And the picking goes on....

We are into the home stretch now, with just a couple weeks to go until we finish picking for the year. Of course picking is just the end product of tons of other work and pleasures, the next of which is pruning. Olive trees need pruning, sometimes quite severely to keep them healthy. But more on that some other time.
This year's picking crew has been great. First Omer and Valentina showed up at the end of October, then Friedrich in early November, and finally Ruth and Jan made their yearly return to gezer and the olives about 10 days ago. It's quite an international group-each of us was born in a different country: Norway, England, Germany, Israel, Italy and the US. And of course kibbutz folk show up sometimes too, especially Melissa as well as Varda, Roxanne, and a few other people.
The weather has been great, with about 5 days of rain which kept us away from picking but has refreshed everything and turned the brown bare earth into a green crewcut. It has been nice and cool, which makes the work a lot easier.
I'm not going to brag about this year's oil, but we are already enjoying it with our daily outdoor breakfast in the orchard.  There are some photos of this year's harvest in the photos section. Enjoy. As always, love to read your comments. D