Olive Menuet

(picture: old olive press at Milellia)

I did not sleep much the night before we took off to do a walk described by the Andersons in their book on walking on Lesvos. The walks as they recommend them are not necessarily my favorites, because there’s always a risk of getting lost and the estimated time they say a walk will take, usually ends up doubled! Given my poor walking experience I was also worried whether I would actually reach the destination of this walk, the village of Kournella that is situated high up a mountain overlooking the coast on the southern side of the island. For years when driving to the port town of Plomari, I have seen this Kournella from a distance, hanging on the mountainside and have wondered how is this place could be reached and what it was like.

The walk was not too bad, though right to the end I did not take my eyes from the top of the mountain, desperately watching out for the village to appear. And when it did, and we arrived, I even had enough energy left to wander along its streets, admiring the play of the autumn coloring plane trees and the picturesque houses, most of them abandoned. Only three people are still living there, so obviously the village must have known better times.

Walking back was much easier because the road winds gradually down back to the sea and the village of Melinda. Just under Paleochori, the village opposing Kournella at the other side of a valley, we had to cross a little stream, its water smelled bad and was of a purple colour. Not only do I know now how to get to Kournella, but I also know from where this dark and dirty water comes, — you can see it on the beautiful quartz pebble beach at Melinda, flowing into the sea — it’s from the olive press in Paleochori!

To press olives for their oil it takes no more than machines and water. But the process is a source of pollution. What comes out is the water used to clean the olives and what is needed for the pressing itself is also mixed with waste juices and other waste products which together is called the Olive Mill Waste (OMW).

OMW contains mucilage, pectic substances and small amounts of oil, all organic substances, but they do not easily degrade naturally into the environment. Especially polyphenols which occur naturally in fruits and berries like olives but are not necessarily good friends of the environment when concentrated in large quantities. However, according to Wikipedia, polyphenols seem to be more healthy for human beings as an antioxidants. They might possibly reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer and new researches even believe they could help decrease the encroachment of Alzheimer’s disease.

These days the polyphenols which are much in demand by the food industry flow freely all through the Lesvorian landscape. Lesvos has some 70 olive presses (all big villages have one) that during the coming months will be working hard to reduce thousands tons of olives into the beautiful green-yellow oil.

In earlier times there were many more olive presses on the island, although the modern presses have more capacity. In the golden years of Lesvos around 1900 there were some 200 olive presses, most of them worked by steam engines. A lot of them are now in ruins, although some have been preserved and turned into little museums like in Millelia, Mandamados and Paleochori. There are two new museums which are restored old olive presses: The Museum of Industrial Olive Oil in Agia Paraskevi and the Industrial Museum in Papados, where they restored one of the first steam engines of the island, but I bet you will find no more flows of OMW from there! Two olive presses even have been transformed into a hotel: The Olive Press in Molyvos and Hotel Zaira in Skala Loutron.

The environmental authorities in Europe have been looking into the problem of OMW, because as well as Greece, Italy, Spain and France all have olive oil industries. And up to now none have found a satisfactory way to dispose of their olive press waste. In Spain they try to reduce the outflow by using less water; in Kalamata (Peloponnesus) they tried to turn OMW into compost; on Crete they use lakes to evaporate the waste; on Chios they dump it into holes in the ground, but none of these experiments give us a cleaner environment.

The food industry claims it puts more and more healthier products on the market and they are interested in this OMW - especially in the polyphenol that it contains. So let us hope that these mighty industrials will cry out for so much polyphenol they get the OMW flowing as quickly into their tanker-trucks as the oil flows into the bottles!

Last week I worked for some days in the olive harvest. As long as you don’t have to do it for weeks on end harvesting is fun when you do it with friends. The men slay the trees and make big jokes, the women empty the nets while they gossip, and after a day of hard work the communal meal is even more fun. When you are not used to this work you better visit a hot spring afterwards in order to heal your muscles for the next day.

Although I was nose deep into the olive branches for days I did not harvest any muscle pains but instead acquired a fast runny nose and lots of sneezing. And I thought I was doing very healthy work amongst those heavenly smelling olives! I probably did not inhale enough of the polyphenol, or maybe I have developed an allergy against it?

