Olive picking is hard but joyful work. Pickers use their fingers and special combs to run through the branches and knock olives into the nets spread on the ground below. Children often climb up into the tree branches to reach the highest clusters. The air smells of earth, warm leaves, and the faint fruity scent of fresh olives. Everyone talks, shares food, and tells stories while they pick.
At the end of each day, the olives are gathered into sacks and taken to the community press, called a ma'sara. The press crushes the olives and separates the fresh oil, which runs out deep green and smells grassy and peppery. The first oil from a family's trees — the 'first press' — is considered special and is often brought home to taste on fresh bread that same evening.
The olive harvest is also the time for traditional food and music. Families cook musakhan — the national dish — using the freshest olive oil straight from the press. Songs are sung in the groves, sometimes accompanied by a musician playing the oud. Children learn the names of the trees and the family stories connected to each grove, keeping alive a link that stretches back many generations.