The first light link: light, wind noise in the reeds and the birds gently awaken us. It is 7 o'clock in the morning and we emerge from our huts open to the winds. The air is fresh in November on Datca peninsula, but temperatures rarely drop below 15 ° C overnight. After a few minutes in a half-sleep, we root out of our bed, sweeping the back of the net hands still wet. Out of our blankets, we hasten to put our clothes flavored olive oil. Fat, the first contact with the skin is not the most pleasant but it is a salutary protection against the cool morning. Just time to spray water on your face with cold water and we will join other volunteers for breakfast. We walk along the rows of vines along the path that leads to the kitchen, accompanied Bunjunc and Pasha, cats and dogs who romp around the farm between our legs, excited to meet us. On the kitchen table, a delicious Turkish breakfast awaits us: olive oil, olives, honey and homemade bread, cheese, tomatoes, tea ... The composition varies depending inward, some mornings, lack of fresh bread, we must settle for "Bread Rock", the bread dry and hard that recalls the famous Swedish rusks. Logan
the American is already spouting incoherent mixing stories, obsessions of the moment and theories drawn from survival guides. We beg to remain silent. Capua it is not up yet and already Sarah embarks on the breakfast dishes. Hassan, who decided to quit smoking his cigar lighter morning contemplating the mountains dotted with olive and almond trees, Silvana bailey, Annette has not slept and hid his ring behind his thick black glasses while the sun, it still has not crested. A nice little family waiting for sleepy day's work ... 8:00 still no one, we could sleep 30 more minutes!
Finally, the cough of an engine sounds in the valley, is the pick-up family Yaziköy slowly descending steep road leading to the farm. He stops at the gate and Noura's mother, descends with an armful of food she will cook them: Tonight at dinner we chickpeas. Simge's daughter, is tired and yawning driving. Bédouane Ali and Fatma, aunt, welcomed us with a warm Mehrabi, our conversations are limited but we are always happy to greet us. The team of volunteers in climbs muddy pickup: women inside, men outside in the back, sitting on bags of olive juice which pierces the canvas pants. Capua and Logan have a competition of "extreme farming" consists in running behind the truck and try to ride during operation, to the dismay of Bédouane and Ali who are afraid of ending up with a Western dismembered on the back.
We arrive at field and the volunteers begin to count the eight hours that are left to toil. The sun is there now, and begins to hit hard. Everyone takes his plastic basket, descends the terraced olive grove, and is a tree. Bédouane and Ali from the top of their long years of experience skillfully wield the stick. Apart from some outlandish West has never seen women take these poles! It is an art: we must strike the tree with a blow dry and precise to make the olives fall as rain, without breaking its fragile branches. Our task, simple novice, will be limited to picking olives hand, on the branches or the ground, especially by avoiding to take initiatives which would disrupt the rhythm of ancestral gestures. Obedient and implemented, we discover the thousand and one ways to pick olives, "zeitin toplamak" as we say in Turkish.
the American is already spouting incoherent mixing stories, obsessions of the moment and theories drawn from survival guides. We beg to remain silent. Capua it is not up yet and already Sarah embarks on the breakfast dishes. Hassan, who decided to quit smoking his cigar lighter morning contemplating the mountains dotted with olive and almond trees, Silvana bailey, Annette has not slept and hid his ring behind his thick black glasses while the sun, it still has not crested. A nice little family waiting for sleepy day's work ... 8:00 still no one, we could sleep 30 more minutes!
Finally, the cough of an engine sounds in the valley, is the pick-up family Yaziköy slowly descending steep road leading to the farm. He stops at the gate and Noura's mother, descends with an armful of food she will cook them: Tonight at dinner we chickpeas. Simge's daughter, is tired and yawning driving. Bédouane Ali and Fatma, aunt, welcomed us with a warm Mehrabi, our conversations are limited but we are always happy to greet us. The team of volunteers in climbs muddy pickup: women inside, men outside in the back, sitting on bags of olive juice which pierces the canvas pants. Capua and Logan have a competition of "extreme farming" consists in running behind the truck and try to ride during operation, to the dismay of Bédouane and Ali who are afraid of ending up with a Western dismembered on the back. We arrive at field and the volunteers begin to count the eight hours that are left to toil. The sun is there now, and begins to hit hard. Everyone takes his plastic basket, descends the terraced olive grove, and is a tree. Bédouane and Ali from the top of their long years of experience skillfully wield the stick. Apart from some outlandish West has never seen women take these poles! It is an art: we must strike the tree with a blow dry and precise to make the olives fall as rain, without breaking its fragile branches. Our task, simple novice, will be limited to picking olives hand, on the branches or the ground, especially by avoiding to take initiatives which would disrupt the rhythm of ancestral gestures. Obedient and implemented, we discover the thousand and one ways to pick olives, "zeitin toplamak" as we say in Turkish.
