Among the Olive Trees
/The call came in the night.
Okay, okay, in lieu of being able to pop into Bar Bonci for a spot of drama (thanks pandemic lockdown), I’m resorting to adding flair to ordinary situations. I do love me some flair, but perhaps you already knew that, having read my four book series where I added flair to basic banter found in an Italian village cafe. But I digress.
The call did not, in fact, come in the night, and in point of fact, it wasn’t a call at all, it was a What’s App message. But it was a highly anticipated one, and so I leapt up, with the sincere surprise befitting the sound of a telephone renting the still night air.
Roberta sent me a message, letting me know that the season’s olive collecting would begin on Thursday.
But I realize I need to back up, for those of you just joining us. You see, I met Roberta and her family eight years ago, when I tagged along with Doreen to help with her friends’ olive harvest. Sante and Conci sadly told us the rain prevented picking, but asked us to come back for lunch. A few minutes after we left, Conci called Doreen, asking her to make sure I brought along my family. Their son and daughter-in-law, Silvano and Roberta, were also there and so began lunches and dinners, pasta-making lessons, and festivals. They came to my book launch party in Spello, all dressed up and bearing a bouquet of flowers.
So you can imagine how excited we were to see them last month, after we arrived back in Spello and sprung out of quarantine. I was not the only one, Sante and Conci were waiting by the gate when we arrived, and oh it was so hard to only bump elbows rather than falling into their arms. We settled at the familiar long table as Sante poured Prosecco from a friend’s vines. Soon enough we were laughing about everything and nothing, my heart vibrating with joy. A funny thing, given the language barrier.
Meanwhile, Sante patted my hand and urged me to pour myself more of his homemade red and take another piece of the prosciutto he’d cured from his brother’s pig. When I tucked a slice into Conci’s soft torta al testo, along with a bit of truffle frittata, he sat back with a grin. “Brava, Michelle.”
And my eyes smarted with tears.
Also, where else but in Italy do you visit somebody’s house for a spectacular lunch and get sent home with a party favor—this time, a bottle of last year’s oil. The new oil, they said with serious eyes, the new oil would be coming soon, the harvest was just around the corner. On our walk to the car, Sante and Conci promised to have Roberta contact me when it was time for olive collecting. Sante pulled my elbow to show me the mushrooms growing in the field, and when I mentioned how much I loved the mushroom crostini at lunch, he paused. “Brava, Michelle.”
And now, the time had come. I called Conci to get particulars and let her know of course we were delighted to help. Remembering how fog can thwart a harvest, I watched the weather forecast with more than the usual critical eye. Thursday dawned beautifully clear, unlike that time eight years ago when I missed the harvest and gained a family.
Though I had to blink pretty furiously to ascertain the day’s clarity. My eyes, you see, were blurred from a malady I find quite common this time of year. Too Much News. There had been an election in the US, as you may or may not have heard, and our family had gotten little sleep, trying to will poll numbers into existence while we doomscrolled, our eyelids scratchy from exhaustion.
We yanked ourselves out of bed, forced ourselves to eat something, and pulled on our shoes. By the time we got to the car, our steps had a bright spring; a nice side effect of not being able to park outside your house, you are forced to take a rejuvenating walk whether you want to or not. We piled into the car, ready to roll.
The car, unfortunately, was not so ready.
The dead battery would have been funny if we’d been less fractious. Just when we decided to see if we could swap out the Ape’s battery for the car’s since they seemed the same size (luckily Keith had firsthand knowledge of this, having just replaced the Ape’s battery), Graziano got my message, saying he did in fact have jumper cables, and he was happy to help.
Fifteen minutes later and a reconfirmation that Gabe would come by later to get Graziano’s house keys for cat sitting over the weekend, we sped toward Bettona, with all the anticipation of a family who has no idea what’s to come, but kind of can’t wait.
As we pulled into the driveway, Fritz the dog alerted the surrounding hills that we’d arrived, and Sante and Conci hailed us from the groves. We bustled down and found them waving from nets spread under the olive trees, smiles lighting their faces. Within moments, we had tools in our hands and had admired Sante’s machinetta, an electric rake for getting the olives down from the high branches. The noise of the machinetta soon became a distant drone, more background than focus, as I raked olives from the branches until they dropped onto the waiting nets.
The rake, being plastic, easily stripped the ripe olives, while leaving the leaves on the branches. Rake, rake, rake. A fall of olives lighting onto the net, soft as rain. Rake, rake, rake. The shimmer of leaves, the mesmerizing shading of the olives, green to purple, the calls and laughs scattering around as we worked. A spell formed over and around us, a quiet even with conversation and the machinetta.
My mind, it trained on nothing more than these olives, these leaves, this day—right now. Once in awhile, of course, my monkey brain would shove some emotion, some thought into my consciousness, and my hand would itch to pull out my phone. but soon enough the urge evaporated like the fog rising out of the valley below.
Maybe this is what I need. A life in the groves. Work that consumes the mind until the soul reclines at peace.
