Olive Oil Take 3

For the third year running Damian and I participated in the UC Davis Students for Sustainable Agriculture olivepick on the UC Davis campus. I took a greater leadership role in organizing it this year, with mixed results. For the last few years two dozen or so students and alumni have harvested a ton of olivesand taken them to a local farmer for pressing. This year, with the expectation that we would have a similar turn out, and with a therefore similar infrastructure to handle the pickings, we were completely blown away by the attendance and subsequent poundage the group harvested. Due to good publicity (ie the announcement going out on random Bay Area listserves) 130 people turned out and collectively picked 7300 lbs of olives. As the day wore on it began to rain and our infrastructure (folding table) proved inadequate, the boxes that people picked into melted, the olives spilled, and our pick overwhelmed the farmer we had contracted with to press. By the end of the day, everyone - particularly myself- was wet, anxious, and upset.

Though it felt like a disaster mid-flight, participants and onlookers were so excited about the turn out from event that we've formed a team to expand the event for next year, encompassing more on-campus programing, agricultural education, and the alumni network. And Damian and I, we went home happy, between the two of us we picked 5 gallons of oil in one day very full day.