Acting Springboard, Posing Window
I just returned home, completely exhausted after two entire days of raking olives in an almost non-stop movement through the olive orchards harvested. It is a most gorgeous setting though, the weather pleasantly warm and sunny, the fields lush, and with the tranquilla-attitude by which work in the context of my fieldwork advances, well, worn as I indeed feel, I am in no place to complaint, thus, my exhaustion should be read more as a statement of experience than as one of grumble.
Exhausted as I may be this evening, this week got off to a pretty slow start, however, with snow (!) falling Monday morning and harvest being put on hold for the day of the precipitation being, as well as the day after due to the soils still being too moist for working in the orchards. By now well aware of the impact precipitation has on harvesting work, though somewhat surprised by the fact that it this day came in the form of snow, albeit I know that might happen, I was much prepared that no work in the orchards would take place for the time being. Thus,
I allowed for the week to a slow start. At least I did so fieldworking wise, for prevented from harvesting olives early on this week as we were,
I opted to take the opportunity to engage some critical work with experiences already taking place. And so, rather than being occupied with, so to speak, amassing more fieldwork experiences Monday and Tuesday, something that I up to this point been quite keen on doing,
I spent the entire forenoons in my robe at home working with materials from previous fieldwork experiences while drinking bottomless coffee—all which occur quite rare treats due to me most fieldworking days being out the door early morning and out all day—and the afternoons reflecting upon the work during long walks. Now, I could these days have chosen to visit one of the nearby mills, busy as they were with pressing olives harvested the days before the precipitation rather than just passing by on my walks, or have taken the car to any given orchard in the commune (we are once again prohibited to leave it due to Covid-19 restrictions) for some fieldworking on my own. Perhaps, even should have, for who knows what curious matters I might have encountered if I did. But I did not, and a somewhat uneasy feeling as it occurs, the one that I perhaps should have that is, I opted to engage processual working with previous research encounters instead of partaking in moments of additional ones. I did so knowingly that I might miss out on important experiences—ethnographic material—and a strugglesome feeling as it is, I am still quite happy to have taken the time to work through some fieldwork already experienced, for as my ethnographic material pile up and my noted wall becomes jammed, it occurs evermore important to find a balance between comprehending the scope and depth of that which thus far have been experienced, and to do so while continuously experiencing.
On that note, a snowy monday morning got to act as a springboard for thinking through some particular matters related to my research and a window onto the process by which it is currently undertaken; similarly, this introduction get to act as a springboard for denoting some particular practices related to the making of lamp oil and a window onto the process by which this kind of olive oil becomes.
I have over the past couple of weeks, both prior to the holidays and after, had the opportunity to partake in harvest of olives later to become olio lampante. These olives, fully ripened and fallen from the plants themselves as most of them occur—some fall due to the whisk of winds or birds and others from forces of rainfall or human labor, some onto nets and others directly onto grounds, yet them all fall easily, fully ripened as they are—become harvested using various machineries and methods, rhythms and techniques; all of which I through practice habitually myself become used to doing and observing and all of which I humbly critically engage. Humbly accustomed as I have become aware of the skills by which the work is carried out, and I say humbly because it is at times quite hard work and skilled because learning while doing, I have become utterly aware that the techniques sits in the experienced bodies of the workers, as pragmatically accustomed have I become to the work undertaken. Furthermore and such as mentioned above and in last week’s post, it is a much weather dependent work and how it is done, such as in which machinery to use at any given point of harvest, hinge much on earthen conditions, such as on the state of the ground and on the quantity of olives to become collected. The work, too, depends on the quantity of plants, orchards even, that any given practitioner wishes to harvest and on the timeframe during which this ought to be done. By way of example, it is not an uncommon practice to by means of sticks force not-yet-fallen olives to the ground, for instance to complete a given section of harvest for this season being, or campagna as in Italian referred to (one photo in one of the galleries below show this).
That said and however went about, from the environment of orchards the olives become gathered and sorted, onto platform bodies stored to be taken to pressing facilities, some of which are operated by the producer who collected the raw material and others who purchase such (olives? raw material?) from farmers to produce olio lampante. This is an oil which by the way later is sold to refineries to become refined olive oil, but more about that in another post, for by way summing up this piece of writing, I would like to note that I as part of the past weeks’ fieldworking experiences also have had the opportunity to partake as the raw material, once washed and kneaded, via processes of extraction turned liquid in form. And so, while I aim to detail olio lampante and refined olive oil per se in considering their properties and spatiotemporal dimension once I have had the opportunity to visit a refinery—lamp oil namely ought to undergo chemical refining before becoming the edible refined olive oil in kind, such as due to its high level of acidity, it being 2.0 or more—I will in this post focus on practices of gathering and pressing the matured olives acting the raw material of these two kinds of oils. Like so many post foregoing this one, pictorial means constitute the main focus of my sharing: the featured imageries comprise a sort of visual note taking from several different occasions and they have been taken as I have worked together with three different olive cultivators in learning about their situated and specific go-about strategies for harvesting olives at this time of the season for the production of olio lampante. That noted and exhausted as I am, in need of making dinner and relaxing with some chess this evening, most probably to a glass of primitivo, I have made galleries with photos and videos from my experiences with the different practitioners. I will let the visuals speak for themselves; however, if you have any questions or are in need of clarifications somewhere in your browsing, shoot me an email or make a comment and I will return with an answer subito, or soon enough anyways. Happy browsing!