It’s also true that the English words in my head couldn’t stand around annoying me while there was so much Italian all around. The only English word we heard during the harvest was “King”. As in Sante nodding sagely that in the groves, Conci was king. His Italian accent is so thick, I didn’t recognize the word as English until he added comandante for context. Even “king”, though, soon lost it’s Englishness in the course of the day, as it morphed into Kingetta.
Conci just rolled her eyes and smiled, patting the clips she kept attached to her jacket, like military bars, announcing tenente (lietenant), generale (general), and capitana (captain). Leaning forward she told me that next year, she and Sante would celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They met, of all places, in Belgium. This we learned during our early visits, but I got more details this time around, or maybe I just understood them better. Conci’s father moved to Belgium to work in the mines when she was young. Her family joined them a few years later, when she was eight years old. Eventually, her family bought a bar with rooms to let upstairs (a few of the sacks we used for hauling olives were old laundry sacks from the bar—so durable!), located close to the mines, which is how she met Sante, who had been working their too. They met, they fell in love, they got married, they had Silvano, and when he was eight, they returned to Italy. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, must have been a kind of culture shock. I mean, she spoke the Italian of her Italian-Belgian community, but she must have had few if any memories of Italy at the time she returned with her husband and small child.
Conci cast Sante an affectionate glance and said, “He’s always smiling.”
Sante is indeed always smiling, and he pulled Gabe into his orbit of cheer. “Gobby!” he’d call, and then ask how he was doing, “Come andate?” Or “Gobby!” And then he’d impart a little bit of wisdom for how to charm women (which Gabe, bless him, passed along to me). “Guarda,” he murmured to Gabe, and then he’d call to me through the groves, telling me he couldn’t believe this was my first time collecting olives. I laughed with pleasure and Sante nodded, his eyes alight. So pleased. Then he turned back to Gabe and told him to always compliment women, they like to know you see them doing a good job.
Gabe took this in.
“Listen to your elders,” Sante began many a sentence. And our Gobby nodded, with great seriousness, while his eyes danced.
Speaking of, Gabe informs us that only Sante and Conci can call him Gobby, but we’ve taken to doing it anyway, and he just grins.
Siena is Siena, I’m likewise Michelle, but Keith is…impossible. Sante did try a couple of times, but away from the dining table where we’ve had almost all of our previous interactions and where names aren’t needed (at least across the table; as you know, “Brava, Michelle” is a constant refrain, Sante being the only person in my life who thinks I’m an incredible person for taking another piece of truffle frittata or for noticing the salumi is exceptionally good), he stumbled trying to call out to my husband. Eventually, unable to get out the indecipherable series of consonants, Sante resorted to what most Italians do, calling Keith, “Damiani.”
As in “Damiani! Get the other end of the net.”
Or “Damiani! This is hard work, isn’t it? But beautiful, no?”
Back to my point though, the melody of Italian helped ward off stupid American thoughts. We spoke more to Sante and Conci than we did to each other, and when our family did conference, we used Italian. So Italian filled my mind. With one notable exception—at one point, as Conci and I raked the same tree, she started singing “Volare.” In Spanish.
?
I don’t get it either—at this point I’d understand if she felt like breaking into a French song—but I joined in, and soon we were belting it out, the words and harmony (such as it is, I’m a terrible singer), lifted from the glowing olive tree to drift across the groves. Causing my husband, “Damiani”, to have no idea why he heard “Volare”, but he felt no need to figure it out. He just chuckled and kept raking.
Other than “King” and some Gypsy Kings standards, the day meandered in Italian as the hours flew by. We learned about olives—Sante and Conci almost exclusively have moraiolo trees, with one leccino (which we all loved, as the plump black olives fairly bounced off the branches, which helpfully arranged themselves downward like a weeping willow to aid our harvest). I remembered a post on an Umbrian Facebook group where a member asked where to get new oil, specifically 100% moraiolo. I wish I could sit down somewhere and taste single-variety oil so I could understand the differences. In the meantime, I’ll take Sante and Conci’s word for it, that moraiolo makes the best oil.
This year around at least, I understand the reverence for the oil so much better. After our visit to a frantoio where I learned how precious and celebratory this moment of the year is for local contadini, and now harvesting olives beside Conci as she estimated how many liters they were likely to get (far more than usual, this year had been excellent for olives; intrusive American thought—at least some part of this year wasn’t a total dumpster fire). I asked Conci where she’d be taking her olives and she gestured down the road, where they’ve been taking their olives for 25 years because it’s one of those mills where the olives aren’t mixed, you get oil from your own olives, the ones you’ve been caring for all year. I nod, understanding thanks to my visit to the frantoio, how important it is for farmers to taste the fruit from their own trees, their own work.
