In spite of a drought this year, Kim and I have been rained on during both trips to Spain this year. As far as I can tell, the rain in Spain falls mainly on me!

During this trip we had planned on visiting the de Miguel family farm to see the harvest and then visit the mill to see how the olives were processed into oil.  It rained so hard while we were there that the fields were mud and they were unable to harvest olives.  Without any fresh olives coming in from the fields, the mills were not operating because you can’t store olives while making extra virgin olive oil.  What is harvested is processed as quickly possible to minimize anerobic fermentation that can turn extra virgin olive oil into a lower quality grade of oil. 

Instead, we took pictures of olives with water dripping off of them.  Not exactly the images I was hoping to capture.  That was Saturday.

On Sunday, we went to visit a vineyard in Montilla.  Montilla is a town south of Córdoba that produces both olives and grapes.  As we were having a coffee on a chilly patio, Mara said that she could hear the machines that shake the trees to harvest olive.  It sounded like a chain saw to me, but we struck out in quest of this noise.  A few minutes later we caught up with a couple harvesting olives.  The man was holding a Sthil 4-cycle machine that he usedto shake the olives off of the three and onto a net below.  No wonder it sounded like a chainsaw! 

It was great to see the process and the views were fantastic.  Here are some photos from both days. I’m guessing you can tell the difference.