L'alleanza: A Collaboration Between Man and Nature
The flowered vegetation covering much of the ground grows rather high at places and reaches up to my knee walking through it. I notice pollen staining the bottom half of my bleached denim jumpsuit with light yellowish powder; bumblebees buzz by and I spot a ladybugs on a leaf. The wind breezes and noise from the chainsaws resonate through it in a sort of pulsing rhythm. It smells bare legs, laughter, the sweet taste of wild strawberries stacked on a straw and running barefoot through lush fields a bright summer day some 25 years ago in the Swedish countryside. The sun-rayed rain-stained vegetation carries with it the smell of nostalgia, bringing me back to my childhood summers while standing in the midst of century old olive trees and flouringing grounds in a springy Fasano. The scent of gasoline momentarily accompanies the memory-laden sensescape of mine, causing strong remembrance of freshly cut grass and my grandfather pushing the lawnmower through the garden. Sublime presence; then and there, here and now.
This place fills me with happiness in so many respects, I think to myself following Giorgio to a recently pruned tree across from the one currently becoming pruned. We have just moments before stood under a tree yet to be pruned and he have demonstrated how olive trees grow ordered and zoned: agronomically and olivicoltura technically speaking that is. I have scribbled in my notebook and he have added a sketch visualizing how branches categorically labeled zone A grow, zone B yield fruit and zone C, well, branches categorized as C non serve a niente, meaning that they serve no purpose. At least not post-harvest, and not from an agronomically and olivicoltura technical perspective. Growing as they do, purposefully or not, depending on the perspective with which they occur sensed, some branches become cut while others preserved.
Sense at it makes to embodied practitioners of olivicoltura, pruning of these old trees happens approximately every 5th to 6th year I am let known while tagging along the steps of Giorgio. Mostly mechanized as it nowadays occur, it yet occur quite a costly practice, one which relationally to the production ought to be correspondingly estimated and evaluated. Noting these things, Giorgio takes me through a flowered field to the recently pruned tree; he wishes to clarify some points made earlier relationally to the tree yet to become pruned by means of this already pruned one. According to the skilled knowing of Giorgio, one which he repeatedly makes known to stem from practices of agronomy and years of undertaking them just as such, he pedagogically familiarizes me at once with his knowledge and the becoming thereof. His chuckling tone of guiding me through his embodied and emplaced knowing of olive cultivation and making of olive oil, intriguing as it is explained and demonstrated, invitingly as it occurs, beckons curious questions on my behalf with regards to the techno-historical undertakings by which olive plants grow treed and, in some cases, industrialized. I take the opportunity to ask about the framing of pruning as a collaboration between man and nature — a joint effort also denoted as l’alleanza tra uomo e natura — that I have noted this producer to enhance in two posts on Instagram a few weeks ago. I do so in seeking to understand the significance of the statement and the metaphor, if meant as such, from his perspective. Giorgio looks at me with a gentle gaze, yet one hinting the obviousness of the answer following my question for his skilled persona. I sense straight away what to come, that he will speak towards the commonplace knowledge (for producers like himself) that there are no good olives without the human touch, or interference if you will. But also to the fact that olive plants grow bush void of human cultivation. Little did I know this before I started my research. I have, however, through my fieldwork experiences become aware of the fact that olive plants occur bush and tree at once, and being able to sense the answer from him to come, I chuckle. In the moment of nodding and chuckling recognition, through our continuous conversation being able to discuss historical, technical, ecological, and affectional dimensions of practicing olive growth and olive oil production, if yet in an apprentice approach to the subject matters from my side, I feel grateful for having cultivated a sense for the practices, perspectives, and people inherent to it. I soak it all in, the sublime presence of being in this place, remembrances and all accounted for, while wondering about how to make sensuous accounts of the year of experiences soon to become a thesis.
