Olive picking

At first, I thought farmers were just pruning their olive trees to prep for spring, I soon realized it is olive picking season here. In fact, my e-bike guide Adam said it starts in November and goes as long as February. He has 600 trees that he manages and one tree can yield up to 20 liters of oil.

But I didn’t set out to pick olives today. My destination was Chamezi the only know Minoan palace in the shape of an oval. I parked where the road got sketchy, laced up my hiking boots, and set off for the 1 KM walk to the ruins. I greeted some olive pickers on my way down the road.

The ruins were not large. And not marked, but the view from this creat was amazing. It was easy to see why the Minoans picked this spot. Honestly, if they or the Venetian’s didn’t build something on a spot in Crete, it wasn’t worth having, which is to say, no wonder there are so many amazing ruins in this island.

Whether the oval shape was due to the plot or some other reason, It is not known for sure. I believe as the Greeks still ate today, they were good stone masons and worked with what they had.

I also may have seen the Elanora falcon which is known to soar over this valley, but I could not make a positive identification. Whatever these birds were, they were definitely catching the wind currents.

On the way back the olive pickers were in break and wanted to chat after I made friends with their dog. They asked about our incoming president with a smirk. They assumed I was from California. They wanted to show me trees with better olives.

There we started picking them and putting them on a plastic water bottle. When it was almost full, they told me to take it. And that is how I came to be bringing my own olives.

But first, I took a drive back to Sitia to go to the museum there. In the sign in book just one ah read of me was a couple from Minneapolis, but they had been there another day. This museum is small and doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but there were some cool relics there. The defining piece is a small terracotta statue of a goddess with a head dress that identifies where this headdress style began.

Then I went to a cafe by the harbor to have some tea and a sweet while I did some reading. The sun dropped and it started to get chilly, so I was time to find a glass bottle for my olives because marinating them on plastic just will not do! I got an orange water bottle at the grocery because I liked the color.

Once home, I rinsed the olives before putting them in the bottle with water. I will need to change the water every day for a week, and then add salt and whatever other spices to brine for another week. I should have just enough time to finish and sample my olives.