Homeward Bound

First go to this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQYQnrPgSM

Did you listen to it?!! Do it now.

Nostalgia is my favorite minor key. I've always been a homesick girl down deep.

When I was young I'd try to spend the night at Grandma's--just our two yards and a dirt road between us, but I would look out her upstairs bedroom window at the lights of my own cozy home and want to be there so fiercely that I'd tiptoe down the stairs, out the back door and brave the dark to run home--being chased by bears.

I love being home. I'm a homebody. (In Chile, I'm a casera) Fortunately, I've been able to live all over the world and have kind of learned to "bloom where I'm planted," but I've always been eager at the end to go home. With less than three weeks until we get on that plane, I'm indulging my inner homesick child. Enjoy the music. (Maybe someone will help me make hot links so you don't have to cut and paste.) Suggest other songs to really get me bawling, as I did when singing "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" with the Officer Wives Skylarks in the Philippines in 90 degree heat.

Homeward Bound (Not Simon and Garfunkle but Tabernacle Choir's version) link above
Oh Home Beloved, LDS Hymn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay_b-r1WeGw
New World Symphony Dvorak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOX15agZ3-0
Bring Him Home:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-ypIhY42-o
The Road Home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbwhSP3ZIq4
I'll Take you Home Again, Kathleen
Sappy song, but I can't resist Johnny Cash and Elvis crooning my demise
           Johnny Cash  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK1OZZ-TOuM
           Elvishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHnzFC7M9A

From Olives to Olive Oil

After the truck dumps the olives, workers judge the ripeness of the particular load. The mix of green and purple indicates what the balance of flavors will be: bitter, fruity, grassy, etc. North Americans, who use relatively little olive oil prefer a blander taste than Spaniards and Italians who enjoy a more robust flavor. More green olives = more grassy, amargo (bitter) taste. I'm starting to really like flavor in my olive oil. The greener the better in my book! 

This batch of olives has a good blend of the ripe (purple) fruit with the less ripe (green) olives.

Conveyor belts move the fruit from the basement to a series of points where it is washed, leaves and non-olivey objects are separated out and into a series of machines that shake, rattle and roll (just kidding--I have no idea what happens, but it involves mashers and centrifuges and magic but NO HEAT). Don't let the three people who have explained it to me know that I suggested I didn't understand the process completely!

 This slurry gets refined and separated every step along the way---

.....until wah-lah! Olive oil!!

 The oil is stored for a time in the tanks with legs and a funnel-like base for any water or solids to sink to the bottom and be drained off and then in gigantic tanks (over a million gallons of storage capacity in these 40 tanks) in a climate-controlled room ready to be sold to wholesalers and exported.

This is the General Manager and Company Vice President and family that we love. Just having a tour with the commoners...... Austin prides himself on making funny faces, Dakota has redeemed that name for me, Madi is just eleven and knitting socks because I'm an awesome teacher and Dillon wanted a short list of things for his birthday--the last thing on the list was, "Bagleys." How could you not love him?

So once the oil has been extracted, some byproducts have to be dealt with. The pits become this material in my hand, piles of which are in the other two pictures. It is burned in the bio-masa red machine to provide energy for the plant~ very efficient and resourceful! I'm not sure what happens to the leaves and twigs, but it's an impressively small pile in comparison with the pit material.

The sloppy olive mash after the oil is extracted gets loaded on a truck and hauled to an area of the fundo where it's hilly and wild. There's quite a quantity of this residue, but a large area for it. It looks like a river of tar and smells woody and rich at this point. The wild horses seem to enjoy eating it. 

Watch for Chilean olive oil in your local grocery store. It's being sold to companies who will bottle it under their own label, but for the last two years, it was bottled and given as gifts under the label ARC (AgroReservas de Chile) with a picture of Noah's ark. The purpose of this farm is investment in the land, primarily, but also to produce food reserves in times of need. I'm happy we won't have to rely on Crisco for our fat allotment in a famine, aren't you?

Harvest! The culmination of a year's worth of work and anticipation

The harvest is going on night and day for about a month. Last year was the first mechanical harvest, with "try it out" equipment and very limited scope. I'm just remembering a day or two.

When all the trees are producing, it is estimated that these harvesters be operating for 70 days, 24 hours a day. 

This year, there are three behemoth harvesters that drive right over the trees, snarfing up the olives and leaving the leaves and branches pretty much intact. Olives go through the tall arm into a bin (metal with green framing) driven in the adjacent row. When this container is full, it dumps the fruit into larger trailers parked along the road.

A few of the small end trees suffered as drivers learned how to maneuver the harvesters.

  Overhead shot of a bin just beginning to fill up.

Truckloads of olives come first to the reception building where the load is weighed and data is collected. Then the olives are dumped into a chute to the basement where the fruit begins the process of becoming olive oil.

We have heard different reports about the harvest, but so far it looks wildly successful. Anywhere from 1/3 more than expected to four times the expectation. The workers are exhausted, the wives are weary (we've done guard-dog duty staying overnight at homes where hubby wasn't home) and the lights don't seem to go out in the fields or the mill; but after this week it should be done. It's 11:30 at night and I just heard another truck rumbling by. Thrilling!