Friday, July 02, 2004
Olives... Olives Everywhere!
Life on the orchard has its ups and downs, but in all it has been good. Meghan has only been burried under the crates of olives once and I think we will finally be rid of the damn olive eating birds since we had our midnight execution ceremony. We burned a string of olives and a rubber ducky out under their tree with a sign saying "This could be you!"
Mostly they don't eat too much until you actually pick the 5 olives off the tree which are the only reminders that this once used to hold enough olives to pay for your food! Oh well. I guess we go back to dumpster diving and waiting to rescue purses in hopes of a free meal.
This week was actually a good week for picking, naturally the weather turns foul when we can go out and play on the weekend. Friday afternoon, the rain clouds rolled in and mulled about deciding to dump or not to dump. Heeding the words of out trusted olive master Peter, who told us not to pick in the rain, we gladly ran off and ended our friday early. Whilst walking back to the little unfurnished abode, we ran into Peter and he reminded us that we are to take our olive press tour today. So after returning to our shamefully abandoned olive picking post to pick up the baskets, we were off to the Press!
The actual pressingroom is cordoned off in its own hermetic soundproof room. Actually it is neither of those, but it tries. We met the two guys running the press, Simon and Carl. After weighing our olives in we went ring side. Simon gave us the low down inside the room after we gratefully accepted the hearing protection. Once inside we understood why they were essential. Inside Mr. Wizard's World, we found the reason that most mad scientists loved their toys and ended up going mad. It was a sterile looking operation room equipped with its own hoppers, grinders, mashers, stirrers, centrifuge, 1000 gallon storage tanks, and all the piping that one could want. Needless to say it was Really Cool!
After our guided tour of the press we continued onward with our boss Peter in the way most workers love to finish out the Friday afternoon, which is to say, by avoiding work and instead showing us around the property which he manages for his boss. But before we left the press, I just had to take a shot of where all this lovely olive poop went when they were finished running it through the wringer.
Peter's boss, the man definately in charge as we soon found out, had made his fortune in a combination of real estate maneuvers and the design of an essentile tool to modern construction. Apparently he designed some sort of conctrete saw and now plays with lots and lots of money...
We arrived at one of Peter's landscaping jobs, the boss's own yard... The view isn't so bad there either.
Apparently the boss loves to decorate his little shack which sits back a little way from his cliff overlooking the ocean, but still manages to get that nice view of the Kaurihangi Mountains. Not too shabby.
We continued driving around in true Kiwi fashion, sans roads, to some of Peter's other landscaping jobs.
The object of these jobs entails waging a war with mother nature to change a number of gullies carved into the cliff to what gullies ought to look like. Each is sort of a terraforming operation to stop the landslide effect and convert the gully into a little picture perfect rainforest microclimate walk. We saw one of these transformations in progress and noticed that Mother nature had something else in mind in a couple places when she hurled all the carefully laid plants into a heap of rocks and dirt in the bottom. But in 20 years they should have their nice little walks, and wonder why the hell there are so many damn plants growing up through the trail.
In case anyone is interested in the property near these gullies, it will soon be up for sale to build your own little paradise.
It should be at least a few million... They wouldn't say exactly.
Mostly they don't eat too much until you actually pick the 5 olives off the tree which are the only reminders that this once used to hold enough olives to pay for your food! Oh well. I guess we go back to dumpster diving and waiting to rescue purses in hopes of a free meal.
This week was actually a good week for picking, naturally the weather turns foul when we can go out and play on the weekend. Friday afternoon, the rain clouds rolled in and mulled about deciding to dump or not to dump. Heeding the words of out trusted olive master Peter, who told us not to pick in the rain, we gladly ran off and ended our friday early. Whilst walking back to the little unfurnished abode, we ran into Peter and he reminded us that we are to take our olive press tour today. So after returning to our shamefully abandoned olive picking post to pick up the baskets, we were off to the Press!
The actual pressingroom is cordoned off in its own hermetic soundproof room. Actually it is neither of those, but it tries. We met the two guys running the press, Simon and Carl. After weighing our olives in we went ring side. Simon gave us the low down inside the room after we gratefully accepted the hearing protection. Once inside we understood why they were essential. Inside Mr. Wizard's World, we found the reason that most mad scientists loved their toys and ended up going mad. It was a sterile looking operation room equipped with its own hoppers, grinders, mashers, stirrers, centrifuge, 1000 gallon storage tanks, and all the piping that one could want. Needless to say it was Really Cool!
After our guided tour of the press we continued onward with our boss Peter in the way most workers love to finish out the Friday afternoon, which is to say, by avoiding work and instead showing us around the property which he manages for his boss. But before we left the press, I just had to take a shot of where all this lovely olive poop went when they were finished running it through the wringer.
Peter's boss, the man definately in charge as we soon found out, had made his fortune in a combination of real estate maneuvers and the design of an essentile tool to modern construction. Apparently he designed some sort of conctrete saw and now plays with lots and lots of money...
We arrived at one of Peter's landscaping jobs, the boss's own yard... The view isn't so bad there either.
Apparently the boss loves to decorate his little shack which sits back a little way from his cliff overlooking the ocean, but still manages to get that nice view of the Kaurihangi Mountains. Not too shabby.
We continued driving around in true Kiwi fashion, sans roads, to some of Peter's other landscaping jobs.
The object of these jobs entails waging a war with mother nature to change a number of gullies carved into the cliff to what gullies ought to look like. Each is sort of a terraforming operation to stop the landslide effect and convert the gully into a little picture perfect rainforest microclimate walk. We saw one of these transformations in progress and noticed that Mother nature had something else in mind in a couple places when she hurled all the carefully laid plants into a heap of rocks and dirt in the bottom. But in 20 years they should have their nice little walks, and wonder why the hell there are so many damn plants growing up through the trail.
In case anyone is interested in the property near these gullies, it will soon be up for sale to build your own little paradise.
It should be at least a few million... They wouldn't say exactly.
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