Wednesday 4 March 2015

Day 191-245: Escaping Winter - Olive harvest

Nice & Warm in the Laconia area, the start of 2nd part of my winter hibernation



Mike's home grown veggies



 My first bag of olives

 At another field

 Nets placed under the olive tree

 I tried them raw... its very bitter


 Kalamata olive tree

 Kalamata olive leaves are bigger

Leaves of another type of olive





 Ready to be taken to the factory at the end of the day

 Picnic basket for lunch... with tsipouro, wine and beer to quench your thirst daily


 
 Roberto helping me to load Thorn in the boot as I wanted to ride`back from work

 This is Stella

 Stella giving me the puppy eyes... whats up girl

Lucy... she gets whatever she wants and everyone loves this princess

Lucy's paw... I like to play with it

 Spiro working at the machine

 The fields at covered with clovers


 The loose olives that falls from the trees and out of the machine... have to pick the twigs out


 Hanni at the machine, running olive branches through the machine

 The loose olives on the nets


 Robertoo (my host) cutting the branches

 Packing up to move to another field

 Lunch with Hanni, Roberto, Spiro and Sascha.. Yamas

 I looked like a bandit... it was the coldest day I had with some snow

 Burning branches... for some warmth too




 Our hideout

 Up on the ceiling... hello anybody home?


 Walnut tree

 Found a mascot hanging in the field

 Men fixing technical problem

 'Tree Cancer'... if you cut this branches on a wet day and use the same saw to cut another tree, it will pass the 'diesease' to the new tree




 Not nice to keep getting poke by them when they get mixed between the olives I try to clean

 New life




 Branches need to be burned after the harvest

 
 Sascha getting off the remaining olives left on the trees with the 'rotating' stick

 
 New toy... no need to pick the twigs by hand now



 Moving the nets around


Sascha, Spiro, Hanni, Anthony, Adrian, Roberto

Hanni & Spiro knew I like Halva and didn't forget to get me one on our last lunch together

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Olive factory







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Daily view

 Sunset view from the house

View further up the mountain

 Fig tree


 Almond trees

 Home grown veggies

 My favourite greens in Greece, wild winter vegetable (Horta). 

 I can eat them everyday. Take some time to pick and clean them though. Bascially you boil them, drain the water, add olive oil, lemon and garlic.


Malvin

 Bernie

 
 Tarzan with his girlfriend... Simple love

 Her name is 'No brain'

 

Trying to learn Greek haha

 Sascha found this 4.5 leaf clover... Lucky? I will keep it safe till the end of my journey


Prepping edible olives for soaking... crush and soak them for weeks before we can eat them

 Figs

 Crushing almonds for the chocolate cake that Barbara gonna bake for us...

 Barbara homemade bread

 Helping Barbara to make cheese Ravioli for dinner

Anthony (French baker) who was also here for the harvest bake us croissants.

Coincidentally we had roast chicken on Chinese New Year eve... Barbara & Roberto's visiting friend, Michael who was a chef cook us these spread. I'll just take this as a celebration for me.
Chicken from their farm.

''Replenishing stock''... for eggs and food

 Sascha & my teamwork... prepping dinner as Barbara & Roberto had other plans on one of the night

 Strange looking thing... a kind of swede?

 Carrots from the garden

Tasty wild asparagus... one of my favourite. Roberto, Barbara & especially Sascha have been picking them and I had lots on the last two days before I depart. Eating them cooked or raw makes me happy.


 Barbara taking me horse riding

 Weekly get together singing with Barbara & Roberto's friends

 Tuning instrument


The game Sascha and I played to past time. The lighter was merely leaning on an olive and you can stack anything on top with things found on the table

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Bike ride home after work

 Stack rock... nature creation?










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Monemvasia
 Day trip on the bike

 Old olive tree

















 



 

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αντίο

Sascha penning down his inspirations in my note book.
 Thanks for making the last ride to send me off, coming for the previous few rides, being the occassional 'GPS' etc etc!

Also huge thanks to Barbara and Roberto for this opportunity and letting me stayed longer than agreed. I had a fantastic time (feasting, learning and experiencing new things) that I broke down in tears on my departure (embarrassed)... Not shed a tear on my riding days but for this...
Greetings to everyone back there and hope to see all again! Was lucky to have arrived here, wonderful people, beautiful landscape, perfect weather that I was brown from the sun... The day I left it was 24deg and I'm going back to the north which is below 10deg.



13 Jan 15: 8.5km [Sunny]
26 Feb 15: 7.5km [Sunny]
01 Mar 15: 78.92km [Sunny]
04 Mar 15: 8.55km [Sunny]

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