Olive pruning in Liguria - part two

Having dealt with the introductions in the previous post, I'll pass to the actual course experience.

Look, it tells you where to cut!

Really?

 Actually, I need to do some explanation first:
whilst some olive varieties do grow in a well mannered way, giving little headaches to the owner (mainly the tuscan ones, like the leccino or the leccio del corno), our istrian varieties have a strong tendency to entropy, mildy said. To be honest, they look like a mess if you do not give them some strong indication with the scissors or the saw... One could forget about the looks, but the productivity is lesser too - think about an employee of yours who, except for looking shabby plays tetris day in day out...

Hence the need for some perspective on productivity management (ok, of a different kind altogether but still!). The first one to put us on track was prof.Proietti from Perugia University, who gave us an 8 hour crash course in oliveology (I made this term up). So interesting it was to an uninitiated like yours truly, that I completely forgot to take some pics during the lecture. We discussed all aspects of the olive and its cultivation, and prof.Proietti was so kind to go into much detail whenever asked for clarification. Albeit brief (one could spend years on the topic), it gave us a chance to understand the olive trees and how to interact with them. Hats off to the professor - his passion for the olive tree and all its facets was really permeating.

Next were three days of proper pruning with another first class professional - Mr.Boco also from Perugia University.

Classroom, day two

 One could not actually tell whether he was pruning and explaining what (and why) he was doing or the exact contrary. He gave us concept, method, order and logic. Sadly he is no man of miracle, so we had to work on training our pruning eye by ourselves, but the guide was there.

Not being the fittest man on earth, I got quite tired of jumping up and down the terraced hills of Liguria to prune the trees, armed with the fresh knowledge, but I must say it was an extremely useful experience.

The pack of armed wolves attacking a poor defensless olive tree

To conclude, what we got was a good starting ground and mental setup to understand our trees, get them ship shape fastly and full of fruit. Let's try.