The Olive Factory

Given the personal experience of picking olives from an olive tree in an olive orchard last weekend, I was excited to see what happens to the olives once they're picked.  How does it become olive oil?  Today was my opportunity to find out!

After we left Tuscania, we drove another 30 minutes to a town called Canino, which literally means "Little Dog" in Italian.  Who knew that THE best olive oil of the region came from a town called "Little Dog"?

What I didn't know beforehand was that we wouldn't go directly to the factory.  Instead, the bus driver pulled over on the side of the road, in the middle of an olive orchard as far as the eye could see in all directions.  There three men greeted and directed us several hundred yards into the orchard where a tracker sat.  Attached to the tractor was a mechanical arm and on the end of the arm was a huge comb, that when turned on vibrated back and forth.  The comb is how the men harvested the olive trees.  The comb harvested an entire tree in a matter of just a few minutes, whereas it took several of us last week about 45 minutes to an hour to harvest one tree.  Boy, we could have used one of these things last weekend!

The whole gang at the olive
orchard in Canino

While it was amazing to see the men manipulate, in almost artist-like fashion, this mechanical comb they were gratious enough to allow several of our kids try their hand at it!  It'll be an experience they will never forget.  Here's one of my advisees, Akbar (left), taking his turn.

After thanking them for their hospitality, we loaded the kids back on the bus and headed to the olive oil factory.  Our guide, Paolino (see right with Ale, Italian teacher), was also one of the men that lead us out to the olive orchard.  At left is where the process begins.  The olives get dumbed into a vat that separates the leaves and tree branches from the olives.  The olives then go up the conveyor belt, leading them into the factory itself.

The olives go through another vat that does a second round of separating from any remaining leaves.  The olives go up another conveyor belt (see left) that sends takes them through the preliminary process of becoming olive oil: weighing, cleaning, milling, and pitting.  Afterwards, the liquid inside the olive is extracted in blue and white tanks (left).  Once the liquid is extracted, then there's a separation process the liquid goes through that causes it to become its final product, olive oil.

The olive oil then get sent to these huge tanks (right) where the oil gets weighed and goes through a "curring" process.  Once the oil is "cured" it's ready for production, or to be bottled.  The oil is packaged three different ways: tiny (for the airline industry), small/medium/large (for the general public), and extra large (for commercial use).  They had a small store on site, so I was able to stock up on the best olive oil in Lazio at wholesale prices!  The picture below-right are boxes of the large olive oil bottles that will be sent to grocery and mom/pop stores around the region for purchase by the public.  Below-left is the assembly line for mass production of olive oil for commercial use.  You can see the olive oil in the cylindrical tanks being cyphoned into the large cans being put on the conveyor belt by one of the technicians.

All of this olive oil production made us all wanting some.  Fortunately, adjacent to the factory was a "Bruschetta Roo
m," where we could go, have a crostini with a dash of salt and some very tasty, hot-off-the-press olive oil.  So good!  Below are four SYA-ers getting their hands on a fresh batch of bruschetta (from left: Emily, Reggie (one of my advisees), Rebekha, and Jacqui (another advise of mine).

Tuscania

Today's Friday day trip first took us to a quaint town called Tuscania, about a 30-minute bus ride from Viterbo.  And while we were basically killing time before the main attraction later (that would be the olive oil factory!), Tuscania was very nice distraction.

Tuscania is home to several churches (what city in Italy isn't, right?), but we were privileged enough to go to the Basilica di San Pietro (see left).  It is the oldest church I've stepped into yet since being over here.  Legend has it that the church dates back to the 8th century, at a time when Tuscania was given by Charlemagne to Pope Hadrian I. Other historians say it was erected in the 11th century.  Either way, it's still one of the oldest churches I've seen in Italy and given this fact, it is in amazing shape.  Unfortunately, no photography was allowed on the inside of the church but I found a picture on-line (see below), a very good representation of what I saw today.

