Old Yearnings

Having grown up in the northeast United States, I can tell you that the de rigueur autumn pre-school activity is a trip to the local pumpkin patch. Kids bundle into their warm, puffy coats to check out the pumpkins (sizes big to massive), enjoy a horse-drawn hayride, sip hot apple cider and, if they’re really lucky, devour a candied apple.

Somewhere along the way, I know I also visited, at least once, some type of colonial village in which we children learned how the early Americans churned milk into butter and spun wool into yarn some 200 years ago.

Here, in Israel, my daughter enjoyed the milder Mediterranean version of my mid-Atlantic childhood field trips. Instead of row after row of oversized pumpkins, there was a solitary modest-sized squash nestled next to the four basil plants. Instead of horses and hayrides over endless acres (or so it seemed at the time) of forest and farmland, there was one braying donkey, a disabled dog injured in a car accident, and short footpaths among the various crops and small, environmentally-friendly wood buildings. Instead of hot apple cider, there was hot tea brewed from verbena and geraniums.

Instead of churning milk into butter, we pressed olives into oil. Two at a time, the children circled the press, pushing the large wooden stick to rotate the millstone, crushing the olives. The press at this modern day ecological farm is remarkably similar to those in use thousands of years ago, during the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, such as those found in the very hills where my neighborhood now stands.

Our guide Tal placed the meaty, crushed pulp into socks, which served as the children’s strainers as they squeezed out the olive oil, their hands slick with their nearly finished product. Some delighted in the sensation. Others, less so.

Next to the press was an aged olive tree, gnarled and knotted, whose hollow trunk is still increasing in circumference. One of its many shoots, itself now six or seven years old, took hold within the hollow trunk, from which it grows, generating its own fruit which my daughter’s class harvested on a previous visit. The five-year-olds gathered around the old tree, a master in the art of perennial regeneration, and learned that olive trees in Israel can live for a thousand years.

In the medicinal herbs building, small hands clutched mortars and pestles, attempting to mimic our guide’s circular motion to pulverize rosemary. Tal placed the crushed rosemary into a small jar of olive oil, produced on the farm, to create a rosemary infusion.

In two weeks time, the children will mark the beginning of Chanukah, the festival of the miraculous oil which burned continuously eight days in the desecrated Temple. They will sing Chanukah songs in their kindergarten, just meters away from the site where a massive ancient olive press compound was uncovered. Conservationist Marion Stone wrote about the site in a local magazine: “Here olives were pressed for oil at a time when the Second Temple stood in Jerusalem, and because of the presence of a guardhouse and mikveh [ritual bath], it is thought that here the oil was produced, so pure that it would be fit for ritual use in the Temple. Experts even offered the theory that maybe the oil was used by the Maccabees to rededicate the Temple after their battles with the Seleucids.”

In their modern kindergarten building, the children will open the steeped olive oil-rosemary infusion to sample an age-old remedy to an ancient affliction that plagued me as a child: lice. Lice dislike the scent of rosemary. Tal taught us that in addition to its own moisturizing and restorative properties, olive oil is also endowed with the ability to assume the characteristics of fragrant and medicinal herbs.

When I got home, I had an overwhelming desire to view photographs of the pre-school version of myself surrounded by the oversized pumpkins. So I emailed my mother, who pored through the stacks of albums in her New Mexican den, to find the vintage image of me in my puffy coat and wind-whipped hair, surveying the orange bounty.

Somewhat dismayed, she reported back that the photographs did not age well, and had oranged. Not in the least bothered, I urged her to send them over. And I was not disappointed. The hooded four-year-old me, wearing plaid pants and my brother’s boyish hand-me-down coat, clutched a pumpkin to my face with my mittened hands. All around me was a massive pile of bright orange pumpkins. But it wasn’t just the pumpkins which were orange. Like the olive oil soaking up the rosemary’s properties, the ground absorbed the pumpkin’s orange hue.

Of Ritual and Change

Changing the olive brine has become a Wednesday Night Ritual. That’s a good thing because there are no other Wednesday Night Rituals. It goes like this. I carry the four jars from their incubational space in the guest room to the kitchen counter. I fill up the electric kettle and flick it on. Then I prepare a large glass bowl with cold water, a holding pen for the olives as the jars are thoroughly washed and refilled. (Ben warned that if you leave the olives out of water for too long, they may become discolored. I didn’t test it.)

