It all started because of—or, as things turned out, thanks to—a disagreement. Or at least it does in the version of how the olive came to be grown in Greece that has come down to us in Greek mythology. History, civilization, and ultimately the fate of man himself, would have been vastly different if two Olympian gods, Poseidon and Athena, had not found themselves competing to become the patron deity of the newly-founded city of Athens. It was decided the choice would be made on the basis of who offered them the better gift: the god of the sea or the goddess of wisdom. Poseidon set out to impress his way to victory. He “flexed”, to use the common parlance, creating a spring gushing forth from the rock on which, many centuries later, the Parthenon would be built. But its water was brine.
Athena was less flashy, but her gift was better thought through. She gave the new city a tree, the olive, whose fruit could feed its people and whose oil could light their homes. The other gods chose Athena’s modest but meaningful offering, and the olive tree has been identified symbolically with her, and the new city named in her honor, ever since. Of course, there’s also the less lyrical version. That the tree that became a driving force of Attic life, and came to be identified with the culture and civilization of Greece, was actually brought to the Mediterranean’s European shores and planted here by Greek colonists or Phoenician merchants.
But why let the historical evidence spoil a good story? Especially at a time when hundreds of Greeks have taken to returning to their ancestral roots and villages to tackle an agricultural task which they regarded until recently as nothing but a chore: harvesting the olives.
Antonis, an Athens-based lawyer, was well past fifty before he felt the urge to take a trip down memory lane and step—literally—into the shoes (or boots, if you prefer) of his ancestors. As an adult, he experiences the olive harvest as a joy, not the forced labor he remembered from his youth. In his 60s now, he devotes every weekend in November, and sometimes the first week of December too, to gathering the fruit of the fifteen olive trees in his family’s grove in Oropos. He’s done it for years now, with his friends on hand to provide company and assistance. As he puts it, he wasn’t motivated by some late-life epiphany to turn his hand to agricultural production. No, it was the collectivity and companionship that comes with the harvest. “We may have detested the whole process when we were young, but now it feels like I’m following in my father and his father’s footsteps and carrying on the family tradition,” he explains. With the day’s tasks allotted and all the necessary tools at hand, along with the requisite supply of food and drink for the breaks, Antonis and his friends are ready to embark on an activity that’s as rewarding as it is physically demanding. “The moment you see your own oil being pressed out of olives you picked with your own hands off your own trees… well, it’s positively orgasmic,” he concludes.
Apart from being essential for the trees, and profitable in many ways for Man, the olive harvest has always been a milestone in the farmers’ year and, of course, a social event for local communities.
Elias and his followers
In today’s image-centered, digitally connected age, there’s no escaping the constant stream of Instagram stories and TikTok videos. Elias, who works as an electrical engineer, has been back home in the Argolid for the last 25 days. The 29-year-old, who is now a naturalized citizen of Athens, says he simply couldn’t miss the olive harvest, into which he was initiated at the tender age of six. Even when he was away doing his military service, he made sure he was home for this family ritual that’s been handed down from generation to generation. Now, he makes an effort to keep his followers on social media informed about the progress of the harvest, with near-daily snapshots.
Starting at seven every morning, Elias spends seven or eight hours in the field with his father. The work, he explains, is both difficult and demanding. Most of all, though, it requires proper organization and a sound methodology. Especially since we’re talking about 1,500 ‘roots’, which is what people from proper farming stock—like Elias—call their olive trees. Still, it’s anything but a foregone conclusion that the children of farming families will return to their villages to help with the harvest. But those who do agree that even this short homecoming gives them a lot more than their yearly supply of extra virgin olive oil (though with prices being what they are, that’s not to be sneezed at); it’s also a source of joy for the older generations.
A tough task
Christos, a 26-year-old postgraduate student, has also gone back to his hometown in the Peloponnese to help with the harvest.
He says it’s a special time of year for every family. What does he like about it? That the olives are a top-notch reason to get up, get out, and get moving. “We’re a bit lazy in my generation. I mean, most people my age have no idea how oil is produced, or how a tomato grows. They see them on the supermarket shelf and think that’s it,” he says.
He also points out that the harvesting itself, which may seem easy or painless to many, actually requires a well-structured plan of action, the assigning of roles to everyone involved (in his case, himself, his father and his uncle), and a fair degree of physical fitness. Because harvesting olives, he explains, is one of the toughest of all agricultural tasks.
For her part, Angela found that out in the most hands-on way possible only last weekend, when she accepted a friend’s invitation to ‘get back to nature’. By the time she got back home late on Sunday night, she’d pressed enough oil—with her own hands—to see her through the year. What will she remember most from her 48-hour farming career? The transformative moment of seeing the olive become oil, but above all the laughter and the chats during their well-earned breaks. It was such a meaningful and above all enjoyable experience, she says she’d do it again in a heartbeat.