The inside is very simple, not ornate in any way.  There are remains of what probably were some very beautiful fresco paintings, but certainly not overdone.  Likewise, the alter was very modest.  Nothing on it except a cloth to cover the top with a microphone stand on top of it (very much out of place).  So, it's an active church even though it very much has a ruin feel to it.

Because no photos were allowed, the Ale and Daniele, the Italian teachers,
asked the students to make a drawing of something in the church that "captured them" in some way.  Then they had to describe the drawing and why it "captured them," all in Italian.  Because today is still a school day.........experiential learning if you will, so they were not off the hook from doing something academic.

Here's one example of what students saw while in the Basilica.  This fresco painting is on the crypt of Saint Peter, featuring the patron saints of Tuscania: Veriano, Secondiano, and Marcelliano (14th century).

Afterwards, our bus driver took us into the inner city of Tuscania,
where we ate our packed lunches inside the surrounding wall.  I'm biased, of course, but their "inside the wall" wasn't nearly as impressive as Viterbo's "inside the wall" until you walked to the opposite side of where we entered it, an area called the Acropolis.  There, we were welcomed to a very beautiful panoramic view (see below) of the Basilica di San Pietro, which sits on top of a hill from where were, and the valley that sits in front of it.

The weather was overcast and cool, but fortunately no rain.  We stayed in Tuscania for about an hour or so and then it was off to our next excursion....an olive orchard and factory in the town of Canino, about another 30-minute bus ride up the road from Tuscania.  

The Olive Harvest

Pat had mentioned to several of us at the end of the last week that he planned to harvest several of his 54 olive trees in his back yard this weekend, so naturally all of the American teachers, who had no idea what they were getting themselves into, all jumped on the opportunity!  Actually it wasn't that bad.  For me the hardest part of the day was getting to Pat's house on my bike.  It's about an 8-9 km trip with the last 1/2 km straight up hill.  We're talkin' about a 30 degree incline (or what seemed that steep).  I hadn't seen a hill like that since biking around Wolfeboro, NH last summer (which seemed like a whole lifetime ago)!

Today was supposed to rain all day....well, 80% chance is good enough for me to make that statement.   But as most weather reports here have proven to contradict themselves, today was no exception.  It did rain but it held off until we were just putting everything away, around 2 p.m. this afternoon.  How convenient!  And you're don't want to pick wet olives, according to Pat.  I guess it has something to do with the time they're harvested and when they get to the press is short and wet olives messes up the process in some way (or at least something like that...I can't remember exactly what he said).  So without further ado, below is kind of a pictorial of how my morning and afternoon went.  After my morning workout on the bike, I arrived at Pat and Linda's house around 9:45-ish.  I was put to work right away.  Pat put a hand rake in my hand and off I went raking olives off the tree.

Here's Linda displaying textbook form on laying out the netting under the next olive tree.  The nets catch the olives that fall from the tree to make it easier for gathering later.




On the left is Mario.  He's been Linda's and Pat's mechanic in town for the past 8 years, and now helps them out each year during the olive harvest season.  Here, Mario is on the ladder about to saw off a limb that is unreachable from the ground, even with a long hand rake.  On the right, Julien (Pat's and Linda's son and currently and SYA student) shows how to capture high olives from the ground with the long hand rake.


After enough olives are captured in the nets, it's time to gather them.  Part of the gathering process includes removing any branches that may have fallen during the raking process. Leaves are fine but I guess the machine that presses the olives into oil doesn't take too kindly to tree branches and twigs (go figure)!

Even the kids got in on the action.  Here's Cellie (left), Brad's and Amy's youngest (Brad's the English teacher for SYA), putting some 3 year-old muscle into it.  Go Cellie!!  After four non-stop hours of harvesting, it was time to stop, give thanks, and break some bread.  Here's Mario (right) holding up a handful of the olives we caught out of the several hundred kilos in front of him.  Go team! The team included Pat and Linda Scanlon, sons Julien and Simeon, daughters Mary and Katherine, Brad and Amy Park, their daughters Savannah and Cellie, Richard and Jesse Davis (Richard is the Latin and Greek teacher) and their daughter Caroline, Whitney Hermann (SYA College Counselor) and her son Max, Mario and his wife Gabriella, Gorgio (Mario's brother and fellow mechanic/partner) and his wife Ana, and yours truly. In all, there were 20 of us out there harvesting olives.

