Deep Roots

When I die, she said, I'm coming back as a tree with deep roots &
I'll wave my leaves at the children every morning on their way to school &
whisper tree songs at night in their dreams. 

Trees with deep roots know about the things children need.
(StoryPeople)

Olive trees are an everyday part of my life here. They are in my backyard. They are on my way to school. They pepper the fields on the hills across from my house. They are all over. Like apple harvesting back home, olive harvest marks the change in seasons. So as the weather gets a bit colder, those olive trees have surrounded by tarps and filled with people harvesting olives.

The past weekend, I had the chance to participate in two olive harvestings. The first day was spent with a local Palestinian family and the second was at the Lutheran World Federation campus on the Mount of Olives, yep I got to harvest olives on the Mount of Olives! SO COOL!!!

Olive harvesting is a bit of work but a lot of fun. For me it was chance to climb through the trees and get my hands dirty, to be outside in the sun doing work and feel good about accomplishing something.

First the olives must be removed from the tree.
This is done by either “milking” the branches or using a rake like comb. Rather than picking each olive individually they are milked or combed to drop on a large tarp.

After all the olives are out of the tree and on the tarp,
all the olives are gathered into a central location on the tarp and all of the extra branches, leaves and stones are picked out.

Then the olives are dumped into a bag which will be taken to
an olive press to be turned into olive oil.

The olive oil from the olives we harvested on the Mount of Olives will be sold and all proceeds will go to the Augusta Victoria Hospital, for more information about buying this olive oil check here: http://lwfjerusalem.org/projects/olive-oil/

The time spent in harvesting olives was a fantastic opportunity to be a part of Palestinian life.

The 8 trees I harvested with the local family have been in this family “forever,” which as far as we can figure meant several hundred, if not a thousand, years. The trees have lived through so much and if they could talk they would tell us stories of peace and war, struggles and joys, beginnings and ends. They have seen the history of this place and their roots are deeply planted in the land and its history

As we climbed in the trees, we heard the family tell some stories that these trees might tell. They told of olive harvests past, struggles of the present to keep their land and hopes for a peaceful future. And as I sat among the branches of the olive trees hearing this stories, I was struck by how much these trees are like the families and the people that care for them, deeply rooted in their land and in their history.

To see more pictures of olive harvest and other adventures check pictures on Facebook here and here.

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