The old olive mill.....

Today is a slow day. We finished lunch at 3.30 pm a bit later than usual. It seems like the rainy days are over and Monchéri said he might give a hand to a friend for the olive harvest. It's not been a good year, in our local area for the olive season. With constant rain, the olives which dropped on the ground got wasted so the production is lower this winter. I did some olive picking a few years ago on a friend's olive grove and I'm not too sure I'd be ready to do it again ! We spent the whole day bent on our knees to pick the olives on the ground...I've never assisted to the final process, when you take your harvest to the olive mill. Can you figure what it was like in the past to grind the olives in order to produce the coveted golden liquid ?
Not far away from our village is the village of Niguelas which holds one of the most ancient olive mills. It had been operating since the XVth century till the early beginning of XXth century.

The olives were deposited in these stone cubicles. They were numbered and assigned to the harvesters who would pour in a fixed quantity of olives (approx. 250 kg)

Then they were ground by a roller made of stone which looks impressively heavy.

Harvesters transported the fruit in baskets made of esparto. I so love this material. From time to time, we still see an old man on his mule transporting wood or herbs in big esparto baskets, slowly but gracefully interrupting the traffic.

Wishing you a slow peaceful week end !