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Mushroom weather

(picture: a cep from Agiasos)

If the forecast is good, get on a plane and experience the most beautiful weather we are having here right now on Lesvos. Maybe beach lovers will find it a bit chilly, but for people who love walking this is the best time of year.

To be honest, I don’t want the island to attract too many large groups of tourists. The main attraction when the weather is beautiful at this time of year is that the island is quiet. The occasional car passes by and the only other busy sound you hear comes from the people harvesting olives, — the ricky-tickety-tick of their sticks battering the branches to bring down the fruit. A sound you would have heard down the ages, a peaceful sound that calms you down after all the hustle of a busy summer.

We often talk to our friends about tourism in winter here. On many days the winter sun can be like the middle of summer. However, it really does depend on good weather. I do remember other November months that were grey and very wet. And you wouldn’t enjoy sitting alone in a cold hotel room.

During winter most restaurants are closed, and in bad weather the villages look deserted as everybody retreats inside their houses and with everywhere damp and cold no amount of Metaxa will warm you up again.

But now, the few tourists who are here must be enjoying the island a lot, very lucky that we have this incredible burst of sunny days. When the sun has decided to party like now the island is magnificent with autumn colours, the sweet perfume of the saffron crocus, the pink cyclamen, the strawberry trees full with bright red fruit, looking like Christmas trees — and the busily growing mushrooms.

Even the Greeks come out of their lazy chairs in this weather, and they do so because they like going to the woods looking for mushrooms. Hunting for the pefkites under the pine trees is a favourite pleasure, like looking for red amanita it is getting more and more popular.

The chestnuts and other trees dropping their leaves up around Agiasos usually have a more varied offering of mushrooms. But only a few Greeks know that, because they tend to eat what they are used to – traditional food if you like. Near Agiasos for example you can find plenty of the most delicious boletus, porcini (or ceps) which no Greek will ever touch or eat, although this year we haven’t found so many because the centre and south of the island and the south are still too dry — it’s different here in the north.

On a spot not far from our house we found peppery milk-caps, red musola’s, field mushrooms, bright orange mushrooms under olive trees (we don’t kow what it is) and, hidden under the leaves beneath an old oak tree, we found a fat boletus erythopus (in Dutch the witch boletus).

So we have not needed to go all the way to Agiasos to find mushrooms. Although up there, the chestnut forests are now at their best with bright golden leaves, misty sun rays filtering through the branches and between the trees you see incredible views over the Bay of Yera.

This time we passed the woods and continued our way by car to Karionas, from where we walked towards Milies. At the side of the road we found plenty of boletus. They were not the best ones to eat (they were probably ‘cow’ mushrooms) and the Greek walking here before us must have thought the same. He picked up all the mushrooms he laid eyes on, then decided they were not tasty enough and threw them away.

Like Hansel and Gretel we followed this guy’s trail of mushrooms, but we never found the culprit. But we did not get lost. We ended our walk (at our departure point) at the most idyllic and highest taverna on the island with a superb view deep into Turkey and round towards Olympos mountain. The kitchen at the Karionas taverna surprised us that afternoon with a very tasty manitaropita (a kind of mushroom quiche).

This week in the paper there was a call from the Mushroom Club of Lesvos (Yes, there is a mushroom club here on the island which is active all year round, and goes around finding the most amazing mushrooms) telling us not to rake up the woods when we go out mushrooming. The pefkites especially hide under the pine needles and some people will rummage with rakes through the woods, tearing them up and filling bags full of them, in huge amounts they will never be able to eat. So they are kindly asked by the Mushroom Club to retrieve mushrooms from the earth with a knife, not a rake, take no more then that they are going to eat and leave the ground like they found it. Yeah, those Greeks!

During a surprisingly beautiful walk around Pterounda, Chidera and Vatoussa and a walk near Polychnitos we did not see many mushrooms at all. But before you know it, you can turn a corner and suddenly be in mushroom paradise. On Lesvos you never know, but for sure nature here is always full of welcome surprises.

