Fall has reached my site and it’s absolutely beautiful; the leaves don’t change color here but the weather is as fall-like as any I’ve experienced (not that I have much need for relief from summer since the heat here isn’t too bad). Students are back in school now, everyone is back from summer vacations and the nights are getting cool. However, there is a major difference between fall here and any fall I’ve ever seen: olive season.
There are a ton of olive trees in this area, a wonderful aspect of the place since they make everything look green for miles around. Now, it is clear they are here for more than just aesthetic appeal. Olive oil is a big export for Morocco and much of the production occurs in the south of the country, where I am so lucky to reside. And this olive oil thing is no small potatoes. Almost everyone in the area seems to be somehow involved in its production, whether it be picking, transporting or pressing the olives. As I write this, there is a man in my backyard up in an olive tree hitting the branches with a stick to get them to fall off and down onto the tarps he has laid under the trees. He will later take these olives to one of the many scales that have appeared recently to have his olives weighed and purchased. Pickup trucks weighed down with thousands of olives make their way from out in the bled to town everyday to sell their loads. There is a flurry of activity in town that was so non-existent during the summer months, and it’s all thanks to olives.
Ok, so olives are picked, trucked and sold. Now what? Well, to me, this is the most exciting part: the olive press. Olive presses are these large machines with huge round stone wheels that squish all the olives up into this sort of olive mush and then another machine presses that mush to extract the oil. Lucky for me, my host father owns one of these presses to I’ve gotten to see firsthand how it functions. My host dad’s machine has a modern touch: it runs by electricity instead of by the power of horses and camels (and yes, there are still plenty of these old-school machines around). My host family doesn’t have many olive trees of their own so when my host dad needs olives, he just flags down one of those pickups and buys a load. He and his brothers (this olive oil thing is definitely a family affair) have connections in Agadir, Casablanca and in other parts of the country where they sell the oil that they press. Olive oil season last 2-3 months and my host dad informs me that they usually produce about 600 liters during that time (pretty amazing considering how many olives it takes to get a little oil). Always the entrepreneur, my host father and his brothers also allow others from the neighborhood to come use the machine to press oil (though I’m sure the use comes with a small fee). It is a lot of work, but the end product is worth it. I may be biased of course but it is definitely the best olive oil I’ve ever had…so if anyone is in the market for some delicious, freshly pressed oil, my house is always open to visitors!
Some neighbors pouring the oil into a bottle. The basket-looking things on the right are filled with the oil mush
then put between the poles in the background and are pushed down
