Liquid gold

A bunch of hawks were circling above our heads for hours. They are a beautiful sight, especially if you are not a prey for them :)

Some people say that it is a good omen to see hawks but there are a lot of them on the island and we always have some above the olive groves during the harvest. I think they are just curious to see what we are doing with all that loud equipment that we use and the unusual activity on the fields that are, most of the time, much more quiet.

Of course I couldn't take a picture of them with my phone but I did take a lot of pictures of the olives and the olive trees :)

The first days of the harvest are kind of a fine tuning for the equipment that was unused for almost a year as well as for our bodies. No matter how fit you may be, the olive's harvest is a challenging work and the human body tends to rebel against the long hours of doing the same, repetitive movements.

But after a couple of days you get used to it :)

The job itself is pretty simple, at least in theory. Throw the olives from the trees on the net, put them in bags and take them to the factory that makes them olive oil.

In reality it is a bit more complicated and there are a lot of things during the process that will result a better or worst olive oil, depending on the way you'll do them.

But that's too much to explain in a post. If you ever come to help us in a harvest we'll tell you all our secrets in full detail :)

_{In the picture above I am carrying a jute bag with olives. Photo taken by @traisto.}

And when we through our gloves on the ground, tired from a hard day's work, it is time for the workers at the factory to take the baton and transform the fruits of our labor into the longed-for liquid gold :)