Conclusion of our olive harvest...

Deb & Jez's pruned tree.

Jez, Deb, Sandra & Tony at the press.

 On Friday the travelling band of would be olive harvesters made it to Jeremy and Debbie's house in Pondi near Vasiliki at the south of the island.  As with Tony's trees there was only one which had any real quantity of olives on it and it was precariously positioned on a very steep scree slope making it awkward to get the olives off

the tree.  We decided to use the net underneath a third of the tree at a time and use our plastic rakes attached to long poles to pull the olives off the tree and into the waiting net below.  Due to it's awkward location and the fact that it was not getting pruned, it turned out to be a bit of a tough task and both Tony and I shed blood for the cause, but hey, that's the British way isn't it.

Jez, Tony & I waiting for our turn.

We also had a very large tree which only had a few olives on to prune and try to convince it to fruit better in years to come.  Jez was feeling brave and pounced up the tree like an uncoiling spring, chainsaw in hand to do his lumberjack imitation.  Although, for Monty Python fans, I never saw any evidence of high heels, suspenders or a bra!  The tree loping really opened up the view down to Vasiliki bay as can be seen from the top picture.

Our 85 Kg of Olives seem poultry against other's tonnes.

We devised a better way to get rid of all the debris which you tend to collect with the olives this time.  We utilised my garden vacuum with a net over the end to stop the inlet sucking up olives and blew out the leaves and small twigs.  This was very successful in comparison to the hand sorting we had used at Tonys, but later at the olive press we found out that we need not have bothered at all as part of the process gets rid of all that stuff for you and some of the farmers olives were coming in full of leaves and even small branches.

Deb, Sandra and Jez emptying into the hopper.

 We ended up with 85 kilos of olives off two trees which wasn't a bad result at all.  With a little ringing about we found a press nearby which we were assured would be willing to takes our meagre (in comparison with the local farmers) offerings.  Thus the five of us set off for the press complete with our lovingly picked sacks of olives.

Filling up the oil.

Sandra with the finished product.

These meagre pickings became apparent when some of the farmers were weighing their bags for the days picking at 300 + kilos.  The Press was packed with loads of farmers and they were quite amused by the five of us taking in the whole experience several of them tried to explain the sequence of events to us and laughed at our miserly little bags waiting to go into the hopper but we were not to be deterred and I'm sure we won a respect from the locals that we foreigners were prepared to do the local thing and took such interest in it.  In the end the guy who owned the press normally takes payment in oil from the crop at a rate of about 12% to 13% of the total but Tony had asked if we could pay with having so little to press we would like all the oil.  When it was eventually squirted into out waiting cans he waived his fee, which was very nice of him.  We ended up with sixteen litres of our very own, from tree to can, virgin olive oil.  The next day we took the press owner a bottle of wine to show our appreciation.

Thanks to Deb and Jez for the fine meal Jez cooked for us on Saturday night it was a great night with great company.

After a couple of wet days breakfast coffee in the sunshine.

Sunday was race day again on "Jungle".  It was another close race and at this moment I don't know if we got the desired win to keep the season alive with one race to go.  We know that we beat "Leonne" which is the yacht currently leading the rankings but we had a serious racing yacht "Cocobill" which was about 10 minutes in front of us over the line and although his handicap means he gives us time it will be a close run thing.  Last race of the season coming up this Sunday so we really need to know whether it's still possible for "Jungle" to win, time will tell!

The early part of this week the weather has taken a turn for the worse and we've had some rain and hail and quite strong winds but by Wednesday afternoon things started to look better which was good because we were going out for a meal in Lefkas town with our great friend Kev & Linda.  The night seemed to fly by and we had a great time talking and after our meal we went back to marina to pick up our car as we set off for home the clock said 12:40 I thought it was about half ten!  Thanks for the great night out you guys must do it again soon after we get back from the UK.

Last picture shows Sandra having her breakfast coffee outside in the morning sunshine, I say morning but she didn't get up until 10:30, lazy bugger!