Simge, the "Princess of Yaziköy", is the only one to have some English, she gives us the guidelines we gives us the rare breaks and distributes food to the beginning of meals. We groan when she tells us to pick up olives on the floor, our preferred technique is as good volunteers lazy, directly to pick olives on branches: no need to bend, no back pain or leg and fun to head down into the foliage and to climb trees. Sometimes we just pick the olives freshly fallen, sometimes only thin and dry olives and earthy, at other times, all the olives, indiscriminately and we do understand the reasons for these choices. We do know that these different olive oils can get different quality: for the fresh food and dry for soap production.
Farmers pick the olives at a furious pace: using their dexterity with both hands, without fear of claws from thistles, are they still rest on their two feet, crouched or stretched legs and bent back toward the ground. For their part, volunteers are desperately seeking the most comfortable position and end up sitting on the floor regularly to peck the olives one by one, within a limited radius of 50 cm around their hindquarters. Earlier today the productivity of a farmer must be worth that of two volunteers in the late afternoon that at least three volunteers. Fatma is the eldest of the team, she is 60 years old but the wrinkles of his skin weathered and fingers all swollen and horny by the fieldwork make him appear more. Despite her age, she picked up at an incredible rate under the very eyes of volunteers barely thirty. His little hands do not leave any escape olive on their way, and his body is so flexible that its belly is almost glued to his knees. No pain seems to disrupt: bursting with energy, laughs, sings and dances around the tree she was born. Fatma is a ray of sunshine, an ode to old age.
But the task of collectors is also especially complementary to that of the big hitters poles. They hit and we pick up. To facilitate our work, hitters can lay a plastic tarp at the foot of the tree, "yasgueul" before you start hitting the branches. Suffice it then to fold the sheet and separate the olive branches and leaves. But again, we find that this technique is not systematic and we despair of understanding the reasons for random use. Regularly volunteers implore hitters to use the yasgueul, which gives rise curious to altercations approximate mixing Turkish and cries of despair. But one day the volunteers were able to introduce a sensible use of yasgueul at the cost of incredible efforts of anticipating the work of hitters in the yasgueul have under the tree just before they attack it.
Once the olives collected yasgueul, it is necessary to extract all the small branches broken by the blows to the branches is the most pleasant time. Sitting around the pile of olives, the harvest is stirred into emerging industries. The smell is strong, Oil slides along the fingers plunging enthusiastically into the heap of jewels sparkling in the sunlight. Once this first manual sorting operated, the olives are separated from the outer leaves through a gate they slide down inclined to fail in a bag, while the leaves fall through. This last exercise of the day accompanied by cries of good humor and excitement of the work resonating in the fading light of evening.
is charged The sacks in the truck leaving for the press every other day on average with a cargo of about 600 kilos of olives. While volunteers have joined the firm and the other peasants their home is Simge that deals with the weighing of the bags to the press, the "olive factory" as it is called. Sacks of olives may weigh up to 50 pounds are lifted and emptied by men with big arms and clothes speckled with fat olive. The olives are first placed in a container and transported by conveyor belt to be washed with high pressure. Then, they are literally crushed by two huge stone wheels turning with a crash. What emerges is a greasy mud brown color. This sludge is filled in a kind of braided bags that are stacked on each other to be crushed by the press of a black liquid which flows, mixing water and oil. Finally, at the last stage, while men sip their tea, a centrifuge separates water and oil, and his cock comes a trickle of pure gold.
There is barely one hour of light before the night when the volunteers return to the farm at about 5 am, he must hurry to start the fire to heat water from the shower before we see anything there. Dinner is served before 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock there remain many people around the table, an hour later everyone is lying, is meant to grind away a ferocious beast: Hassan fell asleep and snoring loudly. Suddenly a cry rang through the night: "Mother fucking cat!", Rejecting the company's Logan night Bunjuck who does not like the cold lonely nights.
