We are back from Padova e Zurigo (Padua and Zurich, nell’inglese) and can report that we had a wonderful time. A full report on our excursion north is forthcoming. However, today we will backtrack and first tell all about our adventures last week at the frantoio (olive mill).
As was reported earlier, we finished our harvest last Thursday and took our olives to the frantoio for a 5 pm appointment. When we arrived we had a little difficulty getting into the parking/unloading area of the mill (top left photo). There were cars, truck and people everywhere. It was almost 20 minutes before we actually unloaded our olives into a cestino (bin). Each cestino can hold up to 500 kilos of olives (top right) Finally the frantoio fork lift set them on the scales (row two). We had estimated a weight of about 150 kilos but the frantoio’s official figure was 134 kilos. I guess that is the accuracy you can expect when you weigh your olives on a bathroom scale from IKEA.
We waited 10-15 minutes for our olives to be dumped into the hopper where the processing starts (row three left). While doing so the gentleman who came in behind us asked when his olives would be processed. The man who checked us in said, “Dopo la Signora (after the lady).” So, at that point “our” olives became “my” olives!
Once the olives are in the hopper they begin their journey through the machinery. First, the olives go up a conveyer belt where the leaves are blown off and the fruit washed (row three right). From there the olives go through a chute (row four left) where they are ground up (yes, pits and all) and the resulting mash is dumped into a mixing machine (row four right), sort of like giant beaters (row five left). The mash spends about an hour in the mixer were the movement makes large oil globules out of small oil globules.
The next step is for the mash to be spun in a centrifuge so that the solids (pits, etc.) are spun off leaving only the liquid. The resulting mixture is centrifuged again so that the water and oil are separated. The bright green olive oil then streams out a tube and into one’s containers (row five right). There is a tap that can be turned off and on so that one can use more than one container. We used four 5 liter plastic jugs and part of a 5 liter glass jug for a total of about 22-23 liters of oil. That was about 14%, by weight, of our original 134 kilos—a very respectable result.
As you know, if you read last Thursday’s post, after collecting our oil we went out for a celebratory dinner at La Fonte, one of our favorite restaurants.
Before we left for Zurich we managed to completely fill the three 5 liter plastic jugs we plan to bring back to the U.S. It was not until today that we finally put the rest of the oil, about 7 liters, into other containers. We now have a supply here for ourselves plus some to give to friends. Overall, we are really pleased with this year’s olive harvest and the resulting oil.
Rain started falling heavily last night and continued today. Fortunately, we had no plans to work outside (yeah!). I cleaned house and Dom puttered around alternately helping and keeping out of the way. In the afternoon we ran errands. It finally feels like Autumn might truly be here but we still hope to get some Italian Indian summer before we leave in four weeks.
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