The olive harvest is the culmination of the agricultural year, traditionally accompanied by long and nostalgic songs, in the autumn setting moving towards the winter season: it is infused with the solemnity and drama of the last harvest, the end of a cycle, entwined with the month dedicated to the dead.

Olive oil and olive leaves are also an essential part of the Christian-Catholic liturgy, mainly linked to the Easter period, and of many  magical-religious and therapeutic practices deriving from the popular local medicine. Oil has been used for centuries to predict and foil envy, and there were practices of rubbing rituals to heal the sick parts of the body; the blessed leaves of the olive tree, if burned, were used to keep away the evil eye and protect children.

The cultivation of the olive tree has always been a protagonist of the agricultural economy of the valleys in the eastern part of the Gran Sasso, firmly established from the coast to the foothills, where it climbs up to 600 metres above sea level, the altitude limit in terms of the ability of the plant to resist to the cold. In Arsita, a town in  the High Valley of the Fino situated in a hilly basin, not far from the Camicia Mountain, the olives grown in groves scattered over the hills are primarily intended for household consumption.

According to the testimony of Enzo Fioravante, a young agriculturalist from Arsita who manages the family farm with passion, “there are no large plantations of olive trees”, and olive cultivation “has been carried out for centuries for household consumption”. On his farm and in the local district the most widespread varieties are the  Leccino and other semi-wild breeds, such as the native Olivastra, that are necessary for wind pollination as  olive flowers are not self-fertilizing. . The Leccino, or Leccio olive, of Tuscan origin, became widespread in this area of Abruzzo from the 1960s onwards, at the same time as the harvest became mechanized.; it is a resistant variety, which offers a good quality/yield ratio, and has since become one of the most representative in the territory, replacing the more ancient species of the Dritta, the Moraiola, the Frantoio and the Carboncina.

The pruning, which is performed every year or in alternate years, is a particularly delicate operation, which can heavily affect the yield of the plant. The ground is not usually hoed but  is left wild to facilitate the work of harvesting in rainy conditions, and to make it easier to lay the nets. The picking is no longer done manually with rakes or  hands, with the aid of a wicker basket attached around the waist, when teams of male and female pickers proceeded slowly among the foliage of the trees, singing and conversing, according to the laws of family and friendly cooperation marked by the movement from one olive grove to another and the exchange of the labour force. The growing scarcity of manpower and the lack of time created the need for pneumatic olive harvesters, which began to be widely used in the territory of Arsita in the 1990s. Although these tools facilitate  the work, they also limit the opportunities for interacting with people during the harvest, polluting the soundscape and preventing the centuries-old practice of singing. After falling onto the nets, the olives are poured into crates and subjected to a first leaf-stripping, an important process to be carried out with care, since an excess of leaves would give the oil too spicy a taste .

As the harvest is frequently a moment of aggregation for the extended family, when the different generations come together and cousins and grandchildren, nieces and nephews gather at the weekend to produce and then share the oil , the visit to the mill remains a cyclical annual event which strengthens the wider social relations of the area. While the olives are being milled people talk about the year that has gone by, the yield, the price, the rain and cold,  the dreaded olive fly; and even though the sounds of the working mill have changed, the smell that assaults the visitor at the entrance has remained unchanged, a symbol in the sensory memory of anyone who has been there at least once.

The olives are weighed and after the leaves have been removed mechanically they are chopped and reduced to pulp under the heavy granite millstones; the mixture, blended and pressed with the aid of the friscoli – discs of synthetic fabric once made with vegetable fibres – is then pressed again to allow the removal of the oil must, collected in a tank in which the centrifugal movement enables the final separation of the water from the oil. In spite of the mechanization of the process which has occurred in the last few decades, the basic principle of cold pressing at below twenty-seven degrees remains intact as it is this which leads to the creation of a high-quality product:  pure extra-virgin olive oil.