Wwoofers weekly

A quick update on our week with Lauren and Luca...pictures taken of Luca picking olives from the tree in the front garden, the first Sunday afternoon when we went for a walk to Yator, Lauren picking olives on Monday, transferring the olives from the net to a bucket, loading the car to take to the mill on Tuesday (237kgs), outside the caravan on Wednesday after work when they had picked some eating olives and are getting them ready for soaking in brine, cleaning the leaves from the net after picking at the end of Thursday afternoon and lastly a view across the 'breakfast-orange-juice' tree towards Sierra Gador with some snow on the top still.

We took another 245 kgs down to the mill this morning and have picked about 130 kgs more today. We all ache in strange places but are getting fitter and have lovely soft hands!!

They have chosen to stay in the caravan so they have more privacy and have created a cosy home for themselves - it's now called The Love Shack. (for those that don't know, that's the title of a song)

Problems with uploading pics tonight.. hopefully better tomorrow.

Olives, olives and more olives!

We took 237 kgs down to the mill in Yator yesterday evening and have filled 4 sacks today (about 140 kgs) but from very large overgrown trees that needed huge branches taking out first before we could even get up the tree to start picking from the inside. Lots of firewood and trimmings today, tomorrow should be easier trees to pick so more kgs to take for pressing. The sun is shining and it's warm enough in the sun to work in a t-shirt although the snow is still up on the hills.

More snow, no harvesting.

We woke on Thursday morning to snow falling, not too much, just enough to lay on the ground and it continued all day although it didn't lay any more. But when we woke yesterday it was to a total white-out, several inches of snow as far as the eye could see, even towards Ugijar which doesn't always get snow. Unfortunately for us, we had arranged to go to Almeria to meet our wwoofers that are helping with the olive harvest. So John set off, thick packed snow every where, cars stranded on the far side of Cherin as the access road from there to the main road leading down to Berja and then on to El Ejido was too slippery for them to get up. It took 2 hours 15 minutes to get there and the same back (normally 1 hour 30) But they all got back safely in time for lunch and that afternoon we took them out for a walk around the land, up to the fuente etc. Lauren is American, from Little Rock, Arkansas (she went to dance classes with Chelsea Clinton) and Luca is Italian from Parma. They met when she was doing her Masters at university in Parma. They have come down on the train, Milan to Barcelona, then on to Almeria. So today we started another tree and guess what...it started to snow again while we were eating lunch. We have abandoned work for the day - they are making a home from home out in the caravan, the coffee pot is on, the laptop is connected, the i-pod is playing and they are very cosy. John is in the kitchen making dinner, something hot and spicy I hope. Hopefully we will be able to get on with work tomorrow, more news as time permits.

The hills are alive....

with the sound of chainsaws! yes it's olive harvest time again and sometimes it's easier to prune branches that are too high and then pick off the olives rather than struggle to knock off the olives with a stick or try and climb the tree to reach them. Also some trees are too compact to climb so pruning is the only way to pick. We have done 2 trees over Monday and Tuesday, the first one was huge, provided 70kgs of olives and about a week of firewood for next year, all the green trimmings were taken by Juan from Yator (his family have a flock of goats and sheep) for animal food, the second was all pickable by hand from ground level and didn't need any pruning, but only produced 20kgs of olives. We took them to the olive mill in Yator this evening, they were cleaned (a sort of leaf blower) washed and weighed, we then got a chit to keep until we have taken in all our harvest and then we hand in all the chits when we have finished for either oil or money or a combination. Unfortunately this year is only paying out about 40 cents per kilo - last year was 80 cents. For oil, you need about 8kgs to produce 1 litre. So we have either earned 36 euros or got about 10 litres of oil. We have lots more trees to do in the coming weeks....

Happy new year!

We had a quiet night at home, went outside to watch the midnight fireworks and then watched the UK celebrations on tv at 1am. Apparently there was a "do" for Noche Vieja (new years eve) in Yator with free drinks but we didn't find out till yesterday! By all accounts it was very quiet, and also cold - no heating in the village hall :(

We are starting our olive harvest this coming week, hopefully the weather improves. It's been trying to drizzle today, the clouds are down low and it doesn't look too good. Some locals have started their olives, they have walked across from El Golco - about half an hour walk - they have land here in Montenegro. There's only a footpath linking the two, but it's a lot further round by road.

Update on the sourdough bread.....we are going to try again when the spring comes, the temperature is up and down too much at the moment. It needs a constant temperature to grow well (21 apparently is best) so in a sunny window is ok, near the fire is ok, but during the night it's too cold. Although the starter grew, it took much longer than we expected and when I wanted to prove that for dough, couldn't get it to froth up no matter how warm it was. We never have the house at 21 degrees (unless of course it's July and August and we'd love it that cool then!) but come May or June it should work. So it's back to making the usual dough, that never has a problem rising.