Woodcutter Next

The very last of the olives were milled at 10.30 this morning. The mills work round the clock and with the harvest in full swing it's best not to forsake a booked slot. Which is how you can find yourself driving a heavily laden Landie through the fog on deeply curvy roads. And when you get there everyone who hangs about offering to unload and tip the olives into the hoppers has gone to mass, so you have to haul the crates about yourself muttering unChristian remarks.

The very high yield of the previous lot seems to be a rogue; this lot was giving 18 kilos a quintal, so I put it down to dogs. You drive your vehicle onto the weighbridge. Then you empty its olives into the hoppers. Then you get reweighed with and without the crates in. Then they do sums. If a dog or two joins in during the weighing - they go in for a lot of tyre-sniffing - then you get dog diversion of totals. Happens all the time they say.

Still very fine yields though, particularly for a bad year.

At crack of dawn this morning, loading up, the groves looked very fine. All ploughed freshly, ready for the winter. If they are ploughed now it keeps down weeds, specially brambles, aerates the soil, allows winter rains to get well into the ground, and looks lovely with the autumn colours on the oakwoods as backdrop and that cared-for, groomed look in the fields of silver-green trees.

(Well, I didn't know why the ploughing had been done so immediately, but I know beautiful fields when I see them).

Now for the wood cutting. The woods are kept best by constant thinning and harvesting; bit like the hunters shooting the deer and the boar, only not so distressing. After that everything goes nice and quiet, which is best because frankly farming can be a bit archersish, as a day after day occupation.