Sacred Sierra (15 page)

*

With so much concentration on the almonds, and then on the truffle oaks, it was easy to overlook the fact that we had about a dozen olive trees hidden on a terrace below the house. Noticing in early December that other farmers further down in the valley were already harvesting their crops, we decided it might be a good time to have a look at our
own
. Only four trees actually had any fruit on them, and even then a couple of them only on a few branches. I wasn’t sure why the rest of them had no olives, although the lack of pruning and general tending to over recent years probably had much to do with it. It was only now that I gave them a closer examination that I realised they weren’t quite the squat, neat trees we saw on other people’s land, the olives never more than an arm’s reach away. Several of ours had grown quite tall. They probably needed a good feeding as well. Ibn al-Awam emphasised the need to fertilise trees, particularly at this time of year, but I wasn’t sure where I could get some good-quality animal dung. Perhaps from the local goatherd, but I hadn’t seen him for months.

Still, we spent a couple of days beating, dragging and pulling off what olives there were. I was surprised at the variety there seemed to be: small green ones,
arbequinas
; large black ones, which Salud referred to as
fargas
; and small but longish and pointed half-green, half-purple ones, that grew on the tree in bunches, like grapes – possibly
cornicabras
.

It was a slow affair, picking many olives off individually as a large proportion refused to fall to the ground when we beat the trees with special yellow rakes. Bit by bit the sheets of white plastic we placed underneath filled up with dots of green and black, occasional leaves and twigs joining them. There was a satisfying sound as the rake flew through the air, striking the tree before the olives started to fall.
Whoosh. Thwack. Patter-patter-patter
. It was a strangely pleasing and calming activity.

Salud seemed to have got over the worst of the ghost scare, although I hadn’t mentioned to her what Arcadio had told me about the farmer’s son. I convinced myself it was because there just wasn’t time: our days were filled with endless tasks, from chopping firewood and keeping the house going to all the farm activities and planting trees: in the evenings, when we finally stopped, we were often too tired for much conversation, simply staring deep into the flames of the fire in a trance state before finally collapsing into bed. The real reason, though, was that I didn’t want to frighten her again.

In the distance the hunters were back, chasing and shooting at a couple of wild boar, it being a Thursday. We could hear their shouts and cries from across the gulley, while the barking of their dogs sounded like a single beast with innumerable heads.

And yet this time their presence didn’t really disturb us. It was as if we had entered a cocoon of our own – the two of us in some kind of communion with the olive trees, as though they themselves had the ability to induce in us a state of relaxation and peace. At one point Salud even started talking to the trees, congratulating them on having so many olives in the first place, despite having been abandoned over the past few years.

In this unhurried, pensive frame of mind, I found myself wondering about the olive branch as a symbol of peace. Perhaps, a thought formed itself somewhere, we were absorbing some substance from the trees through our hands which calmed us somehow. Could this be the reason behind the mythological importance of the olive branch?

‘My grandmother always used to drink a glass of hot water with seven olive leaves in it before going to bed,’ Salud said when I mentioned the idea to her. ‘She said it was to help reduce her blood pressure.’

I recalled how Arcadio had stopped the heavy bleeding in her finger by using a simple weed. Since then I’d started to find out a little bit more from him about the medicinal properties of the plants we walked past or over every day. I didn’t like to ask him straight out: it wasn’t the way he did things. But he seemed to have understood it was something I was interested in, and a few gems had appeared during our conversations: artichokes – of which we had one growing wild near the beehives – were helpful for diabetics and people with liver complaints; bitter chamomile, or
botja
, was an antiseptic and could be used to ease sore feet; rock tea, which grew near the spring, was good for almost anything – an anti-inflammatory and detoxifier, as well as being helpful for stomach problems. Meanwhile the savin juniper, which dotted the mountainside, light-green little cones bursting out of the rocks, had been used to rid farm animals of parasites, leaving branches from the tree to soak in water and then giving the water to the animals to drink. Woman had also been known to take it to abort unwanted children. Sometimes the mountains felt like a drugstore where all the prescriptions had been lost and the pharmacists had died or gone into hiding.

