At season's end

I went to the olive mill at Maiano first thing and managed to persuade the young woman in charge of operations to include our rather paltry crop - turned out at 27kgs - with another batch going through the mill.

It is the last day the mill is open. The photo is a view from behind the frantoio looking out over the grounds of the Villa Maiano. These were laid out by Sir John Temple Leader between 1870 and 1890 and inaugurated in 1893 by Queen Victoria, no less.

You can see the fires of the olive tree prunings burning away and mixing with the fog and mist associated with the high pressure building over Italy at the moment.


Taken with my iPhone it is regrettably blurred but as a simplified watercolour it could work quite well.

I return to the mill at 4ish to pick up what oil we are due - say 4L at a 15% oil content.

Added later



It was 3L by the mill's calculation - all a bit approximate. Our olives were mixed in with another guy from Fiesole who reckoned he was going to get 90-100L. (The milling charge was €15 including €3 for oil cans.)

He turned out to be an Albanian doctor of long standing in Italy. A lovely bloke who told me the rule in the Albanian mountains was to offer strangers 'bread, salt and heart'. He insisted I take another litre of our co-mingled oil.

Later A popped up on his bike - a heroic climb up the Vecchia Fiesolana - to help us collect some furniture a neighbour has very kindly given us.

In those three hours of generosity a lot happened on the Brexit scene.