Mara

Mara and The Olives

We didn't really know what the expect from the second farm we were about to experience; all we knew was that she loved animals, was vegetarian and owned an olive grove.

Mara is kind of like an olive: she may leave a bitter taste in your mouth the first couple of encounters, but once you are exposed to her enough, it turns out she is sweet, incredible and nuanced in ways you didn't previously recognize. She is disorganized to the nth degree, forgetting her keys, or wallet or some bib or bob religiously. She drives an olive green Fiat, which I think was a completely intentional decision, my compatriots not so much. She has no time for bullshit, which sometimes comes across as being pretty abrasive, She drives like an Italian, which is to say like a maniac, especially if she's late for an olive pressing. She will nurture you and conjure up some homeopathic cure if you have a cough, a sniffle or a frog in your throat. She loves to laugh, hang out eating freshly roasted chestnuts around her hearth, chatting about politics or horses or her next big adventure.

And she loves olives. I have never seen someone so singularly dedicated to something in my life. Her day revolves around time in the field, and most appointments seem to be scheduled accordingly. If there are olives on the trees, Mara is there to make sure they find their way into a waiting olive-net. She is fiercely proud of her olives and her oil, telling you with a smile about the time she won 1st prize in an annual olive oil competition in Romagna, and may even produce the card with the judges tasting notes and scores...provided she can find it. The oil IS magnificent, the best I have tasted. It is emerald green, not army green, yellow or any other color. Tell Mara about the oil used back home and she is liable to scrunch up her face, stick out her tongue and "blech!" This year's oil, that we tried about an hour after it was pressed, tasted very grassy and slightly peppery in the finish. It may seem strange talking about olive oil as you would wine, but this stuff has subtleties and notes much like a good glass of wine. Ask Mara if you should use it for cooking and she may very well punch you in the face.

Lynn and I were fortunate enough to accompany Mara to the press one evening, while the other WWOOFers went home to gorge on meat (Mara is vegetarian, but allowed the others to cook meat that particular evening). I think this is when the real bond was forged between us - she saw that WWOOFing was not just about having a place to crash and food for free for Lynn and I; that we cared about the product enough that we passed up this evening of meaty madness and wanted to learn as much as we as we could about olive oil and the process. The olives are first washed and picked through (depending on how scrupulous the oil producer is) for things like snails and large sticks. They make their way up a little olive escalator (not the technical term) and from what I could gather have any errant leaves whisked off by machine and the pits removed. They are then milled into this gross, brown sludge by a giant corkscrew and finally passed through a centrifuge to separate oil from water. Total time for the amount of olives we bring in, which is typically 800kg or so: about 3hours.

When the press guy Marco crunched the numbers for the amount of litres yielded, Mara was ecstatic, clapping her hands and hugged us. 13%, the best anyone got that day. She'll be happy to get over 200L from her olives this year, since that's how much friends have already ordered from her. At 10 euros per litre, she'll make over 2000 euros. Taking into account the month or two spent pruning the trees, the cost of supplies to nourish the trees and pay for the press, and resources to pick the olives, she really doesn't get much back... But she does it anyway.