The Olive Harvest (The Olive Series Book 3)

by Carol Drinkwater

  Laurent has returned to the gardening co-operative but he does not have the expertise to identify them. Alexandre would know, but he is away until the end of the week. Jacques is with his family in the mountains and won’t be returning for another fortnight. I am frantic. The examples I have trapped in the jar expire and on Friday I set about capturing new ones. Eventually, after much frustration, I bag a pair and return to the farmers’ co-operative in search of Alexandre, who recognises them instantly. Cicadelles blanches. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ he says. ‘When you treat the olive trees, they’ll be taken care of.’

  I refrain from mentioning that I have not been intending to treat the trees and that my resistance to insecticides is all the greater since I stared down upon dead beehives.

  ‘There are two kinds of insects,’ he explains to me, ‘those that sting the vegetation and those that suck. These are suckers. If you climb the old trees you will see that they are everywhere on the young shoots, new growth. They are always there, but you haven’t seen them. When René treated your old trees against the mouche de l’olive, the olive fly, that same product shielded the plants against these white invaders. They have bred like this because the vegetation lacked protection last year. Heat incubates the larvae of various insects, including these chaps. If you are registered with us as fully fledged olive farmers I can sell you a liquid, but we cannot supply insecticides to you otherwise.’

  I confess that I haven’t listed us because I have never intended to purchase sprays.

  ‘Well, try this. It’s pretty benign and though not specifically for olive trees, it should see them off. Next time you come by bring your ticket of affirmation as oléiculteurs and I’ll add your name to our files.’

  When I return home Quashia and I set to with the bottled pesticide, diluted with water in two shoulder pumps, and cover the entire estate. It takes us the rest of the day and the following morning. And then we wait. Forty-eight hours, the instructions claim it takes for the flies to begin to drop away. Two days pass, then three, then four. The bugs go nowhere. They appear to be immune to the blue insecticide and remain on the stalks and branches and, in the case of the young olive trees, they are also setting up home on the trunks, sucking the sap. I look them up and find Cicadellidae, leaf-hoppers, but they seem nothing like the moths we have. I am desperate. Not knowing who else to turn to, I put in a call to the Chambre d’Agriculture. It is August – almost impossible to find assistance anywhere – but finally I manage to contact a young man who can advise me.

  ‘Sounds as though they are of the Aleyrodidae family, whiteflies. Serious pests.’ He recommends another product. However, we need a licence to purchase it. Might there be an organic alternative? He has absolutely no idea. But how can I be sure his verdict is accurate? I cannot afford to invest in costly insecticides and I have no desire to bombard the hill with a cocktail of toxins out of ignorance and alarm. I decide to hold off in the hope that the gentle chemical we have used will start to kick in.

  Hosing down the garden furniture, I discover the pale lavender bugs at work in lines of sixes and sevens on the pear-tree boughs. I approach and they take off; a gauze scarf fluttering in the breeze. If they were not leaching the vegetation I would find their colours and form rather lovely.

  We are now into the heavy watering season; an hour at dawn, two hours at sunset. I collapse into bed but cannot even close my eyes. In the moonlit darkness, I count six of the winged insects on the ceiling. Are they intending to take up residence inside the premises as well?

  Quashia suggests we call René and he insists on Michel’s advice. I haven’t shared the problem with Michel who, in any case, is in China, where he is on the judging panel at a documentary film festival. I telephone René and then stroll down to collect our mail – I haven’t seen our postman for a while – and find a letter from the Chambre d’Agriculture. It requests completion of an enclosed form – something about products in use on the land. They are offering to collect free of charge all empty or semi-used defunct containers. I set it aside, my mind occupied with our current bug battle and because I am not quite sure what precisely it is requesting.

