It is now the time for farmers to start the olive harvest. This starts in October and continues until all the olives have been picked. However, the earlier you pick the olives the better! So yesterday I went along with around 30 other volunteers to the Village of Massha (part of the Zaytun Farmers Cooperative), in the Samaria area to help the farmers to pick olives. We left Tel Aviv at 9am and drove the short distance to reach the Palestinian village well before 10am. It was an interesting drive, seeing the security barriers on approach to the check point. No one was stopping the cars approaching Palestine, it is only the cars coming into Israel that are checked. 

After a hard morning picking olives on a beautiful sunny day, we all sat down together and ate the delicious lunch prepared for us by some of the women from the village. We ate humus and fool with pita bread, salad and falafel (it was the best falafel I have had since I arrived in Israel!) and a cup of lentil soup. We were then able to hear from the farmer about the Olive Harvest, how they make the Olive Oil and the process to ensure that their olive oil is both organic and Extra Virgin. He told us that we were in fact not harvesting the olive trees from his village of Massha, as their land is on the West side of the village and is now on the other side of the separation wall. We were actually harvesting trees on land of their neighbouring village Bidiya! (also part of the Zaytun Farmers Cooperative) 

When everyone was fully fed and well rested we got back to work on picking olives. There were people on the ground under the trees picking from the low hanging branches, many people around the trees and more up high at the top of long ladders picking the olives from all directions. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, when the sun was starting to go down and we had managed to fill a van full of olives, we headed to the pressing house where they clean the olives and make them into Saha Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We were then invited to have coffee with the farmers and their families. By the end of the day I felt happy to have been part of such an important process and exhausted from all the work!

All pictures were taken by © Yasmine Soiffer 2008, www.yasminesoiffer.com