Me having fun

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Woohoo, I got to climb up a huge ladder and play in a HUGE truck! 
What a fun day that was in Ramla! 

Look at the size of that thing!
Standing under it is Dani, the man responsible for Kibbutz Gezer Olives. 
On our day off, Dani took us volunteers and WWOOFers on a tour of the city of Ramla, including this new museum for old vehicles. 

Ashlea, Dani, Dina, Luke -- what a team! 

There are lots more posts about our olive harvesting adventures last autumn. 

For June 1 theme day, City Daily Photos bloggers are posting on the subject ME.
It's a rare chance to see photos of the photographers themselves.  Take a look!
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Olive oil by the barrel

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T is for tugging.

Dani, the in-charge of Kibbutz Gezer Olives had just driven two heavy barrels of our fresh oil back from the olive press.

And they had to be off-loaded to the entrance of the kibbutz bomb shelter where the oil would later be bottled.

American volunteer Ashlea took a whiff.

Dani made the taste test.

Ashlea got a capful of the precious fruit of our olive-harvesting labor.

Luke, a WWOOFer from New Zealand, tried it too.

Only I, as reflected in the pure oil, was busy with the camera and mercifully too busy to drink.
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UPDATE May 2018:  A brief video of the Kiwi volunteer Luke was just published! He talks about his good experience at Kibbutz Gezer.

(Linking to T-day at ABC Wednesday and OurWorld Tuesday.)
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Donkeys and olives

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My new friend, Malka! 

"THE HOME OF MALKA AND RACHEL" says the sign. 
Last year the donkeys lived in the kibbutz olive grove, grazing on the underbrush and contributing manure fertilizer.
But this year they were spotted eating olives (!) so they were moved to their own paddock, at least until we harvest all the olives. 

Nothing like a good dust bath on a hot day. 
Yes, it's still hot and dry in Israel, despite it being "winter." 

After she saw Malka roll over, Rachel had a go at it too. 

Two donkey friends and a cloud of dust. 

They are so sweet! 
Gotta love donkeys.
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(Linking to Camera-Critters.)

Volunteer fun in the olives

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Still having fun harvesting olives at friendly Kibbutz Gezer.
Starting my third week as a volunteer.
Here you learn new and exciting things every day.
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The olive harvest is in full swing!

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This is my 6th day living and volunteering at a nice kibbutz in central Israel. 
We are working hard harvesting olives.
The main method to get the olives off the branches is to "comb" them off with a plastic rake thingy. 

We spread long long tarps on both sides of the trees. 
The olives we "comb" fall onto the tarps, making a sweet sound. 

Finally we push and pull all the olives into the center of the tarp, kneel beside the pile and fish out a few twigs, and then pour the beautiful olives into a crate. 

More about life in the big olive grove in the coming days.
If you'd like to learn more about the place and the philosophy, please see one or all of these:
Olives 101
The Olive Blog 
Kibbutz Gezer Olives -- Facebook page 
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Come and join us, there's still a few beds left for more good volunteers! 
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"Waste not, want not."

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Now we reach the final stage in our series of posts about the olive press.

See the stuff falling from the pipe into the big bale?
It is olive waste, what's left after the machines grind up the olives together with their pits. 

We call it gefet in Hebrew;  I've seen it called pomice or pulp in English.
Whatever its name, there is a lot of it!
One newspaper article said that around 70,000 tons of gefet are produced by olive presses in Israel every year.

Susan and Mikki testified that the stuff feels oily.

The Bedouin and Arabs have long known how to turn this gefet into fuel. 

 Now Israeli Jews are learning too: the OliveBar Ltd. Biomass Quality Heating makes "logs" or bricks out of it, for burning in wood-burning stoves. (See pictures at the link.)

 In wood-burning stoves gefet becomes an ecologically perfect fuel, burning with 2.5 times more energy than a comparable piece of wood. 

And what is left after burning can be put on the garden as fertilizer.

Now they are even starting to make "green" charcoal briquettes. 

This Haaretz article has interesting information about the "new" idea of not wasting olive waste. 

