October 20, 2000
Day one of our foray into the olive harvest! We left early in the morning with one of the families of the village to attend to their thirty or so trees up on the hill. The whole town, it seems, heads off to the hills when the olives are ready. Marthame decided not to try his luck on a ladder and went for the far more stable position of up in the tree.
This family's trees are about 200 years old, and there's a fine art to this work: you want the trees to give as much fruit as possible, but you don't want the trees to grow so big you can't pick from the highest branches. So in addition to the plucking, there is the cutting off of branches.
Periodically, we stopped during the day to picnic and drink coffee. Those wandering by - of course - are invited to have a little snack, too. There's something satisfying about working with your hands and seeing the results of your labor.
Even so, it was hard not to be reminded of the day's current events - two days ago, there was a gun battle between Israeli settlers and Nablus olive pickers. One farmer was killed. As always, there are many different versions and slants to the story, but it is hard not to think about this as your fingers pull the olives from the trees.