MAWSIM I — The Tree
MAWSIM · Chapter I
The Tree
الشجرة
Some families keep photo albums. Some keep orchards.
Nobody alive ever met the man who planted this tree. Everybody knows his name.
Ask anyone with a grove to walk you through it and you'll notice they never talk about the trees like plants. These six are from my grandfather's grandfather. That crooked one, my aunt planted the year she got married. The big ones on the lower terrace were already old when we got the land. None of this is written down anywhere. It doesn't need to be.
Olive trees outlive everyone who plants them. They take root in rocky ground where nothing else will, live on winter rain, and keep bearing for centuries — the old trees of Beit Jala and al-Walaja are counted in the thousands of years and still give fruit. So a grove ends up holding the family's whole timeline: who planted, who tended, who kept coming back every October even after they'd moved to Amman or Chicago. In Palestine, that yearly return carries even more weight. Going out to pick your family's trees is a way of saying: we're still here. There is nothing abstract about it.
Everything else in this series — the picking, the press, the oil that ends up in your kitchen — starts here, with somebody's decision two hundred years ago to plant.
From These Hills
The oil is the tree's yearly letter. The paste and the blend travel with it.
First cold press — the letter itself$19.99
Olive paste — the tree, spreadable$12.99
Yafa Thyme Zaatar 100g$8.99
Free U.S. shipping on orders over $75.
Questions people actually ask
How old do olive trees get?
Older than almost anything else people tend. Productive trees run centuries; the elders of the Levant — like the great trees of al-Walaja and Beit Jala — are estimated in the thousands of years and still fruit. A tree planted at a child's birth will feed that child's great-great-grandchildren.
Why are olive trees so important culturally?
They are the least abstract inheritance there is. Families know which trees came from which grandfather; land is measured in trees as much as in dunams; and tending them is how each generation keeps faith with the ones before. In Palestine especially, the tree carries the weight of belonging to the land itself.
What makes old-tree oil special?
Old trees fruit less but concentrate more — lower yield, deeper flavor is the growers' rule of thumb. And because their roots run deep, the old trees shrug off drought years that stress young orchards, which is why their oil is the most trusted in a bad season.