(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

The wondrous world of bleeding icons

(picture: The weeping icon of Holland)

“Good afternoon. I have a strange story. Came home last month from a holiday on Rhodes. Bought an icon. I had already seen it, last May, but didn’t buy it then because it was too expensive. This time I did. I have no interest in religion, I just fancied it. The day after coming home I put it on a spike already sticking out of the wall. I then saw something on the wall and tried to clean it off. I got a fright because about 10 –15 cm from the icon a red fluid seeped out of the wall. The building surveyor came, but he could not explain what it was. The paint shop could not explain it either. A laboratory at the hospital tested it: it was not blood and difficult to dissolve in water. What is it? Friends on Rhodes say it is a miracle. An Orthodox priest says the same. He has blessed it. It does not mean anything to me. Have you ever heard of this kind of phenomenon? I hear it has to do with positivism.” An email from Holland.

Imagine it happened to you! You buy a nice icon just because you like the image and then this image turns out to be not only a work of beauty but a miracle! You often read in the papers about these kind of odd events that attract hundreds of believers. The lady who sent me the email prefers to stay anonymous: “I do not want my living room turned into a place of pilgrimage” she says.

And she is right. Especially in America, plenty of weeping and bleeding icons regularly get discovered, filling their churches immediately with faithful believers, news hunters and sensation seekers.

In the Catholic Church most miracles seem to be connected to a vision of the Virgin Mary. In the Orthodox Church they have icons of the weeping Mary but also saints who bleed. This is not a modern phenomenon because in Byzantine time weeping and bleeding icons were already recorded.

Around the year 861 three Patriarchs wrote a letter to the emperor Theophilos about three bleeding icons. There was an icon of Mary on Cyprus that was pierced by an arrow shot by an Arab; an icon of Christ in Beirut that was struck by a lance wielded by a Jew; and another icon of Christ from the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul) was damaged by a Jew using a knife. This last one became known down the centuries (although some writers says it was a Mary icon). It seems from these legends that for an icon to bleed it had to be damaged, by an infidel.

Many icons that shed tears have been written about in old books and papers, but few of the stories are seriously researched. That might be difficult because in early days icons traveled a lot. After the Turks conquered Constantinople and turned its biggest cathedral into a mosque, the bleeding Christ of the Hagia Sophia was believed to have been moved to Peribleptos Church in the town of Mystras, in the Peloponnese. At the beginning of the ninth century the famous icon of Mary with the Holy Child (Panayia I Vrefokratousa) now at the Panagia Church in Agiasos was supposedly taken there from Jerusalem to Lesvos, by a monk who was evicted from Constantinople. He wanted to give the icon to the empress Irene who had been banished to Lesvos, but when he arrived on the island, he found she had already died. So he fled to the mountains, and as soon as he could trust the people there, he revealed his treasure: an icon painted by the evangelist Lucas. Then a monastery was established by monks to safeguard this holy icon. In 1170 they got permission to build a church dedicated to Mary and then there grew the little mountain town of Agiasos.

I am not sure what kind of miracles this Maria Vrefokratousa performed. She does not weep, but she attracts thousands of pilgrims every year, as does her biggest competitor on the island, the icon (made of clay and blood) of the archangel Michael in the Taxiarchis monastery in Mandamados. This other famous Lesvorian icon not only cries from time to time but is also said to have the power to move other images. When in 1974 the Turks invaded Cyprus a huge wall painting of the archangel Michael disappeared for a week from the Taxiarchis church. Greek soldiers battling with the Turks on Cyprus are sure they saw Michael fighting with them against the enemy on Cyprus!

Non-believers will immediately try to explain the teary eyes of miraculous icons because the painted wood can ooze resin, and when the glue that is used to make the panel gets hot, it melts. There are many ways to use these natural phenomena to cheat true believers.

In North America they even have a specialist whose job it is to debunk the iconic “miracles”. Years ago he was called to look into a weeping icon in Toronto, Canada. When he arrived with his weeping-icon-detection-kit at the church overrun by believers, he immediately saw that there were no tears flowing from the eyes of Mary but oil. When it became known that the priest of this church had another weeping icon in another church in New York and that he also ran a brothel in Athens there was no more talk of miracles! What priests will do to enlarge their flock…

Here on Lesvos we have many churches and small ones especially seem to be everywhere. Because many of them are falling into ruin (and with them many a cultural treasure disappears) they could do with a miraculous weeping or bleeding icon to cure pilgrims of their afflictions. There are plenty of icons hanging on their damp walls, some very old and precious, some just reproductions in fancy frames, or fading pictures from a magazine. Some churches even have murals, but even though they are in need of attention, none of their saints weep or bleed.

