It’s olive harvest season out here in the Moroccan countryside, and that is definitely something to blog about, if only for the fact that it has temporarily taken over the daily lives of my neighbors and friends. Everyone gets involved in the process, and finding myself out and about among various villages quite a bit these last few weeks (walking through the abundant olive groves), I’ve come to really like this time of year.

The process begins with harvesting, which is not like any harvest I’ve ever seen before. Men, women, boys and girls all head out to the olive groves in the late morning, armed with pruning shears, large tarps, buckets, sacks and anything else that will carry olives en masse. The tarps are spread out on the hard clay earth underneath the ancient olive trees. Boys and fathers climb up into the trees to whack and prune the trunks and branches, allowing the ripe green, black and purple-ish olives to rain down onto the tarps below, where the wives and daughters are waiting to collect the olives in sacks and buckets.

baby animals in the olive groves

a neighbor's grove

These sacks and buckets of olives are all towed back to the village to a building known in Darija as a “maasra”. The “maasra”s in my area are comprised of a room with a large circular stone basin with a large stone disc propped in the center. This stone disc is attached to a harnessed donkey that pulls the disc in a circular motion in the larger basin. The olives from the fields are thrown into the stone basin and are ground down by the stone disc/donkey machinery to a rough paste-like consistency.

Maasra

Maasra again

This paste is then transferred to woven basket-like sacks, circular and about 3 feet in diameter. These “sacks” of olive paste are then stacked beneath a metal press, that isgradually screwed downward. The woven sack material surrounding the freshly ground olive paste allows for the olive oil to seep out in the pressing process, leaving only the drier olive residue and crushed pits behind in the woven container.

The oil that is pressed out of the stacked woven “baskets” drips down the press and through holes in the floor of the “maasra” to be collected in a concrete basin below the building. There are usually a set of “trap doors” next to the press that open to reveal a huge vat of fresh olive oil. I asked my neighbor the other day, while visiting him in his “maasra,” about how many liters of oil he can produce a season from his trees in the fields. He told me that his family averages about 300 liters of olive oil a year.

The best part about olive season, as far as I’m concerned, is the social aspect. Though I’m sure all of this sounds like a lot of work (as it is), every step in the process is a family affair and involves tea, food, gossip and a fair amount of goofing off. During the day in the fields, the women are constantly chattering as they sit on rugs pouring each other tea, or snacking on almonds and peanuts (“his daughter’s husband did WHAT? No, I can’t believe it! He seemed like such a nice boy…. God help us all!” “I know, I know! She really should have married the Sheikh’s brother’s son… we all knew this would happen” etcetc).

finishing up olive harvesting for the day

family olive harvesting!

tiny olive harvester

Walking through the olive groves lately has been surreal in that from every direction one can hear “whacking” and people calling out greetings from up in the tree branches. Many of the olive trees here are so old and large, however, that I often hear someone long before I can see them. As I approach a clearing, an entire family sitting beneath the branches (and up in them) can be seen. The event appears, at first, very similar to a family picnic, and doesn’t actually differ much, with the only exception being the olive harvesting alongside all of the socializing.

And then there are the “maasra”s in the evenings. Beside the perpetual game of pick-up soccer being played outside by various rag-tag groups of men and boys, inside every “maasra” can be found a corner with a cozy little fire place and an omnipresent tea service, refreshed every few hours by sisters and mothers. The men work in the “maasra”s all evening and into the night, grinding and pressing the harvested olives from the day’s work, and often cooking meat in the fireplace for dinner. For the last several weeks walking around my various villages, I see men in every “maasra” doorway, hands black and covered in sticky olive paste, wearing rubber knee-high boots and white, olive-stained aprons, offering me their forearms rather than hands as a greeting (though I still end up with olive paste on me, somewhere). Buildings that I had always assumed were homes have now revealed themselves to be either “maasra”s or olive storage buildings(closed up and unused every other time of year), and I’ve just now realized how many olive trees there actually are in my area.

Many people ask me if we have olive trees and “maasra”s in America, and when they hear that we don’t, they feel so sorry for me that they usually offer to bring me several bottles of their family’s fresh olive oil and encourage me to send some home to my family. When I explain that people in America still eat olive oil a lot, but that it is just expensive because we have to import it from places like Morocco, the pity turns to pride. People encourage me to tell everyone to visit from home, so they can taste Moroccan olive oil at its best… fresh!

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