The Olive-Grove

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
-- Nelson Henderson

Rossana and Margherita buried in poppies

I consider the olive field part of the garden, and a very important one indeed. This is so partly because 170 of the olive trees are there since more than a century. As a result, their trunks have often interesting shapes: they show what being on earth for one hundred years is like. On the other hand, the olive field in spring is a garden even in the more classical sense. You can see this in a picture featuring Rossana and Margherita buried in poppies and other wildflowers.

The 170 old olive-trees are of the varieties called "Moraiolo", "Frantoio" and "Razzo". They produce oil of quite good quality that, moreover, is completely pesticide-free: I do not use any pesticide (I do not have neither the time, nor the equipment, not the intention) and I am quite sure no pesticides have been used on that olives during the last 30 years. This is what my friend Will Winsborough said about the oil produced in 1998:

It's really a VERY good oil, I think. Very fruity, with a nice peppery finish. Yum! I'm impressed.

After all this you might think: "Well, he is trying to sell his oil!" Wrong: the oil is not for sale.

Snow is not that common in this area, so 3 cm of snow is kind of an event here. From this picture you can see that the olives are actually quite sparse. I plan to plant something like 100 more olives in the empty slots. I am not sure whether mixing hundred-year-old olives with young ones makes sense from the aesthetic point of view but, on the other hand, I don't see why not.

The olive-grove does not contains olive trees only. There are also, among other things, two almond trees: besides producing good almonds they are wonderful when in blossom.

[Page last updated on April 23, 2002, 22:15:00.]