There is a precise science to replacing the brine. First, I dump in four tablespoons of salt and add a couple of inches of boiling water -- not more. Then, with the lid closed, I shake the jar to dissolve the salt. If I add too much water, the jar becomes too hot to handle. (Also, if I’m not careful, I sometimes get a mist of boiling water in my face during the shaking part.) Then I dump in the rinsed olives, and finally top off the glass with more boiling water. If errant olives float up and risk being exposed to air, I add a plastic bag weighted down with water. And then it’s on to the next jar.

It sounds so simple, and it is, but there was a great deal of trial and error to perfect the process. The first time I opened the jars I discovered a layer of white scum floating on the surface. Mold, apparently because the top olives were not fully submerged. (Don’t let this put you off of sampling my olives; the white scum easily rinsed off and there appeared to be no lasting damage.) And, I confess, the first week I did not know, or did not remember, to add salt. And so the olives sat for the first seven days in brine consisting entirely of boiling water. The implications of this error remain to be seen.

White scum

Like a familiar person spotted out of context, my olives look different in their submerged state. Larger, greener. More perfect, less blemished. Perhaps the glass magnifies them somewhat. Or perhaps the liquid does cause them to swell. Or maybe both. But when the olives emerge from their glass houses for the Wednesday Night Ritual, they, Cinderella-like, seem to revert temporarily to their former, more familiar, less polished, selves.

And that’s not the only change that the olives have undergone in their new incarnation. Within days, many of the deep-purple/black olives largely shed their dark hue, looking like younger, greener versions of themselves. The phenomenon was deeply intriguing. Imagine if I, like the olives, emerged from a salt bath not merely cleansed and in superior health, but actually as a younger and greener version of myself. Restoration or regression?

Creative Fruits

My tree’s contribution to the olive-making project is officially complete. Now it’s up to me. Me and the brine. Not much there to go wrong, right?

Ten years ago was the last time I got the itch to take up a new hobby, something that created something, but did not entail too much creativity. I can’t act, sing, draw or play a musical instrument. I don’t do pottery, photography or quilting. (I can barely sew a button. Ask my mother.) Though I can pull together a decent meal and bake birthday cakes to please five-year-olds, I can’t make elaborate desserts that belong on magazine covers. So I skeptically skimmed through the catalogue of the local adult education program. Passing over the portrait painting and creative writing, I settled on soap-making.

Now we are going back awhile, and this is not a craft that I kept up for very long, so I admit I have to cheat to remind myself the details of what’s involved. The essential steps of soap-making are combining a lye solution with oils of your choice (such as olive, palm, coconut, etc.) or (in my case) according to recipes, at carefully monitored temperatures. The next step entails a great deal of stirring, after which you may add essential oils for scent, spices for color (paprika and turmeric work well), and fillers for texture, such as dried flower pieces or oatmeal. Then you pour the concoction into non-reactive plastic molds – I used to save up the personal-sized applesauce snacks for a nice round soap – and store the liquid-cum-soap for up to six weeks to allow the lye, a dangerous substance, to chemically react with the oils. At the end, with any luck, you get a fragrant homemade gift to send to family and friends.

I didn’t realize it at first, but soap-making and olive-curing have a great deal in common. A chemical process takes place over the course of weeks in an out-of-the-way place, at home. (I saponified the soaps in the back of my closet in my tiny Boston apartment away from my hyperactive cat. The olives are curing in my dark, lightly-trafficked guest room in Modi’in, safe from my active kids.) Dangerous (lye) or inedible (raw olives) substances transform into a delectable, appealing product. Natural ingredients add fragrance and flavor. Used applesauce containers (nearly) gain a new lease on life. And, surprisingly, some olive-curing recipes even call for lye. (I steered clear of those.)

Both are off-the-beaten path hobbies, which don’t require great natural talent, but with some effort, practice, good conditions, and a little luck, produce a respectable product which people enjoy. And both, to varying degrees, derive from the olive tree.