  René arrives, sporting dark glasses, which is a sight I have never seen before. He has a mild eye irritation, he explains. Nothing serious. He was working one of his farms when his mask was caught in a low-hanging branch and pulled off, exposing his face. A pesticide shower caught his eyes. He dismisses it, concentrating on our problem, ‘They are of the Coccoidea family. Scale insects. The females are wingless, legless, spend their lives attached to plants, sucking them. The males have the wings. They are steadfastly extracting the juices from the trees and are particularly dangerous for the saplings, which haven’t developed the wherewithal to withstand a plague such as you are experiencing. If they’ve found a good grazing ground, which they have chez vous, you’ll have a dickens of a job ridding yourselves of them. You should have listened to me and prevented this. Not a single one of my farms is blighted. Not surprising, by the look of it – the bugs are all here! The shingle you showed me on the orange leaves was their larvae. They have hatched and are spreading rapidly in the heat. Treat the olive trees, Carol, or lose your crop.’

  ‘We have sprayed them,’ I confess. I display the product we have used. He shakes his head. ‘I’ll provide you with a much more efficient juice – it’s in the boot of my car – and I’ll hire the machine for you, but I can’t lend you a hand because I am committed elsewhere for the next couple of weeks, and what with my eyes, I’m not feeling terrific at present …’

  ‘Alexandre claims they are leaf-hoppers and the agricultural office diagnosed whitefly …’

  ‘The product I use destroys those too. One proviso: don’t harvest anything for twenty-one days after use.’

  I drop my gaze. It looks as though I am beaten. My dreams of organic farming are gone. For our AOC ticket we are not expected to produce organically, only to deliver first-class oil. If I continue to strive for a chemical-free farm, I will probably lose this season’s fruit and have no oil of any kind to offer for examination.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I concede.

  He supplies me with the extremely expensive ‘juice’ and returns with the machine late in the afternoon. Quashia and I set to work treating every single tree, every flower, every plant, every vegetable against the cicadelle or the whitefly or scale insect, whichever it is. An hour or so later Jacques, fit and smiling, returned from his family holiday, arrives to clean the pool. Quashia has gone off to shower. We have douched over a hundred of the oliviers as well as all the small fruit trees. The rest, which involve hiking the hill, we’ll attack bright and early in the morning. My muscles are trembling with fatigue.

  I mention the letter from the Chambre d’Agriculture and Jacques asks to read it. ‘Ah, it’s reclaiming all banned pesticides. They’re getting strict, and they’re jittery.’

  ‘Jittery, why?’

  ‘Haven’t you been following the Fiprinol saga in the newspapers?’

  ‘The active substance judged lethal to bees? Yes, Michel has been sending me cuttings.’

  ‘There is concern for human contamination from the same product. Cancer research centres are testing it now. There’s another, also lethal to bees, a spray used on sunflowers.’

  I am angry, recollecting the five hives lost here. ‘Fortunately,’ I assure him, ‘we have no banned products here. I have the residue of a bottle purchased from Alexandre and an insecticide René sold me.’

  ‘Let’s check them. I’ll fetch my Bible out of the truck and we’ll take a look.’

  ‘Your Bible?’

  He nods and disappears.

  I offer up the semi-empty container from Alexandre and Jacques confirms that it is of little use. ‘Moderately harmless, except that it shouldn’t be used on any plant visited by bees.’ Which strikes me as a very real reason to avoid it. Then I fetch the liquid we are squirting everywhere now.

  ‘Where the hell did you get this?’


  He riffles furiously through the pages of a hefty paperback, runs his finger down a column of names and hands me the book, entitled L’Index Phytosanitaire.

  ‘This,’ he says, ‘is the agriculturists’ bible. It lists the pros and cons of every available and withdrawn pesticide, fungicide, organophosphate, you name it. The produce you’ve used on your trees is illegal and highly dangerous. Read the list of side-effects.’

  Which I do. It includes several cancers.

  ‘By law, you cannot even throw it in the dustbin. It has been banned for some time and even empty bottles must be delivered up to the Chamber of Agriculture’s collection service for safe disposal.’

  I gawp at him in horror. ‘Will it harm Quashia, me, the fruits and olives?’

  He stares at me gravely and chooses not to reply.

  ‘Show me the trees.’

