Sitia - living in an olive orchard.

After the day of driving and touring places we decided to have a restful day at home. The house we are staying in is just outside of Sitia, about a 5 minute drive down farm roads and finally a dirt track.

We park between rows of olive trees and then walk down to the house which is surrounded by them.

There is a patio and a balcony, so we can see more olive trees

and long rows of bee hives (lots of local honey available in the stores)

After breakfast we walked out our laneway and turned up through the orchards, dirt track all the way with occasional houses and/or farm buildings.

These olive trees are obviously in production, they are taken care of, harvested and irrigated. There are old channels that used to be used for irrigation

There are also old concrete pipes but now all the trees are fed with black pipe irrigation.

Its pretty complicated getting all the different areas irrigated

you also can't drive over the pipes!

We walked up hill for about half an hour and there was a water tank at the top. Irrigation is probably gravity fed from there.

 The olive's fruit, also called an "olive", is of major agricultural importance in the Mediterranean region as the source of olive oil; it is one of the core ingredients in Middle Eastern cuisine and Mediterranean cuisine. Thousands of cultivars of the olive tree are known. Olive cultivars may be used primarily for oil, eating, or both. Olives cultivated for consumption are generally referred to as "table olives".^[4] About 80% of all harvested olives are turned into oil, while about 20% are used as table olives. from Wikipedia

As far as the eye can see.

The olive plant was first cultivated some 7,000 years ago in Mediterranean regions.^[25][35]

 Olives are thought to have been domesticated in the third millennium BC at the latest, at which point they, along with grain and grapes, became part of Colin Renfrew's Mediterranean triad of staple crops that fueled the emergence of more complex societies.^[51] Olives, and especially (perfumed) olive oil, became a major export product during the Minoan and Mycenaean periods.

Spain accounts for almost half of global olive oil production; other major producers are Portugal, Italy, Tunisia, Greece and Turkey.^[102] Per capita consumption is highest in Greece, followed by Italy and Spain.^{[103] from Wikipedia}

^{Further internet research indicates that picked unripe olives are yellow to green and when ripe they are brown to purple. All the table olives have to be fermented to make them palatable and then pickled. Olives are harvested in the fall and early winter (which explains why there are none on the trees now) by shaking the tree and using nets on the ground to collect them.}

The olive trees here are all in the process of being pruned. All are pretty well the same height and lower branches and "suckers" are being cut of. The trimmings are then left to dry out in between the rows or we have seen pick-up trucks full, maybe to feed to goats.

In one area where the olive trees were still young, lavender and rosemary was being grown in between the rows. I picked some of the lavender, loving having the smell in the house.

A guard cat

We were lucky enough to see a Hummingbird Hawk-Moth. Their wing are so fast, like a hummingbird, that they just are a blur in the photo.

The hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) is a species of hawk moth found across temperate regions of Eurasia. The species is named for its similarity to hummingbirds, as they feed on the nectar of tube-shaped flowers using their long proboscis while hovering in the air. from Wikipedia.

Collecting nectar, just like a hummingbird.

View from the top, looking down over the olives to Sitia and the bay.

Coming back down to the house we could just see the top floor.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and painting on the patio and Rick walked into town and back (had a beer at the harbour to refuel)