Liquid gold hunting

(Versión en castellano)

“They halted, then, and called out to each other. As Nausicaa, daughter of valiant Alcinous, commanded, they found Odysseus a sheltered spot. They set out a tunic and cloak for him to wear, and smooth olive oil in a golden flask, and invited him to bathe in the running stream”.

The Odyssey. Book 6.

Part I

Early morning on a 2012 late January Sunday, the gang of laborers appears down the slope. They are young people of the area, no foreigners among them. Thirteen people including the foreman, named José Francisco, are ready for one of the last days of the year’s harvest. The infantry is equipped with shaking mechanical machines, which they engage in the thick branches of the olive tree to knock it down. The engine, similar to that of a chainsaw, starts shocking for a few seconds; the tree trembles violently. The flickering of the sunlight on the silvery undersides of leaves accelerates spasmodically. The olives fall and, from behind, several rakes appear to put a reddish dust cloud with olives, stones, dirt and leaves into black baskets. Beyond them, a tractor waits.

The harvest has been easy this year. It did not rain during the winter and it is also expected that the final product will be good. “The quality is achieved by picking olives early, not as delayed as usual”, says foreman José Francisco. “When it rains, the olive falls down to a mud mixed with all kinds of products; there’s no way to get good oil out of that”.

But there is a setback. José Francisco repeats an old mantra of the olive growers: “If it does not rain this winter, there won’t be any harvest next year”. 2013, the foreman predicts, “will be catastrophic”.

Walking up the hill to the town of Baños de la Encina, in the foothills of Sierra Morena, one can see, with stupor, the raw reality. In the middle of the plain, a thin cypress stands out as a skyscraper over thousands and thousands of olive trees scattered for miles around.

With 570,822 hectares of farmland, olive groves occupy 83% of the agricultural area in the province of Jaén and almost 45% of its total land area. The 66 million olive trees of Jaen has named it “A sea of olives” as the favorite expression used to describe the landscape. However the olive trees awake a false idea of uniformity. Stepping closer the trees reveal important differences.