Fall Means Olive Season

I’m still adjusting to living in a place where Fall doesn’t mean pumpkin spice lattes, ginger snap cookies, and apple pies. Instead, Fall in Palestine means figs, dates, the beginning of avocado season, and olives. 

For about a month every October and November, all over Jerusalem and the West Bank, you can seen farmers, and even small families hard at work collecting their olive harvest.  Sometimes even in the middle of the city in Jerusalem, you'll see a couple of men collecting olives, to take advantage of every tree available.  Many extended families use their olive harvest to supply them with olive oil until the next year.  Many farmers make their livelihood from their olive and olive oil production.

Even the olive harvest is one of the aspects touched by the occupation.  Whether its farmers who cannot get to their land because of the wall, military restrictions, or threat of settler violence, or because their olive trees have been demolished this year to make room for the continuing building of the separation wall, the olive harvest suffers more and more each year.  For this reason, it is even more important to help support Palestinian olive oil, olives, and other fair trade products. 

Although the world has been won over by Italian olive oil, Palestinian has a pure, smooth taste giving it a distinction all of its own.

How can I buy my own Palestinian olive oil? you might ask.  Click below to buy from the Lutheran World Federation or from Canaan Fair Trade.

The Lutheran World Federation Olive Oil

Canaan Fair Trade Olive Oils