Photo article from the Greek Hovel olive harvest 2023 days 2, 3 and 4: a growing sense of despondency

The last good trees ( two of them) were at the rear of the house. In a normal year they would not be deemed fantastic but this year they were the best of the best and worth twerking with mats as you can see below.

By the end of day four we had harvested all the twerkable trees and I had marched down the monastery flank of our fields chopping off the odd good branch from a few trees there. We then took the branches back to the grill and hand picked them. At this point there were just under four bags, not 50kg Albanian sacks but maybe 25 – 30kg Englishman’s sacks.  But there were reports from harvester T on his third trip to the Hovel so now a veteran, of trees at the far end of the land, 800 yards from the house which were laden, in relative terms, with fruit. Amid the growing despond, at last, maybe there is hope. What there is not is heat in the house.

The electrician was meant to come on day 4, Thursday, so we stayed in all day. He did not arrive. The pattern repeated itself on day 5 and we were told he really would arrive on day Saturday. But then at about 9 PM on Friday just as we finished a shop in Kambos a call came in… he was five minutes away. We rushed back to the house to find a laghe man with his young daughter who greeted me warmly as an old friend.  He professed not to understand the heating panlels but fiddled with a few buttons and, hey presto, we have heat from the heating/aircon units.

As it is getting down to 3 degrees at night, this is most welcome.