The meal to follow was fit for a king!  It began with an apperitivo, which consisted of crustini, olive oil (their's of course), salt, onion chutney, radicchio cheese, followed by grace (a Hail Mary in Italian), followed the primi (or first plate).  The primi, made by Gorgio (left), was a home-made spaghetti with pieces of red peppers, olive oil, and pepperoncino spice.  Also pictured with Gorgio is his wife, Gabriella (behind him), and Mario's wife, Ana.  Interesting fact: Gabriella and Ana are sisters and they married men who are brothers.  Makes it easy around the holiday season, right? In the above-right picture, that's me with Whitney enjoying the primi with a little wine, well-deserved I might add!

The secondi (second plate) consisted of Italian sausage, pork, olive-oiled potatoes, and stuffed red peppers.  We wrapped things up with some homemade peach gelato and a small cup of espresso.  Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.  The only part I wasn't looking forward to was the ride home.  I really wanted to get more horizontal after the food engorging that had just transpired!  Many thanks to Pat and Linda for opening their home to us and letting us in on a little Italian culture.  Who would-a-thunk you guys were from New Mexico??

The Darby

The Darby is what you call two rival teams from the same town or area who face-off in soccer.  As you can imagine the rivaly is intense, especially if the two teams are evenly matched.  That is not the case with these two teams, Viterbo vs. Montefiascone.  More on that in a moment.

Dave and Roberta, who both work for SYA in various roles, have a son, Daniel (see right, #11), who plays on the Montefiascone team.   I would call the league these teams are in as semi-professional, comprised of players who are either on their way up in ranks (like Daniel) or on their way down, due to age or injury.   As it happens, the players do not know for sure whether or not they start until right before the game starts.  You can imagine that it's nerve-racking for the players but as I discovered it's nerve-racking for the parents of the players too.  I saw a behavior in Roberta I do not see at school, a hyper-nervous, crowd-rallying, nail-biting, proud parent of a soccer player on the Montefiascone team.

Daniel gets the nod.  He's starting at left forward position.  Roberta and Dave are beyond thrilled.  It's actually very cute to see them in this light.

As Roberta and Dave described it to me, while this IS a darby, I wouldn't call it much of a rivaly when one of the teams, namely Viterbo, always wins.  In fact, they have not lost a game the ENTIRE season, which began back in August.  Montefiascone is sitting somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of their record, so they are clearly the underdogs in this match-up.  Apparently it is no secret that the owner of the Viterbo team went out and "bought" the best players in the league with the expectation they'd not only win the league and hoist the championship cup at season-end, but he is arrogant enough to think that his team is talented enough to win (or at least not lose) every game they play.  Always a good strategy but not reality.

GOAL: 2-0 Montefiascone!

But as history in ANY sport will tell you, every team is beatable on any given day.  This day was one of those days.  On a foggy, cold, and rainy fall Sunday afternoon in Montefiascone the team of the same name scored a goal about half-way through the first half while playing some incredible defense.  Mo ntefiascone's goalkeeper had an amazing day, ala Jim Craig (1980 US Olympic Hockey goalkeeper vs. USSR).  Within 2 minutes of the second half, Montefiascone scored again, with the whole play set up by Daniel.  Without his pass (in between two Viterbese players) to his teammate, his teammate would have never had an open pass to the eventual goal scorer....an assist on the assist if you will. Dave (see above left) and Roberta were quite proud indeed!

Viterbo got a cheep goal with 15 minutes left to play but that's as close as they would get.  It was a little tense on the last play of the game, as Viterbo had an open shot to the goal but the ball sailed over the goalpost.  Final score:  Montefiascone 2, Viterbo 1.  Even their very organized cheering section (see left) couldn't will the ball in the goal.

After the game, apparently the owner of the Viterbo team was so irate he told his players that they wouldn't see another paycheck until they won another game.  With this loss they were 0-3-1 in their last four games, but still way out in front of everybody else in the league.

