to the fitler. And there at the end sat the lucky olive grower, collecting the gold-green jet of oil into his containers. Men and women sat on their sacks or crates of olives, enjoying the process or they helped with the loading. Tested the oil with a lump of bread and commented on it, threw some slices of lemon into the pulp and waited patiently. Todays modern process is less romantic but equally exciting, and certainly more hygienic and faster. First the leaves are blown away with a jet of air-there ar emay olives growers who do not bandpick their olives but bring sometimes rotten loads onto the transport belt-then they are washed and the olives jump merrily along until they disapper into big tanks where they are crushed. This we can no longer watch as we could in the old traditional way. Then they are channelled through modern centrifuges, from which you obtain a very clean oil.Out of our 150kg we obtained 29 litres of delectably smelling gren oil which we tasted immediately after we had returned home, with fresh salad and crisp bread, the rewards of many days of work. During the five hour wait for our turn, I also learnt the secret of black olive oil.
The olives are boiled and then dried before they re brought to the mill.The oil has a very strong taste which is not to everyones liking. At home I had the big bowl olives waiting to be preserved. I took me some more hours to cut them twice lengthwise. I have soaked them in water which I will renew every day. After that I will prepare them my way and in a couple of weeks I will have a delicacy for us and friends to taste with a glass of wine. Those who have never tasted that moment of happy satisfaction which comes after many days of hard work when they see that gren-gold liquid flow into the containers, can never know nor appreciate the luxury which lies stored in the gnafled trunks of the olive trees.
All year Cyprus travel can arrange for you a holiday in northern cyprus and you can discover Northern Cyprus meet with locals, pick olives with cypriots, and taste real natuaral life,
For more information for Natural North Cyprus holidays please contact All year Cyprus Travel.
