EMBORIOS  for the culture of kasos

Any regular visitor to Kasos will gradually become aware of how intensely connected to their olive trees the islanders feel. Status symbol and provider of a precious commodity, a single tree will add value to a parcel of land that is out of all proportion to its earning power. Many allusions are made in conversation to the annual cycle of labour that goes into the care and cultivation of this ancient and enduring species.

In the summer you might happen to see a man with heavy tanks strapped to his back struggle into view along a road, and never stop to wonder where he's going … there's a good chance he's on his way to spray the groves against the olive fly. For if the fly is left to infest too great a proportion of the crop, the oil that year will become more acidic and its quality will be poor. But whether conscious of them or not, it is only fleetingly that summer visitors can hope to have any contact with the processes that are part of the production of olive oil. Most of the work is done at other times of the year.

So it was with a growing sense of excitement that we realised that our brief November visit would coincide with the olive harvest. The unfamiliar sound of cane striking wood rose to greet us from every direction each morning as families gathered to help one another pick the ripening fruit or, more often, beat it down from the laden branches. We joined in when we could, and tough, back-breaking work it turned out to be. Aching shoulders and blistered hands are the wages of just half a day's work in the groves.

The first thing to be done is the spreading of the nets. These are now mostly made of strong, green nylon mesh. Laid over the ground beneath each tree in turn, care is taken to overlap the edges so that no fruit will fall onto bare earth. Then each worker takes up a stick (the best ones are of cane – strong, light and deliciously swishy) to half beat, half comb the branches, so that the olives fall.

Reachable branches can be worked by hand, taking hold of a bundle of twigs, leaves and fruit all together, and pulling the whole lot towards you, teasing the olives out with your fingers as you go. This is very satisfying to do, but far too slow – there are just too many trees.

Nearby, a motor coughs as it starts up, and someone works his way through the tree with a mechanical flail that seems to produce as many twigs and leaves as it does olives. But all the pickers use them, if they can get their hands on one, as it makes the work so much quicker. No one worries about the damage done to the trees; the thinning that results will mean that light and air will circulate better. In fact, pruning saws are whipped out of back pockets regularly and large branches taken out with abandon.

This is what gives the really old trees their characteristic appearance. You see groves of wonderfully stout and gnarled trunks bearing a canopy of much younger and more lissom wood. The imperatives of cultivation have dictated this shape: branches have to be reachable at harvest time, but not so low that they can be got at by marauding gangs of wild goats.

As each tree is finished, the fruit is gathered up from the ground. The nets are lifted by their corners and edges; the olives, twigs and leaves roll into a central mass, and are scooped into old, white sacks, left over from the tonnes of maize bought each year for the herds to supplement their grazing.

In mid-afternoon the women spread a picnic lunch under the trees: there are dolmades, ham, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs. But, naturally, fresh bread, dipped in the first of this year's oil, takes pride of place. One or two of the guest workers hit the retsina with too much enthusiasm, but since there is a shady tree to sleep under, and plenty of pairs of hands to do the work, no one troubles over it. The sleepers are tolerated with a wry smile.

As the sun goes down the sacks are hauled away in the trailer. Sitting above them in tied bundles are some of the greener prunings that will be fed to the goats. Nothing is wasted. Well after nightfall the tractors can still be heard, rattling home with the crop from the more remote groves.

The harvest will go on for a couple of months, depending partly on the ripeness of the fruit, but also, crucially, on the availability of pickers. Family members of all ages are pressed into service, and, when its own trees are dealt with, the team will move on: there are the groves of a brother in Canada; an uncle in the Bronx; aunties and cousins to deal with. No one wants to see fruit left to rot on the trees, though some inevitably is.

At the old olive press up on the hill in Agia Marina the activity begins early and ends late. Standing outside in the late November sunshine is a noisy machine that is a mechanical winnow. It is fed a mixed diet of twig, leaf and fruit at one end and spits out reasonably well-separated black and green olives at the other. There are still plenty of foreign bits that have to be picked out by hand, but, like the mechanical flail, this noisy monster helps to speed the process. Between snatches of conversation the olives are bagged again, and carried inside.

It's noisy there too, and everything seems to be slightly sticky with a film of oil, which nobody minds. There is convivial talk and a very particular odour. Layered through the blend you might identify fresh, green olive; ancient, spilled olive oil; machine oil; diesel fumes; the coffee being brewed up in a side room, and more. A call goes up for more olives.

Someone climbs up with another sackful and tips it into the great metal dish, where two grindstones are circling each other like a pair of heavy drinkers squaring up for a brawl. Round and round they go, leaning outwards, growling as they crush and pulp, while a heaving mass of glistening stuff rises in front of each. When the miller is ready he opens a sluice and the pulp oozes down into a large metal tank. Inside, a gleaming screw, mounted horizontally, will turn to keep the mixture even, and push it out of the bag-filling machine's flattened nozzle in a method that the ancients would have recognised, for it goes all the way back to Archimedes.

In a small store-room at the back, large jars with fat, yellow-glazed lips stand along the wall in the gloom. If you lift one of their flat, wooden lids, the surface of the oil is still, and mirrors your face as you peer in.

Back in the main space the screw begins its work. Pulp is squeezed into bags specially made for the job out of tough, heavy-gauge nylon webbing. Square in plan and open at one end, they look like the grimiest pillowcases on the planet. As each is filled, the miller pats it roughly flat, and swings it in a practised movement atop the growing pile on the press.

He sets spacer bars diagonally across the bags at intervals, to keep the towering column stable. In the courtyard his wife is emptying the compacted, squeezed-dry pith from used bags. The mound of this stuff has grown so big that the ground is completely covered. It's threatening to come inside, and there's nowhere to stand but right on top of it. Desiccated; papery – it looks felted. Or like the stuffing from a hundred horsehair mattresses. It would surely make good compost, but there's no time to ask.

Indoors all is set in place and the press has started up. Slowly the screw at its base turns, and, as it does, the glistening bag-pile begins to rise. When it meets the plate at the top of the structure, a serious amount of pressure begins to be exerted on it. Already leaking a dark wetness under its own weight, the trickles grow until the bags disappear for a while, and there is only a square column of brownish-purple juice pouring down into the waiting trough. The mucky-looking liquid is gathered in a tank, and that's it. The machines fall silent.

You wait for the oil to rise to the surface, skim it off, and fill your amphorae. Close your eyes and you can almost hear the ropes creak in the rigging of an ancient square-rigged merchant ship as it waits at anchor in the harbour. The carts, heavy with jars of oil, will wind slowly down the hill, and the jars will be loaded into the vessel's hold. Phoenician traders will haggle and barter all round the shores of the Mediterranean and beyond. Will prices be good this year?

It's not so very different today … though admittedly the twentieth century has contributed a final piece of technologically-aided speeding-up to the process. So, amid talk of the likely yield, and how much more of the harvest there is still to be done, eyes turn to the Centrifuge Separator. Most mysterious of all the machines because no one can see what's going on inside it. It sits near the door to the courtyard, buzzing and humming. Brown juices from the press pour in at the top, alongside a stream of clear, warm water; cloudy, but distinctly recognisable green olive oil comes out of a spout at the bottom. Bottles and canisters of every shape, size and colour are held reverently in place to catch the flow.

As one family group loads up to leave, its pressing completed for the year, cries rise up on every side wishing everyone well for next year's harvest: “Ante, ke tou chronou! Ke tou chronou!” The voices of the next group, readying its own bulging sacks for the work that will go on into the night, join in and swell the chorus.

Anna Stamatiou

For a complete set of photographs of the olive harvest, from beginning to end, take a look in the Elies section of the Gallery.