The outcome was significant, however, as it sent shockwaves throughout the league.  Goliath looses to David in epic match, as the newspapers described it in the newspaper the next day......okay, so I'm getting a bit carried away.  That was not the headline in Monday's newspaper but the game was, nevertheless, exciting for the Montefiascone-friendly crowd.

Update:  Montefiascone kept up their winning ways with a 1-0 victory over the team currently in 2nd place in the league.  Keep up the good work!  In other news, Viterbo crushed their next opponent 6-2.  I guess the players will see another game (and another paycheck)!

SYA Futbol

Toward the end of October, a team of SYA students took on a very formidable team of Viterbese high school kids that play on a team that one of our host fathers coaches.  The host father's name is Johnny.  Great guy who works at Viterbo's police headquarters.  He helped all of the students and the American teachers through the process of getting our work permits, which you need along with our VISAs in order to work here.

Alexia showing good form!

The game is on a Wednesday.  Game time: 5:30-ish (because hardly anything starts on time here).  The venue:   a converted tennis court, across the street from the Porta Fiorentina train station, whose surface can only be described as indoor/outdoor carpeting with a healthy sprinkle of sand to create just enough slide that I'm glad it's them playing and not me (lol)!

Dominic, our goal keeper

The field is O.T.W. (for those of you who forgot, that's Outside The Wall) so it's about a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment.  But now that I have a shiny new red/white mountain bike (thanks Pat Scanlon for helping me get it!) travel time is trimmed down to just 5 minutes.  As I arrive, all of the key SYA players (Akbar, Dominic, Jasper, Will, and Alexia) are warming up with several more in the stands.  This is clearly an SYA-heavy cheering section.  Advantage, SYA!  As it turns out, that was the ONLY advantage we had (lol).  We got our clocks cleaned.  Final score, SYA: 3, Viterbese: 20, more an American football score!

Ben with coach Johnny

Nevertheless, it was great to see the kids outside of the classroom, cheering each other on and having fun!  My hope is that I'll get to play tennis with some of them in the future.  Several of the kids recently started up the SYA Varsity Tennis Team.  I was officially invited to join the team the other day.  What an honor!!

October Trips

With the end of the first quarter comes comments for all of my students followed by comments for my advisees, which is based on the comments written about them.  Did I mention that SYA is going through re-accreditation process and the burden of writing up the report for this falls on the shoulders of the English-speaking teachers??  So needless to say, I was pretty busy in October to update my blog, but not so busy that Mike and I couldn't squeeze a few day trips around the Lazio region (5 trips to be exact)!   So here they are in a nutshell!

Soriano nel Cimino (October 11): Aside from this quaint medieval town being close to Vitbero (about an hour bus ride) our motivation for going was to witness their annual chestnut festival, where merchants roast chestnuts in these gigantic iron pans over an open fire in their main piazza, among other festive events.  The picture at the right is the town of Soriano taken from atop the Orsini Castle, one of Soriano's main attractions.

One of the main events involves the town dividing into four sections, called 'Contradas'.  The names of the contradas are San Giorgio, Rocca, Trinita, and Papcqua.  Each contrada competes in a series of events for which the winner receives a prize.  The more prestigious award they gun for is 'best medieval feast.'  Each contrada sets up their own taverna during the two weeks of the festival, decorating it in colors of their contrada.  The picture below is the entrance to La Contrada Trinita.

Because we were traveling by bus, our itinerary was dependent upon the bus schedule to and from Soriano.  So unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of the 'hype' surrounded by the festival.  Nevertheless, we really enjoyed our afternoon in Soriano.  The town was all dressed up with flags of the four contradas hanging from private homes and store-fronts.  Everyone was in a good mood and so willing to help us get around, even with our broken Italian.

The Orsini Castle of Soriano (see right) is one of their main attractions.  Perhaps everybody in the town was either resting from the night before, or resting to get geared up for the events of that night because Mike and I had the entire castle to ourselves.  The castle was built in the 13th century and was the summer home of Pope Nicholas III, member of the very influential and noble Orsini family of the time. Three popes, 34 cardinals, and several military, religious, and political figureheads have come from this one family over the span of several centuries during the medieval era.