  Jacques confirms Alexandre’s diagnosis: ‘Cicadelles blanches, also known as Metcalfa pruinosa. They arrived in France from the United States about fifteen years ago. Currently they are feeding off more than two hundred plants, including fruit trees and vines.’ Then he explains that I have muddled two insect families. ‘The bluish moths you have here are cicadelles, of the Cicadellides family. There are over four thousand species worldwide and their colour can vary, which is why it is sometimes tricky to recognise them, but there’s no doubting they are what you have got. Cicadellidae are also leaf-hoppers. They are suckers too, and pests to crops. Interesting little critters, though: the males attract their mates by low calls transmitted through leaves and stems instead of carried on air.’

  ‘So what should I have treated the cicadelles with?’

  The solution Jacques would have suggested was a dash of washing-up liquid diluted with water hosed on the bugs with a high-powered jet spray. ‘You could’ve waited till after summer. No real harm would have been done. But now it’s too late.’

  ‘And the insecticide we’ve drenched the olives in?’

  ‘Poisonous. When did you spray?’

  ‘We began a couple of hours ago.’ I am considering the fact that I have deluged almost 50 per cent of our oliviers in a banned product, listed as a carcinogen. Any oil pressed would surely bear traces of its elements. The AOC chemical test is bound to register this.

  ‘My advice to you is to get the trees washed down immediately.’

  I run in search of Monsieur Q., who is preparing his supper. He looks shattered but he follows me up the hill where we find Jacques unreeling the hosepipes. ‘I’ll stay and help you. I’ve called Alexandre, too. He’s on his way over.’

  Fortunately the days are long. We each take a separate section of the land and work through until late, late in the evening. Quashia has already seen to it that our water basin is being replenished from our pump house on the other side of the lane. I am allotted the lower eastern flanks because these involve the shorter lengths of hosepipe and are the most accessible. Even so the work is crippling and my arm muscles are burning, screaming with pain. I am transporting weights my body has never been trained to bear, hoisting unwieldy pipes in the fading light. The trees are dripping, raining. I am soaked to the skin, and praying. It is an awesome baptism. Around ten-thirty, when we pack it in for the night, I open a bottle of wine and, together with the two men, relax on the upper terrace. We polish off that red and another. Quashia, of course, does not partake. He has returned to his cottage and a solitary dinner. It is agreed that we will all reconvene at dawn and go through the entire process all over again, just to make sure that the trees are thoroughly cleansed. The cost in water alone does not bear thinking about.

  Before crashing out for the night, I play my messages. There is one from Michel, who has returned earlier in the day from China. It says, ‘Back safely. Falling into bed now, jet-lagged. I’ve been thinking. We have to do this differently. I love you.’

  When I wake the next morning, my right arm is frozen. I have torn both upper and lower tendons. I can barely lift a pen or cup and certainly not agricultural equipment. I am obliged to cease work. There is little I can do to assist the men. My arm is trussed up. I call Michel: ‘Come home, we need you.’

  He drops everything and flies south.

  I pick him up from a plane that is delayed by hours. He is shattered after so much travelling, but perhaps not as shattered as I am. What has happened to my arm? He takes the wheel, talking nineteen to the dozen, describing developments in China since his previous visits, the films he saw, those that won, those he fought for. I turn my head and study the man at my side. My silent husband grown confident again, loquacious even. He wants to hear all my news. ‘We have much to discuss,’ I murmur.

  But I am content just to have him home.

  A Harvest, at Last

  Today is 25 November, the feast of Sainte-Catherine. Traditionally, it is the first day of olive-gathering but earlier rains have brought large quantities of the drupes to the nets already. They are plump and fleshy and delicious-looking but still too green for an oil-lucrative pressing. Still they must be gathered, on hands and knees, picked from the sodden earth. Rummaging about amongst the first of the fallen leaves, slicks of light minky oak mulch and the first of the earth-bound fig leaves, yellow and curled, working with my left hand only, I inhale the scent of bonfires on the surrounding hills. A popular Provençal dictum is that on Sainte-Catherine’s day ‘tout bois prend racine’, all wood takes root. It is the perfect season for planting, particularly fruit trees. A warm, humid earth is the gardener’s dream and arrière-automne, or vers la fin d’automne, the late autumn season, promises exactly those conditions. Michel and Quashia take advantage. I see them through the kitchen window planting up the surround to Monsieur Q.’s completed shed extension. Alongside it, we are planning a splendid custom-built greenhouse for tropical fruits. Mr Pear, the blacksmith colleague of Guillaume Laplaige, has been by to measure for the frame.

