THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO TO SICILY – YouTube

We set to work in the cool of the morning. Lyn handed me a hollow yellow rake that looked more like a child’s beach toy than a tool. She pulled it through the trees’ thin grey stems and oily green leaves, letting the olives catch in the rake’s teeth and plop gently onto a tarp beneath the tree. “Just like combing your hair,” she said as she pulled her rake down through a tangle of branch and fruit.

We moved through the orchard tree by tree, combing, collecting. As we worked, I peppered my hosts with questions: What did extra virgin mean? Can you eat olives like grapes? (That second answer was no, but I tried to anyway. It was dense and bitter. I spat it out quickly.)

Our days followed a steady rhythm, working in the morning, breaking in the afternoon, dinner, card games, wine, repeat. I basked in the simple routine, gleefully ignored my phone, hiked the gypsum cliffs and gouged-out country road, and drank in the peace of night under familiar stars and the reliable churn of the windmills on the mountain’s crest.

We combed the hair of 27 olive trees in three days, and on the fourth day, Tony and I drove to a deafening warehouse where a Suess-like machine gobbled down our harvest—olives, pits, twigs. and all—churning it into a brown mash and spitting it out as an electric-green oil. With a hunk of day-old bread, I tasted it: peppery and still warm from the pressing.

Once the oil was pressed, it was time to prune the orchard. Olives pop off willingly, but pruning requires actual weapons, like chainsaws. Lyn and I snipped small, thin branches with pruning shears while Tony took to large limbs. The work was slow and sweaty. But as we progressed, my hosts handed me sharper, more serious tools, and trusted me to take out larger branches. I’d like to think it’s because they saw in me what I was beginning to feel: a growing sense of capability, and a willingness to take on new and challenging tasks, like mending chain link fence, cutting back a spiny pawpaw, or closing the chicken coop after the sun had set, which meant walking back through the olive grove in the inky mountain night.

On the morning I left Contrada Noce I sat on the veranda sipping espresso with Tony as wind and rain barreled in from the north. The storm rolled in the night before, and the howling wind had covered the sound of my soft sobs as I packed. Alone in my room, I cried because I was proud of myself for committing to this trip. I achieved so much of what I hoped for by learning about olive oil, by putting my body to use and my brain to rest. I cried because I did not want to leave Contrada Noce and the cozy life Tony and Lyn had welcomed me into. And, for the first time, I cried for the family that would never be the same, the family I was going home to.