A decade ago, the mothering project supplanted the soap-making project. I abandoned soap-making when I became pregnant with my first child, fearful that the lye presented a potential risk to my unborn baby.

Some nine months and nine years later, soap-making did not cross my mind when I hurried home from the grocery store to get to work on my freshly picked olives. By the time my first-born, now a fourth-grader, came home from school, I had cut slices into a good chunk of the olives, and placed them into the waiting jars.

For the first time, my son took a serious interest in the olive project. His interest, it turns out, was monetary. He hoped to set up shop down the street, selling olives to feed his soccer cards addiction. Though I disabused him of that notion, he nevertheless contentedly settled down next to me. Side by side, we prepped the olives for the next stage.

Harvest High

We didn’t expect any olives this year. We were under the vague impression, which hazy memories of previous years seemed to confirm, that olive trees produce fruit only on alternate years. (My late stage research indicates that we were onto something.) So when embryonic olives started to appear several months ago, we were surprised.

As the olives ripened, we celebrated the Jewish holidays. We marked Eliad’s first birthday (which falls on the harvest holiday of Sukkot). We went on hikes, we went to the theater, and we celebrated with friends and family. Only when the kids went back to school and routine resumed was I able to turn my mind to the harvest. I was determined to pick my first batch whose end did not entail decaying in the garbage bin. (I relinquished an earlier batch to my brother, because, still, I did not have the proper jars. But though those olives travelled as far as Tel Aviv, their fate was not much different than last year’s crop. My brother eventually disposed of them in a trash can. A Tel Aviv trash can, but a trash can nonetheless.)

So on my first work- and kid-free day, I dug out the hockey stick and the old pink bed sheet and set on the tree. The new liter airtight glass jars, purchased that week, were standing at attention in the kitchen, waiting to be called into action.

When I cleared all of the lower branches, I dragged over a chair and aimed higher, striking the tree again and again until solitary olives remained here and there. With each hit, sending down a hail of leaves and olives, I beat back encroaching thoughts. I should be going to the grocery store. Bam. I should do a load of laundry. Bam. I should prepare my kids’ next meal. Bam. I should read the newspaper (which is actually part of my work, but even when I’m off, I can’t not read the paper.) Bam. I should do all of things that generally occupy my off day, the endless errands, appointments, phone calls, cooking, and more, that keep a household of five running smoothly. Bam. Bam. Bam.

And then, when the first collection bowl was full, I was empty. Emptied of the usual burdens and free to exalt in the moment. If before I was motivated by the determination to see a project through to its conclusion, now I was driven by the sheer joy of the immediate task at hand. Delighted and re-energized, I ducked under previously prohibitively dense branches at the back of the tree, positioned myself in the corner, leaned way over the railing towards the street, and greedily grabbed at the bounty almost out of reach. I chuckled as I considered how I, a zealous olive-picker perched precariously over the passion fruit-entwined fence, might look to passing drivers on that quiet Wednesday morning. And I basked in the calming realization that even if the end result of the olive project was unpalatable (a distinct possibility), failure was not in the realm of possibility. There would be none of the bitterness that marks raw olives.  

When the bowls were filled and the tree was mostly stripped of its fruit (except for one patch which I discovered later), I still needed to go to the grocery store and then prepare my son’s lunch. After all, though the emotional burden was lifted, the physical need to buy (and eat) food was as real as ever. But the rejuvenating effect of the morning’s activity was restorative as an olive oil balm. I tackled the routine tasks with a lighter step and higher spirits.

My kids enjoy a story called Up, Up Up, It’s Apple-Picking Time, in which two children travel to their grandparents’ apple orchard where they pick and sell apples, all the while eating the fruit off the tree and then enjoying apple cider and apple pie in the evening. Unlike apples, olives are not an instant gratification crop. (The explanation, perhaps, for my kids’ less than enthusiastic response.) Harvesting the fruit is only the beginning of a long process involving weeks of soaking, rinsing and flavoring. With immediate physical needs to be met, I put aside the hockey stick and the old sheet, and then made my usual detour to the grocery’s deli counter to pick up a large container of my favorite Syrian olives. Enough to last the week.