Some herbs in particular seemed to have a special importance. Thyme, picked in April or May, when it was in flower, was a stimulant,
and
good for the circulation. Lying close to the ground and with dull green leaves, you often only became aware of it as your foot crushed it during a walk over the hillsides, releasing a rich scent pregnant with memories of roasted meats and grilled fish. It had strong medicinal properties, being good both for reducing bloating as well as soothing the nerves. The hunters drank thyme tea as a stimulant after a night out on the mountains. Arcadio recommended it to ease period pains, adding that its antiseptic qualities made it a common cure for coughs. Drinking it after a heavy meal also eased digestion.

Rosemary, meanwhile, was the Queen of the Countryside, its pale blue flowers like droplets from the sky.
Romero, para amor verdadero
, people said, as they plucked a twig or two on a country walk to take back home with them: rosemary, for true love. No Spanish woman considered a walk out of her village or town complete without picking up some rosemary along the way – either for cooking (it is used especially in a paella, thrown in just before the rice is done to impart aroma to the dish), or to ward off the evil eye: Gypsy women make a habit of thrusting it in your hands in the hope of opening your purse, while the men can often be seen walking with a sprig of the herb poking from their mouths, almost like a cigarette, to bring luck.

Rosemary, Arcadio informed me, had many medicinal uses. The flowers of the herb are soaked in alcohol for nine days; the resulting liquid was useful for all kinds of skin complaints, from rashes to cuts and bruises, while infusions of rosemary increased circulation and stimulated appetite. The smoke from the plant, placed on a hot plate or stove, was meant to ease the symptoms of asthma.

Rosemary was often used to light a fire, and was highly valued as a firewood. A local Christmas carol, sung after midnight mass as everyone comes out into the cold night air, goes:

Pastorets i pastoretes

fue-me llenya, que tinc fred

no me la feu d’angilaga

feu-me-la de romeret
.

O shepherds and shepherdesses,

Bring me some firewood

Not just twigs from the gorsebush

But nice branches of rosemary.

We took the olives down to the press in a nearby village on the feast day of the
Inmaculada
– the Immaculate Conception. At the agricultural co-op, according to what I’d heard, you took your freshly picked crop, they weighed it and then you got a certain amount of oil based on how many olives you’d taken in; everyone’s olives were mixed together.

We filled about three large rubber buckets –
capazos
– and drove them down. The co-op was in a warehouse on the edge of the village. Lights were buzzing against the dark winter air and a crowd of people and cars were huddled around. A tall, bald man in grey overalls showed us the ropes – we took a ticket and waited our turn. At the entrance to the warehouse was a large hole in the ground covered by a thick lattice grid. People drove their cars up to it, unloaded their crop, then tipped the contents down the hole, olives, leaves and everything. A conveyor belt picked it all up from the bottom of the hole and carried it towards a machine that separated the olives from the rest. Then another conveyor belt took the clean olives to a big metal container where they were weighed. From here a third conveyor belt took it up to a massive metal trench where all the olives were stored before being pressed. It looked like something Heath Robinson would have been proud of; the whole series of machines made a tremendous racket, while a sour, fruity, not altogether pleasant smell filled the place.

There was great honking of horns and general chaos as cars reversed in and then drove away again with their loads: no one wanted to wait in the cold, so anyone holding things up was sharply reprimanded. One woman with short mousy hair and thick glasses tried to speed things up by helping the people ahead of her in the queue; she was almost poleaxed when the long steel pole she was using to prod olives at the bottom of the hole got stuck in the conveyor belt and snapped back at her viciously. She let go of it just in time, but quickly retreated: no more helping other people.

Most of the others’ olives were black or deep purple, with only a
handful
of green ones. I wondered about those still sitting in the back of our car, waiting their turn to be cast down into this mechanical pit – they were almost all green, some quite hard and small. Perhaps we hadn’t given them enough time to ripen.