Bagnaia (October 13):  Like Soriano two days before, the weather on our day trip to Bagnaia was unbelievable!  Unlike Soriano, Bagnaia was close enough to Viterbo we were able to take a Viterbese city bus (instead of a Viterbese regional COTRAL bus).  Travel time was a very reasonable 15 minutes.

The big attraction in Bagnaia is the Villa Lante Garden (see above), which is perched on a hill overlooking the town.  The 'Villa' began by the building of two identical square-shaped houses, known as 'casinos'.  The first casino was commissioned by Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara in 1566, who served under several popes during his tenure.  One of his highlights was being elected to the papal conclave, which was responsible for elevating Ugo Boncompagni to Pope Gregory XIII.  The second casino was built 30 years later by the next owner, the 17-year old nephew of Pope Sixtus V.

And while the grounds are spectacular with their sculpted maze-like hedges, the main theme of this garden is centered around water.  The garden has several tiers to it, each with unique fountains and means for which water travels.  On the third tier, there is a long stone table (above left) with a central channel of water flowing through the middle.  The purpose for this interesting design was to keep the wine cool when the current occupants of the grounds entertained their guests.

Again, the local folk were so nice to us.  After our 3-hour tour of Villa Lante, Mike and I, rested our feet at a tavern at the base of town.  Our server spotted our 'American-ness' a mile away and began speaking in near-perfect English to us (with a healthy Italian accent).  I kept speaking in my broken Italian while she spoke in English.  Super nice and took very good care of us.

Bagnoreggio (October 19):  This was the most spectacular of our trips, by far!  Bagnoreggio is literally a town on the top of a hill that's decaying into the surrounding valley.  Official population: 12, although once you're there, you realize that number refers to who live there year-round.  There were clearly more people there than 12, as evidenced by the number of stores and restaurants that were in operation when we arrived.  The town is certainly alive on the weekends and while the weather still permits ideal travel to it.  Again, like the other trips, the weather was ideal (see picture left).

In order to get to the 'old Bagnoreggio' you have to walk 2 km from the bus station in 'new Bagnoreggio', with the last .3 km a traverse across a footbridge.  No cars on what can only be described as an elevated water-less island.  You can see how the town's square mileage has dwindled over the centuries; little-by-little it slides down the side becoming part of the surrounding valley's landscape.

Rome (October 25): My aunt Manny, cousin Brian, and his wife Megan, were in Rome visiting Grace (Brian and Megan's oldest daughter), who was 'studying' in Rome for the semester through a program that is supported by her college (Bucknell) back in the States.  And while I didn't get to see Grace (she was out of town with friends from the program), I had a fantastic time catching up with the three of them.  They all looked great and it was really the first time I spent any significant time with Brian and Megan.  Simply put, they're good people and I feel very fortunate that our visit worked out.  Who knows when I'll get the opportunity to connect with my relative on that level again (you see, there are too many relatives and it would be impossible to keep up with them all)?   My only regret is that I forgot to snap a photo of us all before we parted ways.

Rome (October 31):  Halloween in Rome!  It's no New Orleans (or so I've been told...never actually seen it myself), but Mike and I saw several people walking around in full costume, either going to a party or having just left a party and on their way to the pubs around the Coliseum, which is where we where headed.  And while it was fun to be in Rome to celebrate 10 previous days of very hectic lesson-planning, grading, and, most of all comment-writing, the "bitter" part of this bitter-sweet trip signified the end of Mike's five-week stay in Viterbo.  The good news is that I've decided to return to the States in December, so I will see him (and many others) again in Atlanta, as well as family up in Michigan for Christmas.

Let's face it, it's a tough pill to swallow to be in Italy for Thanksgiving but Christmas too?  I thought I'd be able to do it, but as the season draws nearer what was I thinking?  Gotta be with family, enough said.  Thanks in advance, Bob and Heather, for opening your home to me!