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So here ends the story of my two days of olive harvesting, 2014.
I had a great, albeit too short, time at Kibbutz Gezer with Dani Livney and his team of volunteers.
If you ever have free time between October and December, you can join in the happy harvest too!
You can also follow the progress and catch the enthusiasm through Dani's blog.
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Related posts:
1. A quite different olive press, in Latrun Trappist  Monastery, 2009.
2. A fire at the Franciscan monastery proved that the olive tree trunks could keep burning inside for days, no matter how much they were hosed down with water.
3. See the whole series of 5 posts on the Kibbutz Gezer olive harvest and olive pressing.
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Here comes the olive oil!

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Here is how Dani, who cares for the olive grove at Kibbutz Gezer, describes the process at the press:

The mash is mixed for about half an hour in a mixer called a malaxer. This allows the olive molecules to buddy up and to begin separating from the solids and water.  Next the solids are separated from the liquids, and then the water is separated from the oil, using a centrifuge.  And voila! 

The Thai worker gave Mikki, friend Susan, and me a little taste of the fresh olive oil.

It was TOO fresh, very bitter.
It needs to rest a few weeks in order to get the good taste.
Still, Susan and Mikki  happily said "Lechaim!" -- to life!
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The olive pressing process

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Continuing our olive saga (see here and here) which began last week in Kibbutz Gezer:

 November and December are the time for making olive oil.
High season, so each grower's bin(s) of olives have to wait their turn at the olive press.

Here the Thai worker spreads out the fruit and collects the twigs.
(The olives I helped pick were much cleaner because we took the time to go over them already in the field.)
Much of Israel's agricultural work gets done thanks to hard-working guest-workers from Thailand.
These men working at the olive press live on-site.

Next, Mikki watched the olives climb up the "ladder" conveyor belt.

The olives got their first shower from the jets of water as the rolling rods shook leaves to the side and let any little stones fall through.
It's fun to enlarge the photos and see all these details up close.

Then they got a serious bath.

Here come the olives, dropping off the moving belt.

Once the olives are all clean they say goodbye to their firm bodies and get mashed up, pits and all.
The big rotating screw grinds them and pushes the pulp forward to the final stage--oil!

But lest this post become way too long, let's see the beautiful oil come out in tomorrow's post.
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Olives go to press

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As you heard in Friday's post, we were off harvesting olives last week at Kibbutz Gezer.
Here is me, Susan, Dani, Maybelline,  and Mikki.

Susan from Michigan, who came up with the idea to spend a week of her vacation in Israel working through WWOOF, invited me to join the olive harvest.  We had been roommates at the Hebrew-learning ulpan in Kibbutz Hazorea in 1968.  We had a lot to talk over after all these years.
Dani, a former American, divides his workday between being in charge of the olive plantation and working as a lawyer in Jerusalem.
Maybelline and her friend, Steven, were traveling the world.  In their native Singapore they had never seen a wheelbarrow before! They said the country was too small and urban to have room for agriculture but that maybe their parents or grandparents had still seen some farms.

Mikki the Israeli college student lifted the crates of our day's harvest into the trailer.
Here he is, multitasking.

And off we drove to the olive press.

We drove through the flat expanses of the Shefelah, the lowlands of central Israel, under a big sky.
(Rain came that evening, exactly as I boarded my bus back to the Negev.)
Enlarge the photo 2x and you will find recently-baled bales of hay  cotton  with bright orange-colored covers.

A smiling forklift driver off-loaded our olives and drove them toward the press.
In the next post you will see how solid olive fruit is turned into golden oil.
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To learn more you can take a look at Gezer Olives website.
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(Linking to OurWorld Tuesday.)

Olive time!

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 Shalom friends!  I'm back!
For the past half week I've been helping harvest olives at Kibbutz Gezer in the Shefela, in central Israel!
Here you see me "combing" the olives off the branch with a big comb.
Or maybe it's more like a plastic rake.  Or a mega back-scratcher. 

First you spread a long long tarp under the trees.

After raking, shaking, or beating the olives off the branches you get them all into one pile,  pick out any little twigs, and then push and pour them into plastic crates.
That's Danny, the nice kibbutznik in charge of the harvest.

Young Israeli Mickey made a good healthy field breakfast.
We worked from 6:50 until 1:00.

 Nice volunteers from USA and Singapore.
Did you know we have WWOOF in Israel?!

A good time was had by all!
Yesterday we drove our olives to the olive press to see how the oil is made.
Pictures to follow!
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