The icon in Holland does not bleed any more either. It was moved to another place in the house, next to a cross, and the fluid that came out of the wall dried up. How this icon made Mary shed her tears just some centimeters below the icon is still a wonder. There was no priest in desperate need of followers involved, nor a lunatic that cried for attention. I think you just have to accept some of the miracles just like life…

For the people still wanting to perform miracles, here is a website that can help: weeping icons for the whole family.

(Thanks to: Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

A deafening silence

(photo: singing pine forest near Anemotia)

When I visit Holland it strikes me that there is noise everywhere — highways, airplanes and other disturbing ‘background’ sounds. It is said that more than half of the cities in Europe have to put up with sound pollution. Maybe this background noise is not considered to be pollution proper, but the fact is there is never any silence in Holland.

The truth is that this island is also seldom silent. But the noises here are mostly produced by nature. The only disturbing sounds made by human beings come from building sites, motor bikes, small trucks from which people sell vegetables, fish or clothes, even furniture and try to gather customers by shouting through megaphones; radios with the volume turned up to accompany workers; very loud music celebrating a Greek party night or a wedding — and the Greeks themselves who are in the habit of talking pretty loudly.

The other noises you hear are made by the wind, the sea, rain, barking dogs, tingling bells of sheep and goats, howling foxes, singing birds and especially cicadas that probably produce the loudest natural noise here, especially on hot days when you are lying in your hammock trying to have an afternoon nap. When cicadas are screaming in your ears you can forget sleep. The only solution is to forget the nap.

There are less melodious sounds that can wake you up. Like a rhythmical gnawing somewhere in the darkness. A niece visiting her sister went investigating and got a big fright when a huge scorpion emerged from a bag full of papers. Hearing this story I anxiously wondered about the gnawing noise coming out of my bedroom. When I carefully set out to have a look around I spotted big holes in the window-sill: woodworms maybe, or perhaps the loud sawing noises came from a longhorn beetle? Before you know it, these little creeps will have eaten your house!

Lesvos is known for its many birds who can sing solo or in fabulous choirs, just like the bleating sheep and goats with their tingling bells they create a dreamy, meditative sound that can be heard all over the island. The most powerful sound however comes from the wind that plays the island like a natural instrument. It is said that the head of Orpheus with his magic lyre washed ashore at Andissa and that the music he played can still be heard on the island. That is right - when you listen carefully you can hear one concert after the other.

When you walk through a pine forest, you will hear the wind caress the pine needles, creating a melody that fluxes with the gusts of wind. From further away there’s the sound that rolls over the treetops, a sound that gets louder and louder and finally washes over you like a symphony.

Walking in a chestnut forest, when the chestnuts are ripe, there’s the rhythmic sound of falling chestnuts, harmonising with the higher notes of the crisping leaves far above you. When they are joined by the crackle of a forester’s wood fire and the faraway tinkling sounds from invisible sheep, you can enjoy a marvellous afternoon concert.

The wind can change, with the waves of the sea to produce a mighty percussive performance. Never underestimate this sound. Sleeping close to the beach, the play of the waves and pebbles can keep you from sleeping for nights in a row. And it is not only the wind that makes the waves roll. Some years ago when the speedy hydroplane ship Kenderis passed by the island for the first time, I was woken from an afternoon nap by a booming sound I had never heard before. It was a mini-tsunami that sounded like a drum solo beating the pebbles on the beach. A swelling, a crescendo until the waves came to rest and then it slowly rolled away, by which time the Kenderis that created the waves was long gone.

The mightiest concerts come when the wind with all its powers sweeps through the trees and together with branches, shutters, open windows, crackling thunder and lashing rain performs an overwhelming rock concert. Storms can be ear-splitting.

As soon as a storm thunders by, and the waves at sea finally calm down and when the wind goes to sleep, suddenly, it can be threateningly silent and disturbing. It is said that animals can feel the approach of an earthquake and fall silent. Then your ears almost hurt because you hear no sound — if ever I hear a grumbling sound coming out of the earth, announcing disaster, I always listen very anxiously.

