Marakkech  / Morocco Board News--  Olive season has just come to and end…and by olive season I mean that the olives ripened, were harvested, and either pressed for oil or cured to turn them edible.  Did you know that both black olives and green olives come from the same tree?  Here is a very ripe olive from our family farm.

Did you also know that harvesting olives by hand is a labor intensive business?  In Morocco it’s all done this way: a large plastic is laid out under the tree, then you take a long bamboo stick and start to beat at the olives to knock them down.  Eventually you have to climb the tree to get to the higher branches.  Olives yield about 16 liters of olive oil per 100 kgs of olives, depending on how much the trees were watered.  The more they were watered, the juicier the olives.

I will never forget when I was 8 years old and I spent a whole day knocking all the olives off a particular tree.  At the end of the day, I had very sore hand and about 20 kgs of olives.  I was very excited to lug my harvest down the road to where they would buy them from you for about a dirham per kilo (like 6 cents per pound, for those of you who are allergic to the metric system).  I walked back with more than 20 dirhams in my pocket (2.5 dollars).  I’d never been prouder of my earnings (maybe even to this day .  It didn’t occur to me that those olives actually belonged to my parents, and that technically, I owed them like 90% of the money.  They kindly didn’t point it out either.

Everywhere in the Moroccan countryside, you see olive trees, and under them there is wheat or barley growing.  Each farming family gets olive oil and flour for the entire year.  This way they have fresh bread and olive oil, which, along with sweet green tea, is a meal unto itself.  Talk about local, sustainable, organic and vegan….This is how it all once was.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (5)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

nabilino02 said:

Like Like like like...where is the facebook share?

01/31/12

Mark Willenbrock said:

... A really nice, evocative article - my wife's family has olives in the foothills of the Rif. But - vegan?! Never in Morocco! Are you forgeting all those goats and sheep?

01/31/12

Mohamed Serroukh said:

... Hmmm, the very reason I decided to study agriculture and plan to go back home to my beautiful Morocco, take moroccans out of Morocco but you can never ever take Morocco out of moroccans with love from London

01/30/12

S Hassi said:

Like it I liked reading this article, warm and Very Moroccan , most of us had a similar upbringing to what Nora is talking about . Thanks

01/30/12

Morcelli said:

... This brings back memories when my folks would buy a sac of olives (quantar), they would curred with all sort of spices and then store it in one of the darkest area of the house (saddah), later on, every time they go visit a relative, they would take some as present. As a kid I never cared for those olives, I preferred the one you buy from the store. Those they mixed with btata et zitoun and lamb, Yam Yam. Later on I started to appreciate and preferred the home made ones. Mrs Nora is really good at bringing back the good of Morocco to those of us who long for the good old days. Nothing malicious or knifing with a style of a first grader similar to the other poster.

01/30/12

Name

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Add Comment Preview