The older farmers in town were impressed by the Vaughan’s determination, and began stopping by to offer help and advice. With their assistance and Bob and Elf’s hard work, Reniella got up and running.
In the damp chilly mornings, after Bob had taken Owain to the school bus stop on the back of his motorcycle, we’d head out to the grove, set up nets under the trees, and start picking. The Reniella trees represent the region’s typical olive varieties. I learned to recognize those little hard to pull off green moraioli, the easier corregioli, the large shiny black leccini, and the small green-black olivastre. We’d click into a rhythm, climbing up and down ladders, our conversations running from books to movies to life stories, with the rustle of olive branches, birdsongs, the distant muffled shots of pheasant hunters, and neighbors picking on nearby farms filling up the background.
Elf had warned me, “Careful not to get whacked in the eye by an olive branch,” but during my first enthusiastic hour of picking, the inevitable happened. Elf snapped into maternal mode, putting salve on it and apologizing as if it was her fault. “It’s my initiation rite,” I laughed, putting on my Jackie-O sunglasses to avoid another incident.
A whack in the eye seemed a small price to pay to become part of a 2,000-year-old tradition. Olive cultivation began here during Etruscan times and took hold during the Renaissance when the ruling Medicis offered farmers free land if they planted grapes and olives. Over the centuries, workers have had to endure all kinds of hardships, including winter freezes, the most recent in 1985, which wiped out two-thirds of the region’s trees. The Tuscans’ perseverance and commitment to quality through all the ups and downs has resulted in their olive oils being ranked among the most prized in the world.
At Reniella, time-honored harvest traditions are followed. Oil comes from fruit picked by hand rather than rake or machine, just before it ripens, and is brought to the mill as soon as possible to be put through the cold press process.
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