The two weeks spent on the farm to the rhythm of the sun, we have given a true lifestyle, we could also glimpse the difficulty of work in fields and measure the value of each product Nature. Olives, yet we see throughout the rest of our trip around the Mediterranean, but now we enjoy them in a totally different way. It's funny, even long after the harvest, the sight of a few olives on the ground awakens in us an irresistible urge to look for the picking!
For audio slideshow below, remember to put the sound!
The photos are also available on our gallery here . Farmers pick the olives at a furious pace: using their dexterity with both hands, without fear of claws from thistles, are they still rest on their two feet, crouched or stretched legs and bent back toward the ground. For their part, volunteers are desperately seeking the most comfortable position and end up sitting on the floor regularly to peck the olives one by one, within a limited radius of 50 cm around their hindquarters. Earlier today the productivity of a farmer must be worth that of two volunteers in the late afternoon that at least three volunteers. Fatma is the eldest of the team, she is 60 years old but the wrinkles of his skin weathered and fingers all swollen and horny by the fieldwork make him appear more. Despite her age, she picked up at an incredible rate under the very eyes of volunteers barely thirty. His little hands do not leave any escape olive on their way, and his body is so flexible that its belly is almost glued to his knees. No pain seems to disrupt: bursting with energy, laughs, sings and dances around the tree she was born. Fatma is a ray of sunshine, an ode to old age.
But the task of collectors is also especially complementary to that of the big hitters poles. They hit and we pick up. To facilitate our work, hitters can lay a plastic tarp at the foot of the tree, "yasgueul" before you start hitting the branches. Suffice it then to fold the sheet and separate the olive branches and leaves. But again, we find that this technique is not systematic and we despair of understanding the reasons for random use. Regularly volunteers implore hitters to use the yasgueul, which gives rise curious to altercations approximate mixing Turkish and cries of despair. But one day the volunteers were able to introduce a sensible use of yasgueul at the cost of incredible efforts of anticipating the work of hitters in the yasgueul have under the tree just before they attack it. 
Once the olives collected yasgueul, it is necessary to extract all the small branches broken by the blows to the branches is the most pleasant time. Sitting around the pile of olives, the harvest is stirred into emerging industries. The smell is strong, Oil slides along the fingers plunging enthusiastically into the heap of jewels sparkling in the sunlight. Once this first manual sorting operated, the olives are separated from the outer leaves through a gate they slide down inclined to fail in a bag, while the leaves fall through. This last exercise of the day accompanied by cries of good humor and excitement of the work resonating in the fading light of evening. 
is charged The sacks in the truck leaving for the press every other day on average with a cargo of about 600 kilos of olives. While volunteers have joined the firm and the other peasants their home is Simge that deals with the weighing of the bags to the press, the "olive factory" as it is called. Sacks of olives may weigh up to 50 pounds are lifted and emptied by men with big arms and clothes speckled with fat olive. The olives are first placed in a container and transported by conveyor belt to be washed with high pressure. Then, they are literally crushed by two huge stone wheels turning with a crash. What emerges is a greasy mud brown color. This sludge is filled in a kind of braided bags that are stacked on each other to be crushed by the press of a black liquid which flows, mixing water and oil. Finally, at the last stage, while men sip their tea, a centrifuge separates water and oil, and his cock comes a trickle of pure gold. There is barely one hour of light before the night when the volunteers return to the farm at about 5 am, he must hurry to start the fire to heat water from the shower before we see anything there. Dinner is served before 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock there remain many people around the table, an hour later everyone is lying, is meant to grind away a ferocious beast: Hassan fell asleep and snoring loudly. Suddenly a cry rang through the night: "Mother fucking cat!", Rejecting the company's Logan night Bunjuck who does not like the cold lonely nights.
The two weeks spent on the farm to the rhythm of the sun, we have given a true lifestyle, we could also glimpse the difficulty of work in fields and measure the value of each product Nature. Olives, yet we see throughout the rest of our trip around the Mediterranean, but now we enjoy them in a totally different way. It's funny, even long after the harvest, the sight of a few olives on the ground awakens in us an irresistible urge to look for the picking!
For audio slideshow below, remember to put the sound!
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