The warehouse here serves both as an olive oil maker and a winery. See the sign? For today, we went to the left (a sinistra).
This place is cool. If you have an olive tree, you can pick your olives and bring them here to make olive oil for you. They produce olive oil for people all week. On the weekend, they make thier own. The warehouse is stacked with bins full of olives.
These olives still have bits of branches, leaves and their seeds.
A forklift picks them up...
and dumps them into the machine.
They're separated from their brances and leaves, seeded and cleaned. Then they fall down the chute and into the "olive smoosher". That's not actually the official term, but that's what it does.
Then they go down another chute...
and into these churns.
Basically, the olives churn until they become oil, resting every 40 minutes. The churns are numbered to help keep track of each person's olives, and the progress is shown on the screen.
It is not the same software they used in Sicily during medival times.
The olive owners stand and wait to collect their oil.
And when it's done, they grab a funnel and go for it!
The cool thing is that the olive branches, leaves and seeds are collected out back. The branches and leaves are used as mulch and food for farm animals. The seeds are sold as fuel. Many Italians use them to heat their homes, as it's much cheaper than gas. So no part of the olive is wasted! How very green of them!
This is how the weekend oil is packaged.
And the final step, into my belly!
Buono!
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