Life In the Way

The first time I entered the apartment, I was on a reconnaissance mission. I was planning on buying a different unit in the same project, and was consulting neighbors about the air and the light in these apartments, all identical. Identical, but not the same. Rationally, I know that the décor of a home should not influence the purchase of a property. After all, the furnishings and fixtures go with the seller. Nevertheless, I was totally taken in by the Moroccan style. But it wasn’t the furniture that sealed my fate.

For once I stepped into the bright, spacious living room, I couldn’t miss it. Beyond the broad sliding doors leading to the yard, there it sits. Majestic and imposing, occupying an elevated corner of the garden and peering out at the breathtaking view of the Ayalon Valley in the distance. Back then, the bulldozers and construction cranes had not yet reached much of the untouched hills just across the street.

Back then, I knew next to nothing about olive trees, but even I could see that this tree – which I was told was more than 40 years old -- was particularly impressive. Six years have since passed. A new neighborhood complete with young gardens, and olive trees of its own, now stands on the once rocky hills, which had once been teeming with ancient archeological remains, delicate wildflowers in the winter, and the odd braying donkey or two. I still know next to nothing about olive trees.

But I know my tree, its thick, sturdy trunk which splits in two very close to the base, its full foliage, and its abundant fruit which weighs down the upper branches in the fall. I know that its branches and leaves extend nearly symmetrically around the trunk in a perfect circle, unlike many other olive trees which appear to grow on a diagonal axis – with the trunk on one side, and the branches growing off in a different direction. I know how the ground fills up with the unharvested black olives, which mix with the small, reddish volcanic rocks surrounding the tree, and scatter across the nearby grass and stone patio. Most of the fallen fruit are dry, shriveled, a dull black, surrounded by thin, long leaves which curl into themselves when they brown and dry. A few olives, the freshly fallen, are plump, shiny purple-black, eggplant-like. When trampled on (as often happens, given their proximity to ongoing baseball practices), their flesh bursts and tantalizingly glistens with juice – oil, really.

The downed olives create an implausible but irresistible temptation – and choking hazard– to my one-year-old. Olives straight from the tree are inedible and taste horrible, but that doesn’t stop Eliad from trying to stick them in his mouth over and over again. When he’s quicker than we are, he usually grasps the olive between his top and bottom front teeth, as I used to see old people nurse sugar cubes in between their incisors as they sipped tea. Maybe, to the baby, the raw olive tastes as good as sugar with tea. Or maybe he understands something we don’t.

Eliad was born during the olive harvest. In fact, his birth prevented us from curing our first batch of harvested olives, which we had collected shortly before Rosh Hashana. For the harvest, we enlisted the help of our friend Ben, an experienced olive-harvester, and our collective children, ranging in age from eight to two-and-a-half. We envisioned an exciting, perfect activity for the kids, engaging them in a hands-on nature project. But their interest quickly waned, and they wandered off to play ball, dress up, and, sadly, watch a video. Given my advanced stage of pregnancy, I sat out the harvest, and the two men collected the fruit, whacking the higher branches with an ice hockey stick and catching the bounty on a tarp spread across the ground.

Lawrence and I sorted the olives according to Ben’s instructions. Green (younger olives) in one container; black (more aged) in another; half-green, half-black, or purple, in a third. The rejects, those with bruises or bugs, were discarded. When we were finished, we entrusted the collection to Ben. With the baby on the way, we could not commit to the next time-consuming stage – cutting a slit in each olive and soaking them in special pickling jars. (I had saved up more than a dozen glass jars, mostly from tomato sauce and apple sauce, over the course of months. But Ben was skeptical that these would be up to the task. We did not have the air-tight pickling jars, and did not envision ourselves having the opportunity to get them, with both the birth and holidays around the corner.)

So the olives left with Ben, and his three kids in tow. Ben planned to pursue the several weeks-long process of soaking, changing the water repeatedly, flavoring, and soaking some more. And, at the end, we would get the fruit of his labor and our tree.

But for Ben, too, life – and death – got in the way of olive-curing. His grandmother’s death was quickly followed by his daughter’s birth and our olives rotted, indifferent to both birth and death.