Glimpsing A Day of Fieldwork #1
The alarm goes off at 4:30 and I get straight up, make myself an espresso, drinks it and studies Italian for an hour. Morning routine. Same as usual or come al solito as we say in Italian. The clock hits 5:30 and it is time to get myself ready for driving to Olio Claudio, one of the key research collaborators of this project located about an hour drive south of Ostuni, the city where I have by base during this fieldwork year. I arrive at the premises right after 7 and work is already ongoing. I spend the first hours with the timber about to become firewood, observing both the men working with the wood splitter and chainsaws as well as with the actual wood itself. Having observed this practice many times the last couple of weeks, I take much note of the actual wood today, photographing stubs and branches, piles and individual pieces, cross sections and branchings, barks and cracks. The wood captivates me with its marbled appearance, and I find it intriguing how branchings are easily discernible on one side of the stubs but not on the opposite, where they seemingly are grown together. I take note of ants and lizards moving within the piles of wood, and of snail shells stuck on wood pieces. I notice how I can sound silence as the wood splitter and chainsaws turn quiet, and I think in the moment of tranquility about the presences notable when working with absences.
9 o'clock and Giorgio arrives, a couple of hours later than usual. Vuoi caffè? I jokingly ask him, as he habitually asks me this when I arrive in the morning. Rather, as he and everyone else habitually asks me and one another several times a day. I usually only drink coffee in the early morning hours; it is a habit equally habitual of mine, as it for the people that I am working with to offer coffee regularly throughout the day. Having politely declined a fair share of coffees, I have come to understand that the offer is one not to be confused with a question for coffee as such. Not at all actually. It is a question offering a moment together, thus an offer not to be declined, no matter how politely, no matter how many coffees one has already had, and no matter whether one feels like coffee or not. Having adopted the habit of accepting these sharing of moments, I am currently working on cultivating the habit of offering such moments myself.
We take a coffee — moment — together before entering the office to print out some labels. The last liters of olive oil from the previous harvest were tapped yesterday and it is now time to label the containers. The expiration date is counted 18 months from the date of tapping, which amounts to the 22nd of March 2022, and that computed, Giorgio goes ahead making the labels. He prints out four different versions and as we decide on the fourth label to be the best, I exclaim fourth time lucky, making a reference to the Swedish saying tredje gången gillt, although I explain the deliberate miscount. He tells me about a seemingly similar saying in Italian, stating non è due senza tre. Another moment is shared, one of joint understanding and the building of rapport through a different-yet-mutual reference. With the correct number of labels printed in the best version — albeit the trials are used too, so to save at once monetary and environmental resources — we go to another part of the premise. We label three differently sized containers of olive oils while conversing, partially in Italian and partially in English, about everything from football to climate change. Our conversation moves from personal experiences to more general, advances specifically from our own familiarities and curiosities to broadly cover the topics of conversation. During this work, I think about all the steps going into olive oil production, where the labeling of containers constitute only a small part, and where the supply chain of the actual olive oil correlates the supply chain of a vast range of other products, let alone industries, such as that of making tools for harvest, chemicals for growing and seals for the caps.
Being on the topic of sealings, and by way of wrapping up the glimpsing of today, the last step of the labeling procedure undertaken this day is to seal the bottled oils with a heating device. It is stated on the labels that the oils should be kept away from heat and light, so to prevent them from for instance processes of oxidation, and so, using heat to seal the caps, the conversation moves into the correlation oils—temperatures and the molecular transformations taking place if oils are exposed to temperatures below 4 degrees or above 28 degrees for a duration of time. Intriguing as this conversation occurs, tons of notes are taken on the topic of what affects the quality of the oils and their chemical properties; also, on notions of what constitutes good contra bad oils and how such ideas becomes relationally to the value landscapes in which they occur. Several moments — coffees — and pages of fieldnotes later, inclusive of experiences detailing process of preparing machineries and tools for the upcoming harvest and driving through orchards to check on the maturity of the olives to be harvested this year, this day’s workday on the premise ends shortly after one o’clock. The guys drive home for pausa pranzo to return to work in the morning; I drive back to Ostuni to begin my second part of this fieldwork day, namely that of re-writing fieldnotes, sorting images, and thinking through fieldwork experiences. What you’ve just read glimpses a day of fieldwork as well as the afterjob that such a day entails. It is indeed intense work, I tell you that, but more importantly, such a fun one to engage.
