Olive harvesting

This is a step by step gallery of olive harvesting, as practiced in the village Samiko in the Peloponnese, Western Greece.

Preparation

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  The olive pickers access the olive grove, usually by pick-up truck.
 
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  First action is to lay out the olive nets and sheets on the ground.
 
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  Some of the olive branches are sawed off, in this way serving both pruning and facilitation of picking.
 
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  The branches and some olives have now fallen on the nets.

Harvesting

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  Handheld mechanical tools are often used to speed up the picking process.
 
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  Cut branches are passed through a special harvesting machine to remove and collect the olives.

Harvested olives

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  The olives are gathered into piles by lifting and shaking the corners of the nets.
 
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  Olives are transferred to jute or synthetic sacks and loaded onto the pick-up truck, to be carried to the oil press.

Post-harvest works

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  Excess branches are burnt with special care so that the fire does not spread.
 
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  The olive pickers are "rewarded" with a rainbow in the sky when leaving the olive grove:)
  
  sourse: http://www.wikipedia.org/