When the wind and the animals are silent and the sea is a light blue field that the clouds use as a mirror, you best think of happy things and try to hear the most wonderful sound I ever heard here on this island: the flop-flopping sound of dolphins breaking the flat surface of the sea, a symphony of happiness that shuts you up for quite some time.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Welcome in the hell of Lesvos

(photo: here at the coast...)

Some weeks ago a senior government dignitary visiting the refugee centre Pagani in Mytilini said: “It looks like Dante’s Hell”. The last line of a 9 line verse written on the Gate to the Inferno of Dante (Canto III) says: ‘All ye who enter here, abandon hope.’

It may seem strange to compare a refugee centre with Dante’s Hell. The Inferno consists of 9 circles and the outer circle is filled with pagan people — but the refugees here are mostly Muslim people with strong beliefs. In the next circle you are awaited by King Minos who will judge your sins and send you to the place in Hell you deserve, just like the Greek officials will send refugees to their places, although for them it will always be a better place to go. Young boys without parents or guardians go to the refugee centre at Agiasos, and what all refugees really want is to continue their journey to Athens, and Europe.

You will find all kind of sinners in Dante’s Hell, but I don’t think all our refugees are voracious, greedy, prodigal blasphemers, crooks, schismatics, alchemists, violent people or even killers; although there are some malevolent people who do try to sneak into the country amongst genuine asylum seekers — like the Georgian murderer of the Greek actor Nikos Sergianopoulos who re-entered the country with a group of refugees to the island of Samos (after he was already expelled from Greece).

These last weeks some refugees have used violence to protest being locked up for long periods in the Pagani centre. While the support action group ‘No border’ has been in Mytilini, refugees kept on protesting. There were at least seven hundred people living in the centre — which was built to house only two hundred people maximum — so the conditions, especially hygiene, were appalling. People were locked up in cages that, rather than being a modern refugee centre really were like Dante’s Hell. Last week parts of the centre were even set on fire by the refugees, to protest against their inhumane situation. So indeed it did look like a hellish inferno.

Since September the authorities have tried to ameliorate the situation in Pagani by sending away large groups of people to Athens by boat. Some refugees were so keen to leave they begged doctors to pronounce them sick so that they could get a boat ticket to Athens. When the doctor refused they went beserk and attacked him.

So the doctor left the refugee centre, and because they too felt threatened so did other people working there. Even the police would no longer remain inside the centre, and kept guard outside of the gates. This was really because inmates believed the police had beaten up a seventeen year old refugee boy.

After months of struggle, the refugee centre has been closed down this weekend. It had become an untenable situation. However, I doubt if this is a real solution, because all new refugees now coming to the island (and they will keep coming) will be sent to another refugee centre on the neighbouring island of Chios, where I am sure, nobody will be happy to receive them, because they too have refugees arriving from Turkey. Probably in no time the centre on Chios will be just as overcrowded as Pagani on Lesvos.

In most hells you will find a flaming inferno. Last Tuesday however a kind of inferno happened at sea when a small boat with seventeen refugees capsized. On board were people from Afghanistan and one Turkish ‘asylum seeker’ (he had just got out of prison and could not find work in Turkey so for a good sum of money he smuggled the refugees group to Greece, thinking afterwards he could find himself a job in Greece). The boat hit rocks just near the little port of Skala Sykaminia, and three women and five children drowned.

One boy of 14 lost his mother and two brothers. A man already living in Germany who thought this ‘illegal’ route would be a quicker way to have his wife and child join him, rather than spending of time and trying to get them accepted the ‘legal, lost both of them. It is not known whether the husband of another woman who drowned with her two children (according to the papers) has survived or is missing.

People only make such dangerous journeys if they really want to escape a hell: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan and many such countries where the lives of people are persecuted and hounded by ruthless people craving power. It is those people, of course, who should be cast into the deepest point of Dante’s Hell: Cocytus, the frozen lake where traitors must remain for all eternity.

It is sad that our world knows so many hells that make so many people flee their homes. From one hell into another — which, of course they cannot know before they start their journey. But to compare the refugee centre on Lesvos to Dante’s Hell might be a little exaggerated — certainly if you go look at those countries where they come from...

(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Olive rhapsody

Now that most of the tourists have gone, work in the olive groves can start. The nets have to be spread out under the trees and the olives are nearly ready to be harvested.

The olive tree (olea europaea) is a tough tree which is difficult to destroy. You find it all around the Mediterranean, never far from the sea. In more than one country you will find famous and very ancient olive trees, some of them older than 2000 years.

