The Olive season is over now but you can see by these two pictures how the olives are harvested. Unlike the nut crops (walnuts and almonds) which are harvested by machinery, olives are still hand-picked. Note the strange shape of the ladders used by the pickers. They are wide at the bottom and gradually get narrow towards the top. Olive trees are not allowed to grow taller than the ladders used to reach the olives so pruning is done each year after the harvest. The olive tree appears throughout history and has been found to live more than two thousand years. (Just click on the pictures for a larger view).