  The outskirts of Marseille are under 2 metres of water. Landslides are being spoken of everywhere in the hinterland hills, the arrière-pays. Roads are closed off. Red triangular signs warn of floods. Bad weather, moving east, is forecast. A scirocco wind blows our way, carrying with it red sand from the Algerian desert. Accompanied by heavy rains it settles like roseate mud at our doorstep. The base of the swimming pool is carpeted in it and the water turns deep rust, the colour of freshly dug carrots. Still, I swim, or paddle one-armed. But the force of the relentless wet sandstorms begins to break the olive boughs laden with piebald fruit. They are falling fast and the magpies are having a field day, tearing the nets as they feast. Michel and Quashia are working in the gales to beat the birds to it. My support is given in cooking and brewing pots of steaming tea for although my arm is no longer trussed up the doctor has advised no heavy lifting for six months.

  Out shopping in the village, I bump into Alexandre.

  ‘How’s your arm?’ he asks.

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Look at me.’ His right hand, his trigger finger, is bandaged and besmirched with bloodstains. The hunting season is in full flight and he cannot participate.

  ‘What happened?’ I cry. ‘Did you shoot yourself?’

  He tells me solemnly that it was an unfortunate accident. The previous Sunday, he was out hunting in the mountains and having a terrible time of it with the weather. It bucketed down all day. He and a couple of his hunting colleagues, along with his two retriever dogs, attempted the ascent of a sheer rock face directly behind his mother and stepfather’s chalet. They were tracking wild boar. The ground was slippery. He lost his footing and his gun went off.

  ‘Lord, you did shoot yourself!’

  He shakes his head. The gunshot spooked the dogs. He immediately grabbed one of them in an attempt to restrain her but the creature panicked, turned on him and sunk her teeth through his tendon. ‘My own dog!’ he wails. ‘When I let out a cry of pain, she and the other hound bolted and neither of them returned home until Monday evening. It was a catastrophic weekend.’

  Could it have b
een the irresistible Beethoven? I wonder.

  Alexandre shakes his head, staring at his disabled hand.

  ‘Do you ever take him hunting? He is a retriever mix, after all.’

  ‘We took him once, a long while back. Jacky and I thought that he would make an excellent hunter but as soon as the guns went off he fled home like a scared rabbit.’

  I smile silently. My instincts about that shiny-headed black brute were sound.

  As we part, I thank Alexandre once again for the enormous support he has given me this year. He beams like a schoolboy and begs a kiss. I acquiesce, grinning, and peck him on the cheek.

  The rain that Alexandre talked off in the mountains is settling along the pays côtiers, the coastal regions. Everywhere is sodden. Fortunately, the scirocco has abated. We pick and gather the drupes in between downpours or even, when needs must, in the rain. It is Ramadan and Quashia is fasting. He finishes in the early afternoon so that he can rest and prepare his post-sundown meal. Michel works on alone. I participate a little. Standing at his side, holding steady my prized fruit-tree ladder, I watch him and wonder. Hair plastered flat by the recent rain, I follow the shadow of a raptor gliding across the cypress trees and listen to the distant hum of traffic. Our fruits are being drummed into the earth by the force of these incessant torrents.

  ‘We must deliver what we have collected to the mill or the wet drupes will turn moisi’ – mildewy – ‘and the pressed oil will be acrid and barely useable. They smell like mushrooms already,’ I mumble.

  The following morning Michel and Quashia press on with the cueillette, the gathering, while I take charge of the first of this year’s pressings – the windfalls only, but they tip the mill scales at 123 kilos.

  All around me, men arrive from out of the inclement morning with sackloads of fruit; hessian sacks with ‘La Poste’ stamped across them or bread and flour bags. I thought sacks were forbidden now. Are these people moonlighting postmen and bakers, pressing their olives in their spare time? I am reminded that I haven’t seen our postman in a while. Perhaps he has thrown it all in and taken up beekeeping?