Traditional Olive Oil Production  Izmir - Antakya, Turkey  1994 - 2013

The story of Olive Oil produced by arm and animal power from its villages in the Aegean to the villages of Antakya in the southeast. Although lever strength turned to press over time, production remained basically within traditional limits again. The manual tightening method in Antakya maybe still goes on. Olives collected one by one during the cold winter months are brought to small factories. There, olives are crushed in the stone mill by a horse or a donkey power, and it was squeezed by pouring hot water over the filled bristle sacks. For this job, the men of the village were obtaining the olive oil by turning a press with hand force. In Antakya, women were squeezing olive puree in their hands. Nowadays, these methods are in history with continued systems.

When I was a child, me and my grandmother I and later with my mother would go to a factory in our village to buy oil frequently. We never bought olive oil from the supermarket shelf. When we went to the factory, we first put olive oil on our bread and then ate it. We would decide to buy it based on the effect it leaves in our mouth. I witnessed the factory workers heat the bread over the fire under the cauldron and put it in freshly squeezed oil and ate it for lunch. They were good memories.