Conci told me that the first harvest after buying the property she toodled to the mill with exactly one bucket, secchio, of olives. The trees had long been neglected, and that’s all she had. They laughed her out of the mill. Quantity is no longer an issue for them, their hundred trees take over a week to harvest, bearing in mind breaks for foggy days and for Sunday when Sante and Conci take on hosting duties at Roberta and Silvano’s fantastic restaurant.
We finished raking our collection of olive trees before lunch. Using gravity, we lifted the corners of the nets, propelling a slide of olives into the corners, where Conci funneled them into buckets, and poured those buckets of olives into sacks. Later in the day, Sante got out his Lamborghini tractor (giving us a little ride, and ordering me to take a “film”) to haul the sacks back to the house, where he dumped them into a wheelbarrow and used the wheelbarrow to carefully pour the olives into cassette, or plastic crates, where they are stored in the dark until taken to the mill (a few days of waiting helps the olives prepare to release their liquids, but you don’t want to wait too long or they’ll start to ferment).
Sacks filled, Siena and I rolled the nets while Gobby was ordered to be in charge of the “ferri” the iron posts that hold the nets in place. Conci—the Kingetta, Sante reminded us with a satisfied grin,—directed us on how to spread the nets around a new stand of olive trees, securing them with the ferri, and overlapping them to increase the efficiency of later collection, while not losing olives to gaps. Now the grove was ready for when we returned after lunch.
Lunch, I was warned ahead of time, would not be Conci’s usual multi-course affair. One, she’s out there in the groves, so can’t spare the time to cook. But also, this is tradition, Sante tells us, his face uncharacteristically serious. Because after Italian lunch, we all want Italian pausa, and Kingettas don’t want people falling asleep when they are supposed to be working. So lunch is light.
Let me correct the record, lunch is “light”. Panini with prosciutto, wrapped in napkins so we could just take one and start eating, though there was also a plate of sliced frittata with wild greens, and we’ve learned that a wedge of frittata added to a panino is just “il top.”
Torta al testo, a board of sliced cheese, and a platter of flavorful capocollo rounded out our plastic plates, along with Coke and a bottle of Sante’s wine, which prompted him to break into his favorite sing-song, “A San Martino, ogni botta diventa vino!” In honor of November 11th, San Martino’s Day. To our perplexed expressions, Sante settled into explain that November 11th is the first day that new wine is ready to drink, hence the saying, “On San Martino’s day, every bottle becomes wine.” Checking in with Roberta later, she encouraged us to have some roasted chestnuts with our new wine, which we did (recipe here for easy peeling). We are nothing if not obedient.
I did, though, have to stop Sante pouring more wine into my plastic cup, reminding him that I had work to get to, but Siena wasn’t so lucky and he splashed quite a bit in before we laughingly stopped him and forbade him giving Gobby any. He leaned back and raised his shoulders, opening his arms…but Siena is a lady! A Kingetta in training! She should get wine, too. A lean in and a conspiratorial whisper over the last few pieces of capocollo, “Do you like the wine, Siena?”
I watched a smile creep across my daughter’s face, “Siiiiii.”
“Brava, Siena.”
As we patted our stomachs, Conci put out a bowl of mandarini. You may use the word “mandarin” and “clementine” interchangeably, but they are different citrus fruits. Roberta, who had come to help set up lunch as she and Silvano would be assisting with the harvest over the weekend, explained that clementines have fewer seeds and are also less sour. I adore these little mandarini, so small that once you peel their tight skin, you can practically pop the whole thing in your mouth for a hit of sour citrus with notes of evergreen.
Roberta brought out a plate of cubed crostata alla marmellata, which has become Gabe’s favorite Italian breakfast and dessert, a kind of pie made with jam. Roberta had not only made this one, but she also made its orange jam. We talked about how the restrictions have impacted her osteria in Bettona. They’ve adapted to doing some takeout and delivery, plus dinners Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and lunch on Sunday. Over coffee, we decided we’d go for Sunday lunch. We’ve adopted the local custom of traveling on Sundays for lunch, and what better place to enjoy our domenica (sidenote: since this writing, restaurants in Umbria have closed until further notice, only take out and delivery are possible).
Plastic plates and cups translates into clean up that takes about a minute, and we were back in the groves. Pulling my sweater back on as we walked, I discovered an olive in my hood. Conci laughed, and accused me of trying to make my own olive oil by stealing a single olive to take to the mill.
Laughter faded into the blue sky and peace descended as the work began.
The Umbrian winter sun starts to fade around 3:30, just as we pulled the sacks of olives into the storeroom. Regretfully, I cast one more gaze around the hills, framed now with a peach sky, the olive leaves hardly whispering in the stillness. Beauty upon beauty.
We said goodbye and headed home. Once nestled back into our positions on the couch in front of the TV, the peace wore around the edges. But when Keith and I got ready for sleep, we paused at a sound, like plastic balls falling to the floor. After a moment, we realized….Olives. Olives falling from our sleeves, from our pockets, from the folds in our shirt. Olives hiding away, it seemed, for just this moment.
Olives, and the memory of the magic they weaved over and through our day, rained through our laughter.
