It was the fifth of November but it looked more like a summer day. The land was parched, there were no signs of grass and the mountainous village of my grandparents looked like a scenery for a western movie. We were at the middle of Crete, at an altitude of 530 meters (around 1740 feet) and the place that should have been all green at the end of fall, was discouraging dry.
At least we were welcomed by some familiar and always inquisitive creatures, our neighbour's livestock :)
The younger sheep are always the cutest, no matter if they are white, patchy or black and I can never resist taking a few (or more than a few) pictures of them. But then again all the baby animals are cute, aren't they, even the ones of the most vicious and terrifying kinds!
As for our (always a baby in soul) canine companion, he was devastated by the existence of this ruthless fence that didn't allow him to go and play with all those furry animals. Although the sheep were obviously preferred their end of the fence :)
The next morning we visited the olive grove, which was the actual reason of this trip, in the first place but what we saw was so disappointing that I just want to forget about it. Not only there were no olives to harvest but even the trees were so stressed from the drought that we worried about their well being. And we are talking about olive trees, a plant life that exist on this island for thousands of years and a kind of trees that are practically immortal.
But we can't fight the weather and with no access to irrigation water there was nothing we could do. Obviously I didn't took any pictures of the suffering olive grove, so I just keep showing to you more pictures of the charming livestock next to my grandparents house :)
Fortunately we have more olive groves at the east side of Crete and at this point we could only hope that they were in better shape. The truth is that there was no reason to think so, other than the fact that hope dies last!
Going east would only get us to more arid areas and the chances that we would manage to harvest any olives at all this year, were very slim.
This was the fifth part of our trip from Nafplio to Crete, in order to harvest our olives and visit the places and the people that formed our daily life for almost a decade. I can now tell you that it lasted from the first of November till the fifth of December and it was much different from whatever we anticipated. The first four parts were edited and written on the go but now that I am back home, I hope that I'll prepare the rest of the posts in a much faster pace :)
Below are the links of the previous posts or you can just visit my blog and scroll down.
Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.
Commenting, upvoting and rebloging are highly appreciated!
What a photogenic bunch!! And I love the mountains behind :)
They are cute indeed :)
Thank you very much for your support!
Thanks a lot, much appreciated!
I love sheep.
So sorry about the olives, that is hard to see. I know it well, although this year the harvest has been good.
But seeing the land strained and dry, it is a hard sight indeed xxxx
As we were away most of the summer and fall, it was a big shock to see them in such a condition. It has happened one more time during the last ten years that we are into olive oil production and the trees recovered just fine but it is still a hard sight to see, not to mention that last time we had three years in the row with minimal harvest.
Sheep are cool :)
Stefanos, what terrible news. Your trees! Like you asked how does that happen to something that has been thriving for thousands of years in the same area. A little bit different, and a little the same this year there have been MANY Saguaros that have died here in the desert. They are only hundreds of hears old, still that is so fascinating to me that after hundreds of year this would be the year they died. We had an extremely hot summer and the lady at the Desert Botanical Garden said that the summer before was hot too and the temperatures didn't cool down at night, too much stress.
Wow, if even cactus are dying from the heat we are in trouble! Sorry to hear that. The olive trees will recover, they have done it in the past and I trust that they are very resilient but I don't expect much of a harvest for one or two more years. That is of course if the weather pattern doesn't deteriorate and this kind of drought and heat remains a rare event that happens seldom.
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Haha, cute :)
I have always found it funny the way goats and other livestock look at us when we are close to them. They can stare at us for minutes without moving, it's hilarious 😂
Haha yes, they are very funny! Especially the goat that seemed to be the "leader" of the sheep, didn't leave us from her sight during the whole time :)
Aha of course all packs have leaders =) humans don't seem to miss out on the rule ;)