After a long cold wait, in which we saw the locals pour bucket after bucket of fresh, ripe olives down the hole, it was our turn. In the harsh fluorescent light of the warehouse our crop looked even greener than it had back up on the mountain. Everyone around looked on with disapproval as we very quickly sent our paltry specimens down into the gaping mouth of the olive machine. They simply weren’t completely ripe, and our best efforts to clean the fruit of any encumbering leaves and twigs were a waste of time – there was a machine for that. Only a fool would waste hours on such a task. I walked over to the man in the grey overalls, who was standing at a grubby computer taking the measure of how much fruit we’d fed into his great machine.

‘Very unripe,’ he said with a look of resignation. He’d probably taken a measure of us as soon as we’d walked in – despite wearing dirty, country clothes, we were obviously city types at heart, as green as the olives we’d just brought in.

‘How much?’ I asked eagerly. After two full days threshing trees, our hands scratched and sore, I wanted to hear a big round number, something that would make me proud of this, our first harvest.

He looked up at the screen. It said 49 kilos. He gave another resigned smile. Then it flashed 50 and stopped.

‘That’s all right then,’ he said. ‘You might at least get a litre or two out of that.’ He ripped off a piece of paper from the printer and handed it to us. ‘Come back in a week or so to collect.’ Then he turned to the waiting crowd behind us.

‘Next!’

A litre or two. All that work for a litre or two of oil. Despite my disappointment, though, I smiled: it would be
our
oil, from
our
olive trees, doubtless it would be the best olive oil I had ever tasted. That was worth all the effort.

Salud poured us both a glass of wine when we got back. ‘To our first olive crop,’ she said. We clinked glasses and settled down in front of the fire. Outside an owl was hooting away, while cold draughts did their
best
to push through the cracks in the doors and windows. A gale was blowing in again from the north-west, blustering bursts of air hurtling over the house. Starting, making mistakes, learning, amending, carrying on. There was a mountain to climb.

*

The thirteenth of December –
Sta Llúcia
– St Lucy’s Day. Like thousands of women across the country, Salud takes down last year’s mistletoe from where it was hanging over the back door, burns it in a pan outside by squirting lighter fuel on to it and striking a match, then places a new sprig up above the window in its place. I’ve found some pine trees further up the valley with mistletoe growing on them and cut a bunch down for her. She says it’s traditional to do it on this day – it absorbs ‘negativity’, which is then dissipated at the end of the year when you burn it. Marina would be proud. I am about to ask whether it will work for keeping away the ghost girl, but think better of it.

*

A week or so after dropping off our olives at the co-operative, I went round to see if our oil was ready. Where previously the place had been packed with people delivering their crop, now there was no one and the place seemed deserted. I poked my head round the door and was met by the familiar smell of slightly acidic, fermenting olives.

A girl was sitting at the desk, smoking and listening to the radio. I handed her my receipt.

‘Filtered or unfiltered?’ she asked.

‘What’s the difference?’ I said.

‘Unfiltered’s cloudy and you get more of it,’ she said.

Half an hour later I was back at the farm clutching two five-litre plastic bottles of thick, green, opaque liquid, a loaf of fresh bread under my arm. Salud was waiting for me.

‘Time for an
almuerzo
– a mid-morning snack,’ she said.

She decanted some of the oil into a little bottle, broke the bread and placed two plates on the table. We poured drops of oil on to the plates and then simultaneously reached down to dip bread into it before bringing it up to our mouths.

‘To our first crop,’ she said.

‘Cheers.’

Perhaps only once or twice in my life had I tried such a richly flavoured oil. The smell alone was worth every effort we had put into harvesting, a strong, deep, earthy scent that connected directly with some pleasure centre in the brain. It tasted magnificent, too, with just a hint of a spicy kick at the back of the throat.

‘How come you can never buy this kind of stuff in the shops?’ I asked. Even the best ‘named’ olive oils I’d tried – usually from Jaén province in northern Andalusia – weren’t up to this standard. There was something raw, pure and genuine about this oil.