Reactions to Sheep Stealing

Somebody has stripped four heavily laden olive trees and crept off into the mist.

How are we to react to this? Cross? Certainly. Surprised? On the whole. Care? Quite a lot. Confused emotional response? Yes.

I feel proprietary towards our olive trees; they have had years of cash and care lavished on them that could easily be spent on other ends that would not have been as socially inclusive - a lot of farming here is park-keeping to some extent, this is a highly constructed and maintained rural landscape that is, generally, socially not privately enjoyed. So taking the crop has something in common with scrawling graffiti on a restored palazzo - taking the trees, which happened to our neighbour this year and to us last year, is a step worse, like smashing windows and stealing roof tiles.

But is it stealing? Mr HG owns the land and the trees, we have paid for the labour and the fertiliser and the tractor, and done the waiting. Whoever wants some of our oil can come to the cantina and buy some. People are getting poorer though, and olive oil is a staple not a luxury foodstuff, yet its cost has risen astronomically while unemployment has advanced. They can see the olives hanging there while they are in enforced idleness and without wages. It's not scrumping, a bit of fruit or figs taken from trees by passing children, you need nets and ladders to pick a fully grown olive tree bare, and you need crates and a vehicle, and a mill to take the olives to. It's a bit like shoplifting perhaps. Is shoplifting stealing?

Our fellow pickers reacted as variously as we did and with much the same puzzlement. "Whoever did it must be very poor indeed poor things," Graziano remarked; all agreed it was quite a risky thing to do, which is why the trees chosen were down near the river, out of sight of the house. Others wondered if it was foreigners - not immigrants but, literally foreigners in Italy not understanding the rules about crops. But that was ruled out by the equipment needs and the milling. It's locals, but who?

Mills won't take really small quantities readily so either our olives were to be assimilated with someone elses's crop or someone had access to a mill. Everyone knows who has trees, who would be an unexpected possessor of a few trees worth of olives. Minds were being turned over, though not to me (being a foreigner myself).

Thank Goodness. Whatever would we do if we were told who did it?