According to Greek mythology the olive tree was a present from Athena, the goddess of Wisdom. She won a competition with Poseidon, god of the Sea — giving the best present to the city of Athens. This is how the first olive tree grew on the Acropolis. In the 4th century BC the father of biology, Theophrastus, recognized the olive tree on the Acropolis was the one given by Athena. Pausianus, a famous traveller and geologist, living in the 2nd century, wrote (in the year 170) that when the Persians set fire to the Acropolis, at the time of the battle of Salamis in 480 BC, Athena’s tree was also burned. However, on the same day, a new branch emerged from the blackened trunk and the olive tree survived.

There used to be another famous olive tree in Athens, in the western part: Plato’s Olive, where it was said that some 2500 years ago Plato held his academy. The tree lived through many turbulent centuries until 1975 when a bus drove into it and not only damaged the tree but uprooted it too.

Most of the old trees have fascinating whimsical forms and no wonder many people have fallen in love with them, so much so that they give a cheery salute to their silver grey leaves. The tree itself does not have too many enemies, although the fruit, the olives themselves can be attacked by a particularly nasty pest: the olive fruit fly bactrocera (dacus) oleae, known by the Greeks as dakos.

The females of species lay eggs in a olive and when they become larvae, they feed on the olive for ten days before becoming adult flies. By that time you can forget about the olive! In this way a single female fly can damage around 400 olives; and through the summer months at least 5 generations of these flies can be born into the world.

When after World War II chemical pesticides were introduced to farming, the Greeks, just like many other Europeans, were so happy with this new killer spray they hired planes to douse the landscapes with the mission: kill the dakos! The result was a bigger harvest of olives and better quality oil.

Well, I am glad that since I’ve been living here, these planes have never appeared. I would have stayed inside the house for at least a week if they sprayed their lethal cargo. Fifty years later even children know how poisonous these pesticides were.

For other farmers, including those into viticulture, it is easier now to farm organically without chemicals, but for the olive farmers there is still no way to find an environmentally friendly way to completely eliminate the dakos fly.

Although most farmers here on the island have changed their farming ways: the poison sprayers are more and more banned from the orchards with signs warning: ‘organic garden’. This does not mean that all owners of olive trees did it for a safer cleaner environment. No, the Lesvorian olive farmers have changed to organic because they get a good subsidy to do so.

The result is that at many entrances to the olive groves there are signs saying they are ‘organic only’ and in the trees you will see little square green or white bags (pheromone traps) which contain a powder to attract the male olive fruit flies. As soon as a male touches the powder and flies away with some on his legs, other males think he is a female and will follow him instead of the females. This way fewer and fewer females get fertilized. How do they find such things out?!

Another way to get rid of the dakos is by hanging plastic bottles in the trees containing a mix of ammonia, water and honey or some other sweet juice which will attract the flies. In these ways the islanders hope finally to get rid of the olive fruit fly.

But organic farming remains a difficult choice because without the dakos you have a bigger harvest of good quality while using these organic methods not all flies are immediately killed, which means that it’s very likely in the first years of organic growing the harvest can be disappointing.

This year on Lesvos the expectations were that they could harvest some 25.000 tons of olive oil. However due to the frequent rains in spring this number has to be reduced to 8.000 tons. Another problem comes because many farmers aren’t able to look after their groves and their trees more or less run wild and bear less and less fruit. Because of a lack of money some farmers don’t plough under the trees at the beginning of summer, nor can they afford to hire a specialist to prune their trees.

Thanks to mass production in countries such as Italy and Spain (where I bet they do not grow organic olives) the prices of the olives goes lower and lower, putting small farmers in a vulnerable position.

But anyhow it will be virtually impossible to remove the olive tree from the Mediterranean landscape. Not only are the trees tough, but so are the people who live with them. They are born amongst the olive trees and grew up on olive oil. It is a tradition that cannot easily be lost, neither because of dakos the olive fruit fly, nor the pressure from international olive businesses.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Free-range snails

This month Lesvos has been picked as one of the 22 European Destinations of Excellence for 2009. Other regions on the list include: the Viroin Hermeton Nature Park in Belgium, Vouni Panagias on Cyprus, the Northern Vosges Regional Natural Park in France, Park Gravenrode in the Netherlands, The Bird Republic in Warta Mouth in Poland and the Municipality of Remich in Schengen, Luxemburg.

