las aceituneras

olive-picking songs

my olive-picking helpers

Picking olives was certainly the best job I’ve ever held and probably the one I'm best suited for. The hypnotic pull on the branches, the pleasing click of the olives into your palm, their soft fall to the nets. Long-legged and quite good with a chainsaw, the task of climbing fifteen feet up to prune aging trees was always left to me. From the tip-top of the grove I could see the sweep of las Alpujarras, birds diving in and out among pomegranate, fig, and almond trees, goats crossing the river, kittens romping in the grass below. 

(Most olive harvesting is now mechanized but some family farms do still pick by hand.)

When we'd filled our baskets every few days, we loaded the pickup and drove through the Alpujarras mountains to the olive press, a sweaty, pungent building full of magnificent aging machinery oozing oil, which I ate with every meal, put in my hair, smeared on my skin, used as lip gloss. The oil was muscular, briny, green-brown and full of particulate, nothing like the gussied-up canola oil we get in the States. 

Hours upon hours alone with the trees, the gentle rhythm of hands swooshing through branches. Once I asked my friend at the olive press (of a long line of olive growers) if people made up olive-picking songs. It seemed only sensible that they would. 
	Por supuesto! he said. 

Las aceituneras, Julio Romero de Torres (1903)

Olive is aceituna, so olive pickers and their olive-picking songs are, delightfully, called aceituneras. Furthermore, the act of picking olives is referred to as lechando el arbol, or ‘milking the tree.’ Which, if you’ve spent time both milking cows/goats and picking olives (surely someone else here too?), you realize is quite apt.

your correspondent, lechando el árbol

Predictably, as a rural folk song performed in trees at harvest time, there is not a robust online presence of aceituneras. But here's a small sampling, for your pleasure:

-A flamenco aceitunera 

-Jota (folk dance) de las aceituneras, from Extremadura:

-Olive harvest songs are widespread across the Mediterranean basin – a particularly lovely one from Palestine:

-My humble addition to the oeuvre. Thoroughly committed to the geographical cure as I am, I had of course run away to Andalucía to escape heartbreak. For what it's worth, a chainsaw and fresh olive oil are good medicine. My aceitunera is an attempt to forget among the olive trees (olvidar en los olivos): 

lechando el árbol
en las Alpujarras
el leche el aceite
en mis venas para ti

aquí en las olivas
estoy olvidando
no más esperando
esperando para ti

corazón de granada
llorando semillas
en el otoño

entre los ramos
yo soy pajarita
volando, olvidando
olvidando de ti

la luna mi amiga
dijo, 'tu te quedas.
hijandalucia: 
siempre más aquí'

corazón de granada
semillas, lagrimas
se crecen un árbol  

los gatos de los olivos