This nomination is a small consolation for the tourists who are here now and who have to endure heavy rainfalls and thunderstorms. I can imagine they are a little disappointed, because going on walks will be a challenge - because they would have to cross many a mud stream trying to find its way to the sea.

So I pity them, but as I am living here I secretly love all this water. The summer dust finally gets washed away and lovely fragrances are freed. It is a real joy to inhale he fresh odour of the pine trees, the spicy smell of the earth and the prickly smell of the first wood fires.

In between the rain showers I am quite enjoying trying to navigate the mud, over the pine needles brought down and rendered by the rain into artful patterns, and between the olives that have started to fall; and I am careful not to step on the snails that now are part of the micro traffic on the paths. And when you see some Greeks with their noses down shuffling through the landscape, you know that they are not looking for chorta (wild vegetables) but for snails (saligaria).

I love to eat snails, but not to prepare them. I know it is a little contradictory maybe to enjoy eating them but to be too afraid to kill them in order to prepare them for cooking, but I cannot butcher a chicken, cow or pig, either, even though I eat their meat.

Before you start cooking the snails they have to be cleaned; they obviously eat dirty things and all that has to come out. The Greeks put them in a box or a cage (they need air) from where they cannot escape. Then they feed them with a little flower and pasta. Then, as far as I understand it, the snails can eat their bellies full and, again, all the dirt passes through,

Another way to clean them is to put them in water with some vinegar, and an even more lousy way is to starve them: they are put in a box/cage for 5 –6 days without food so they will empty themselves. I am sure that I would not sleep one night, or would free them on the their first day of fasting.

But snails are very healthy to eat. They have lots of calcium, they are rich in proteins and they have lots of vitamins B1 and E. It is said that snail eating is good for curing anaemia, asthma and rheumatics.

According to an article on the internet, a Dutchman Ruud Bank in 1988, found as many as 63 species of land- and sweet water snails on Lesvos. I could not find much more about his investigation or this Mr Bank so I have to do it with the list of the 63 snail names. I guess the species of snail that I always encounter on my way around here is the Helix cincta anatolica, a snail which probably came from Anatolia in Turkey.

The Greeks have eaten snails for a very long time. In the old Lycian town of Aperlae (founded in the 4th-3rd century BC, in the South west of Turkey) archaeologists excavated a site of about 1600 square meters full of shells from the Murex snail. So for sure it must have been a snail farm. Besides being eaten, the Murex snails were used for making a purple-red dye. Scientists calculated that for 1.4 gram of dye, 12.000 snails were needed. Wow, if you would have to eat that many...

The Greeks that lived in Anatolia used to prepare snails with onions, tomato sauce and bay leaf. On Lesvos, where many Anatolian Greeks fled at the beginning of the 20th century, they also add quinces, which makes a delicate combination of tastes.

People from Crete however have the most snail recipes. It is said that they know as many as 300 ways to cook them. A Cretan cook once served snails at a festival in Athens cooked in 20 different ways.

‘Bourbouristi’ is the name of a Cretan dish with fried snails. It is named after the plopping sound the snails make when they fall into the hot oil. Then they are seasoned with olive oil, vinegar and rosemary. Another snail dish is made with bulghur, tomatoes and spices; another with potatoes and spices and, continuing like that you can vary the ingredients until you have 300 recipes.

Especially in Bulgaria snail farms prosper. This year this Balkan country will export no less than 800 to 900 tons of snails. Mostly to France, but also to Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. And even now they cannot meet the demand.

Here on Lesvos you only have free-range snails. You can even think of the island as one big snail farm. The Cretans may say that snails are a Cretan speciality, but first try out this Lesvorian recipe: snails with quinces.

1 plate with cleaned snails
1 cup of tomato sauce
2-3 bay leaves
half a cup with green olives
2 onions, chopped
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
pepper, salt
2 quinces, cut in big pieces

Fry the onions in some oil. Add the tomato sauce, the snails and the bay leaves. Stew it a little, than add salt, pepper and cinnamon. Then add the quinces and olives. Cook until the quinces are soft, then the dish is ready to serve.